Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

–Parallel verses:
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭4‬, ‭6‬‬‬
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭42‬:‭1‬-‭5‬
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

These two beatitudes found in Luke are also found in Matthew. They are both interrelated. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we will mourn; and when we mourn, we will hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Mourning is not always just crying. At times, we are mourning the loss of a loved one, or the sin that we have become entangled with and its impact, or the heartache of a close friend going through a marriage breakup or challenge. We mourn for ourselves, and we mourn for others. But the key difference between the mourning of Christ-followers and the mourning of this world is this … HOPE. We see this hope modeled in the above Psalm. The psalmist’s soul is downcast, and he is in mourning, yet he has HOPE in God his Savior and his Lord. Mourning is also a precursor to repentance. When we wail over our sin and fully understand the weight of its impact on us and those around us, we prepare our hearts to fully repent of it and to change. THIS IS SO GOOD. The benefit of Godly mourning is that God will comfort us and bring laughter and joy. When we submit to him in the trials he DELIVERS THE VICTORY in Christ!

Second, we have to hunger and thirst after righteousness. The psalmist says: “As the deer pants for water, so my soul pants for you.” This deep desire for knowing the heart of God is a gift of God. And we can receive this gift when we first trust in him. Then over time he builds this hunger inside us through his Spirit, who dwells in the hearts of his children. And as I go through life, I realize what I need most and crave more often is His Presence and his Spirit — alive in me. “In The Spirit Activities” are the things I accomplish through God’s Spirit working through me. “In The Flesh Activities” are the things I try and accomplish on my own. I’ll give you a personal example: when I first started trying to right today’s devotional, I skipped my focus and prayer time with God and Jesus, and just jumped right in. Some might say I was doing a “good work”. But I wrote a section of “Joe junk”, and then God’s Spirit convicted me of my sin and I deleted it. I was operating in the flesh. But God gave me grace. He allowed me to wake early to write it out again after spending time with him. This time I was filled with his presence and wrote in the power of the Spirit.

The point is, it takes hard effort and a desire to be honest and transparent with ourselves in order to operate in the Spirit of God. “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke‬ ‭9‬:‭23‬) And this is what it looks like to daily do this: we must seek his face, recognize who God is, acclaim his great works and surrender our hearts to his kingdom ways and his will. The Lord’s Prayer is key for me in this process.

Lord, thank you for calling me out today, and rescuing me from myself. May the words of every future devotional be the fruit of your Spirit working in me. You deserve all the praise and all of the glory!