A Year of Prayer: Season One Weekday DevotionalsSample

If there’s one thing in churches that seems shared across all denominations and countries, it’s this: all cordial at shared lunches always tastes like it’s made from a jug that used to have cordial in it, got washed out, and then just filled up again with water.

Why does it always taste so watered down and weak?

If you remember being a child and having your first ever ‘spending money’ from chores or grandparents or the goodwill of a parent, it’s very highly unlikely your first big purchase was broccoli. Or spinach. Or a carrot. Do you remember what you bought?

If it was a food item, it was most likely something that was a ‘treat,’ something not regularly available or allowed: fizzy lollies or drink, odd coloured sweets or neon coloured ice creams. Something delicious and treasured and tasted. These were the joys of hunger and thirst satisfied!

Today’s scripture fits amongst the beatitudes from Matthew 5, the ‘Supreme Blessedness’ sermon named for the initial words of each of the nine beati sunt, “blessed are” statements.

Blessed are the poor in spirit (5:3), those who mourn (5:4), the meek (5:5), those who desire righteousness (5:6), the merciful (5:7), the pure in heart (5:8), peacemakers (5:9) and the persecuted (5:10) and those slandered for Christ’s sake (5:11).

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’ (Matthew h5:6 NIV). Hunger and thirst are not just hoping or liking. They are visceral, deep, nagging needs and feelings that dominate a whole of life, top often mind feeling and self.

We don’t get to choose hunger and thirst—they return and return, and if we’re not cyclically fed, we die. So hunger and thirst for righteousness speak of a deep, inner spiritual self that is regularly fed, regularly watered, and regularly seeking to have both these needs met.

Righteousness. What is righteousness? How can we hunger and thirst for it if we don’t ‘know it’?

Philippians 3:8-9 finds Paul writing to us about the response to Christ in imparting his righteousness upon us: ‘What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God based on faith.’

Righteousness from Christ requires a response from us—not in acquiring it, but in receiving it wholeheartedly. How can we not want even more participation in Christ’s works of grace?

Cofounder of The Salvation Army, Catherine Booth, wrote this in her treatise, Aggressive Christianity:

‘Satan knew the secret of the great success of those early disciples. It was their wholehearted devotion, their all-encompassing love for Christ, their utter renunciation of the world. It was their entire absorption in the salvation of their fellow man and the glory of their God. It was an enthusiastic religion that swallowed them up and made them willing to become wanderers and vagabonds - for His sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn in two, and to endure persecution in every form to the ends of the earth.’

‘There, in the Bible, the glorious standard is placed before us, the power is offered, the conditions laid down, and we can all attain it if we are willing. But even if we are not willing - for the sake of the children and for generations yet unborn, do not let us drag the standard down, trying to make it meet our weak and failing Christian experience. LET US KEEP IT UP! That is the way to get the world to look at it. Show the world a real, living, self-sacrificing, hard-working, toiling, triumphing Christianity, and the world will be influenced by it; but anything short of that, they will turn around and spit upon.’

We don’t labour and toil to earn and receive Christ’s righteousness - that is blasphemous. God has already assured righteousness through Christ’s blood - and what a gift of grace. But as we allow that righteousness to perform its transformative work in and upon us, our lives must look radically different.

We must share the grace and its effects! We must allow it to soak into our character and conform our thinking to news shows, musicals, and colours. What could this radical bloom look like if I allowed Jesus to continue his work on me uninterrupted?

Prayer: God, thank you for the grace of your son Jesus Christ, offered for my sake. Thank you for removing all things that hinder me and for the dignity you offer me in active participation with you. Help me to receive your grace with an attitude of thankfulness and hopefulness that blessed you as I respond in the ways that your love would require of me to reveal your hope to the world.

Action: Pray and discern: As you eat today, think of the food and tastes, the time you ate it, the location, and the people around you. Where is God present here? What is God asking?