Blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled.
This
is the HATAR diet: hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Obviously, it has nothing to do with losing or gaining weight or
using exercise machines because it is spiritual in nature. This is not to suggest
that it is totally free of physical activity or that exercising or applying God’s
truth is unimportant (cf. faith without works is dead, Jas 2:26, yes?).
For
this spiritual diet does not attempt to separate the spiritual (knowing God’s
will) from the physical (doing God’s will: think, say, do) as so many do by
their cafeteria-style approach to the Scriptures, having a problem with
knowing as well as the doing or the talk matching the walk.
We
all fit somewhere in the “nobody is perfect” assessment, but it is a spiritual
error to use our imperfections as some kind of excuse as if God needed to be
reminded of that in His expectations of us to be holy as He is holy (1 Pet
1:15-16). Our spiritual failures can be traced back to a love deficiency for
God (cf. Mk 12:30; Jn 14:15). Often, what we ascribe to weakness is actually a problem
of the heart, a love problem. It is the MO of our sinful nature to lean toward
self-victimization – “Everybody is a sinner, and God’s too tough on us!”
Concerning God’s Word, you have those who know but do not do; those who do but do not know, and everything in-between. God’s Word is equivalent to His will provided it is understood and interpreted in its grammatical/historical context. Also, this notion that what is done physically in our bodies is inconsequential because of the claim “God knows our heart” (yeah, He does, Jer 17:9, 10) is an ancient exercise that is contrary and egregious to divine holiness.
Any
actions, thinking, speaking, or doing that violates the teaching of Scripture is
missing the mark of God’s standard of righteousness. Because we are sinners by nature,
we cannot use that to condone our sins under the premise that no one is
perfect. Indeed, sin is sin, but not all sins are equal in gravity. Stealing
does not hold the same weight as murder, for instance.
Man
cannot see another man’s faith without the manifestation of it (cf. Mt 5:16;
Eph 5:8; Jas 2:18); the identity of a tree is established by its own fruit (Lk
6:44), yes? The unforced fruit suggests it is a natural byproduct of genuine
faith. Ever notice how forceful self-righteousness reveals itself? It always
comes across as coerced, awkward, and unnatural.
It
must not be assumed that a person attending an evangelical church is a
Christian. Going into a church makes no one a Christian any more than going
into a garage makes one an automobile. A person’s “own fruit” will be his or
her identifier. A tare (an unbeliever disguised as wheat) can speak the lingo,
look and play the part, but a tare is not wheat but an injurious weed (cf. Mt
13:24-30). By the way, Jesus died for tares, too!
The
HATAR diet will cause people to take notice that you are different than most
people because it cuts against the grain in the ways of the world. Your spiritual
food and drink intake govern your lifestyle. You avoid worldly ways that have a
negative impact on personal holiness according to the teaching of Scripture.
Before proceeding any further, I want to be crystal clear that this spiritual
diet is based upon a heart that has already been spiritually regenerated or
born again.
The
HATAR diet is only made possible by the Holy Spirit living within the heart
(Rom 8:9), a without
Me you can do nothing kind of thing (Jn 15:5). This Spirit-enablement is not
automatic, for the Holy Spirit will not override the will of a believer in disobedience;
otherwise, individual faith has no meaning. This does not preclude chastening.
The
HATAR diet has nothing to do with the nonsense of meriting salvation (Rom
11:5-6; Eph 2:8-9; Titus 3:5) for the Holy Spirit eternally lives within the
heart (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13; 4:30), nor does it serve as a mechanism of human
legalistic doctrine leveraging what is spiritual or not (Gal 2:21). It is based
squarely and solely on the Scriptures as the supreme and final authority in all
matters of faith and practice. It is a beautiful and godly thing in the eyes of
Yahweh to see His children walking in the truth (3 Jn 1:4), not legislating or
leveraging truth but living out the truth in the beauty of holiness. The latter
is so much more effective and influential than self-righteousness, yes?
A
few years ago, a dietician looked over my lab results and informed me that I had
to start thinking about what I am eating on a daily basis from here on out.
That was a game-changer! I had an epiphany of sorts with that command to think.
For
all of those years of my life, I had never analyzed my eating habits. When I
was hungry, I ate just like most people did.
It never dawned on me that I was eating according to my feelings. I just didn’t think about why
I was eating other than hunger pangs. “What do you want for supper tonight?” or
“I’m in the mood for steak!” or “I am craving a juicy hamburger, fries, and a
chocolate shake!” or “I could eat a pizza or a hot dog right about now,” not to
mention all those sodas, southern sweet teas, and sugary desserts.
My
food world was experiencing a continental shift, producing tremors and shock
waves that rocked my mind and stomach, not to mention my lifestyle. It reminded me of this
commercial where some young man said, “We don’t want to think; we want to
feel.” Yes, I feel your pain, foolish man!
Making
a paradigm shift from unhealthy to healthy demanded that I move away from
feeling to thinking, subjective to strategic; it was like going through some kind of
detox program. I never had to experience any detoxication before, but I was
always told it could be rough in the process of letting go and becoming clean
and free of whatever it was counterproductive to good health. Thinking of
calories, carbs, sugar, protein, fats, et cetera, was too much like work, not
eating! I was now working at eating and drinking. Everything was becoming
intentional.
