The dead can’t feel anything. Likewise, we may be almost spiritually dead if we can’t feel whether our souls are thirsty or hungry. The life of faith is to find ourselves hungry or thirsty before God. Such people live their faith enthusiastically by trying to solve their hunger and thirst as the deer pants for water.
In the book of Matthew 4, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. When people don’t eat for forty days, they live on their body’s reserves, because there is hardly any nutrition left in their body. All the nutrition in their body is consumed after forty days’ fasting. Jesus was also clothed in the body so He couldn’t survive any more physically and spiritually. At that moment, the devil came to Him and tempted, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” That means people would believe in Him as the Son of God when they saw His power to turn the stones to bread and eat them. When people think like that, it seems plausible. However, Jesus answered, “It is written: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The most important thing while walking by faith is to satisfy the thirst and hunger of my soul. When people have realized that their souls are thirsty and hungry, they are already blessed. Jesus’ disciples didn’t know how precious Jesus was before they received the Holy Spirit. But when they satisfied their soul’s thirst by the Holy Spirit in the upper room, they could realize for the first time that only Jesus was the best blessing who could solve their thirst. The life of faith is that we satisfy our soul’s needs and thirst with God.
Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #577 (May 26, 2018)
