Holiness has not legs and does not go walking about visiting idle people, as a lazy Christian seemed to think who told me that he thought the experience would “come” to him “someday.”
Hunger
John Bunyan
There hath not one tear dropped from thy tender eye against thy lusts, the love of this world, or for more communion with Jesus Christ, but as it is now in the bottle of God; so then it shall bring forth such plenty of reward, that it shall return upon thee with abundance of increase. “Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.” (Luke 6:21)
Tommy Tenney
I am afraid that most of our carefully orchestrated church services and revival meetings would go along just fine without God’s help, approval, or appearance. Judging by the fruit of some of our endless meetings, they have already been functioning that way for a long time. What a sad commentary. It’s a statement of our low hunger level that we would be satisfied with less of God than He wants us to experience.
Carolyn Arends
I guess I shouldn’t think it odd [that] until we see the face of God the yearning deep within us tells us there’s more to come. So when we taste of the divine it leaves us hungry every time for one more taste of what awaits when heaven’s gates are reached.
Anthony M. Coniaris
Man hungers for material food but he also has a hunger for something far greater. This is why Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone”. Greater than the hunger for food in man is the hunger for God which manifests itself basically in the hunger for security, for love, peace, joy, meaning, and life. All these hungers find their complete and permanent satisfaction in Christ.
David Brainerd
My soul felt a pleasing yet painful concern lest I should spend some moments without God. Oh, may I always live to God! In the evening I was visited by some friends, and spent the time in prayer, and such conversation as tended to edification. It was a comfortable season to my soul. I felt an ardent desire to spend every moment with God. God is unspeakably gracious to me continually. In time past, he has given me inexpressible sweetness in the performance of duty. Frequently my soul has enjoyed much of God, but has been ready to say, ‘Lord, it is good to be here,’ and so indulge sloth while I have lived on the sweetness of my feelings. But of late God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry almost continually, so that I have been filled with a pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of Him the more insatiable, and my thirstings after holiness the more unquenchable.
Thomas Watson
God will fill the hungry because He Himself has stirred up the hunger. As in the case of prayer, when God prepares the heart to pray, He prepares His ear to hear (Ps. 10: 17). So in the case of spiritual hunger, when God prepares the heart to hunger, He will prepare His hand to fill.
Author Unknown
Lord, give fish to the hungry, and hunger for You to those who have bread.
Author Unknown
God’s Word needs to become the object of your desire, your deepest longing, and most intense craving.
A. W. Tozer
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.