My menu outlook took a nose dive to a foreseeable flavorless future. For years,
only the bad things tasted good. I was addicted to bad; bad tasted good; good
for me tasted bad! Practically speaking, everything that I subsisted on was
being taken away if I wanted to be healthy and avoid some hefty negatives down
the road. The future looked bleak and bland; the truth was that the future was
stark if I didn’t make the migration to a healthier lifestyle of eating and
drinking. I was heading down an unwise food path of eating and drinking myself
into trouble though my weight was under control. What a bleak horizon: a world
without salt and sugar!
A
very important spiritual truth emerged from my food world being rocked. What if
I told you that unless you decide to turn from feeling to thinking spiritually
on how to live your life for Jesus, it will lead to some very negative
consequences? Feelings are undulating emotions; they are up and down; you can
be on top of the world one minute and rock bottom the next; they are passionate
and indifferent; we should not allow emotions to dominate our lifestyle for
feelings are subjective and unreliable. They come and go. We need to strike up a balance with our
intellect, emotions, and will, or as the old country preachers used to say, our
thinker, feeler, and chooser.
We
know theologically where hungering and thirsting after sin leads. How often
have you heard to live the Word-driven life by learning the Word, loving the
Word, and living the Word? Recall Jeremiah’s response to Yahweh’s Word while
under persecution and suffering (see Jer 15:15),
“Your words were found, and I ate them, and
Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your
name, O LORD God of hosts” (Jer 15:16).
The
Word-driven life does not make us immune to persecution or suffering, but it
does provide a moral compass in the storms of life and gives us direction,
comfort, and hope. Eating and drinking the ways of the world will not provide
this at all. We need to replace the eating and drinking of those things which
are bad for our spiritual health with the HATAR diet, hungering and thirsting
in the ways of wisdom found in the Scriptures.
We
are at an all-time low of believers feasting on the Scriptures and living their
lives accordingly, which is precisely what is taking place today – willful
spiritual ignorance, poor spiritual health, broken fellowship with Yahweh, loss
of testimony, blessings, and power. Let me ask you, “Why would a world be
attracted to the testimony of faithless, fruitless believers?”
When
the world sees the world in believers the world turns a deaf ear to our
message. They just see us as hypocrites. The Word of God is collecting dust in
our lives; there is little to no praying, giving, fellowshipping, worship,
serving, being a witness, or being fruitful. What a projection to a lost and
dying world – “Look at my Christian testimony and see how God has changed my
life!” How unwise can it be to bank our eternal destiny upon that which never
changed our life!
It
stands to reason if it is harmful to go with feeling over thinking in the
physical realm of eating and drinking, it is also detrimental to our spiritual
health as a believer, yes? In order to think over feelings, we have to study and
apply what is good for us physically and spiritually at all times.
The
tense of these participles, hunger and thirst are in the present, meaning this is something
we do continually, not when we feel like it. It is a lifestyle. If we don’t,
the negative consequences will come (cf. 1 Jn 2:16, 17), for whatever we sow we
will also reap; this law of the harvest is exacting (Gal 6:7). If we based our
spiritual diet on our feelings, it leads to inconsistency, harmful choices, spiritual
error, and ungodliness. A spiritual diet based solely on feelings will derail
us from being like Christ.
There
are a host of things that can trigger misguided hunger and thirst, and it all
orbits around something perceived as better, at least to the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Think of the time before we were
“in Christ” when there was no hungering or thirsting after righteousness; we
had no appetite for HATAR because we were spiritually dead or separated from
God, dead in sins (Eph 2:1; Col 2:13; 1 Cor 2:14). The Holy Spirit did not live
within our heart (Jude 1:19; Rom 8:9). There was only groping in spiritual
darkness (2 Cor 4:4; cf. Gn 19:11; Eph 5:8) driven by the impulses of the sin
nature and feasting upon rebellion (1 Cor 6:9-11; Eph 2:1-3; 4:17-22; Col
3:5-7; Titus 3:3; 1 Pet 4:3). Why would we exchange HATAR for that?
With
our new birth, we became a new creation (Eph 2:5; 2 Cor 5:17; Titus 3:5).
“Become new” (2 Cor 5:17), is literally rendered, to become fresh, a fresh
creation in Christ, indicating a continuing condition of fact or a constant
reality.
Because
of this newness or freshness, we no longer live for the temporal values of the
world (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, 1 Jn
2:16) but for the eternal values found in Christ (1 Jn 2:17). With the new man
comes forth a new desire: a new appetite, HATAR, that could never be experienced in
the old man or the flesh. It is a supernatural desire to be like Christ once we
have been born from above (Jn 3:3; 1 Pet 2:2).
The
absence of such a desire in the heart could possibly mean that the Holy Spirit
has not taken up residence there, or there has been no spiritual regeneration?
Think of hungering and thirsting after righteousness (HATAR) as fruit worthy of
repentance (Mt 3:8). HATAR is the supernatural byproduct of being a new
creation, a fresh creation, having a new mindset (Rom 12:2). <><
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