Smith Wigglesworth on
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” Note that word, “shall be filled.” If you ever see a “shall” in the Bible make it yours. Meet the conditions and God will fulfill His word to you. The Spirit of God is crying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money: come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” The Spirit of God will take of the things of Christ and show them to you in order that you may have a longing for Christ in His fullness, and when there is that longing, God will not fail to fill you.
See that crowd of worshipers who have come up to the feast. They are going away utterly unsatisfied, but on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stands up and cries. “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Jesus knew that they were going away without the living water, and so He directs them to the true source of supply. Are you thirsty today? The living Christ still invites you to Himself, and I want to testify that He still satisfies the thirsty soul and still fills the hungry with good things.
In Switzerland, I learned of a man who met with the assembly of the Plymouth Brethren. He attended their various meetings, and one morning, at their breaking of bread service, he arose and said, “Brethren, we have the Word, and I feel that we are living very much in the letter of it, but there is a hunger and thirst in my soul for something deeper, something more real than we have, and I cannot rest until I enter into it.” The next Sunday this brother rose again and said, “We are all so poor here, there is no life in this assembly, and my heart is hungry for reality.” He did this for several weeks until it got on the nerves of those people and they protested. “Sands, you are making us all miserable. You are spoiling our meetings, and there is only one thing for you to do, and that is to clear out.”
That man went out of the meeting in a very sad condition. As he stood outside, one of his children asked him what was the matter, and he said, “To think that they should turn me out from their midst for being hungry and thirsty for more of God!” I did not know anything of this until afterward.
Some days later someone rushed up to Sands and said, “There is a man over here from England, and he is speaking about tongues and healing.” Sands said, “I’ll fix him. I’ll go to the meeting and sit right up in the front and challenge him with the Scriptures. I’ll dare him to preach these things in Switzerland. I’ll publicly denounce him.” So he came to the meetings. There he sat. He was so hungry and thirsty that he drank in every word that was said. His opposition soon petered out. The first morning he said to a friend, “This is what I want.” He drank and drank of the Spirit. After three weeks he said, “God will have to do something now or I’ll burst.” He breathed in God and the Lord filled him to such an extent that he spoke in other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. Sands is now preaching, and is in charge of a new Pentecostal assembly.
God is making people hungry and thirsty after His best. And everywhere He is filling the hungry and giving them that which the disciples received at the very beginning. Are you hungry? If you are, God promises that you shall be filled.