Martyn Lloyd-Monday: How To Hunger & Thirst

A fitting post for my birthday since Martyn Lloyd-Jones was probably the most influential author that I read after leaving a life of sin and deception. The following quote has been a favorite of mine for a long time. He is expounding on the opening progression of the sermon on the mount

"I am poor in spirit; I realize that I have no righteousness; I realize that face to face with God and His righteousness I am utterly helpless; I can do nothing. Not only that. I mourn because of the sin that is within me; I have come to see, as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit, that blackness of my own heart. I know what it is to cry out, 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?' and desire to be rid of this vileness that is within me. Not only that. I am meek, which means that now that I have experienced this true view of myself, nobody else can hurt me, nobody else can insult me, nobody can ever say anything too bad about me. I have seen myself, and my greatest enemy does not know the worst about me. I have seen myself as something truly hateful, and it is because of this that I have hungered and thirsted after righteousness. I have longed for it. I have seen that I cannot create or produce it, and that nobody else can. I have seen my desperate position in the sight of God. I have hungered and thirsted for that righteousness which will put me right with God, that will reconcile me to God, and give me a new nature and life. And I have seen it in Christ. I have been filled; I have received it all as a free gift.

Does it not follow inevitably that, if I have seen and experienced all that, my attitude towards everybody else must completely and entirely changed?"

He inevitably arrives at the conclusion that seeing our own emptiness and God's fullness should change our treatment of others. In other words, inward change is the only way to true outward change.