make sure that the hot mic stay muted and that the background looks okay. We have a few, a couple of guys in the back, in the back room and in the lab, that's what the Vault Lab there is for. They're helping me take care of some of the logistics with recording and uploading and It's very important that hot mics stay muted, especially during the meditation, because we do record those. And when a hot mic, when somebody else speaks, their video takes over. So we just want to try to make that as minimal in its disruption as possible. So appreciate their help in the back. This is exam week for the school here, and that means that students are pretty much gone. Friday is what they call around here commencement. That's like a graduation service. It's a big deal around here, and so Rick will be taking the hosting spot for us on Friday. Appreciate his help. And then we'll resume on Saturday. Hope you're doing well. We are now sitting on day 1095 of United Prayer. We've been praying together in this fashion since really 2020, which is before COVID. It was right around when COVID started. And I listened to a meditation that I brought back in 2021, three years ago. And I sounded a lot different back then. I noticed three years changes people. I sounded a lot here or something. But it's been definitely a road traveled. but we believe that this is the right course for us. We have to keep praying that the Lord will revive us. Every day we need it, you know, but in the big picture we do need to have the Lord to visit us in revival blessing, That is the only thing that will, if I can say it this way reverently, it's the only thing that will compete with the allurements of this world for the young people especially. They're being pulled away and they need to see something genuine, something genuine of the Spirit in our churches and in our experience. we believe that we need to keep praying for that. And it's not a one-time event either. It's basically we're asking the Lord to revive all of our hearts and revive the worship of God, revive the prayer meetings. There's nothing worse than a dead prayer meeting. So we're asking the Lord to do that work. It's good to see you here. I'm glad that we're able to keep praying another day. And we'll make a start here. Julio is down there in Chile, and he's going to bring the devotional for us. Let's give him our full attention. Brother, it's all yours. Thank you, brother. Can you hear me well? Okay, that's good. I will please ask you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5. And today we will be meditating on verse 6. That's Matthew 5, 6. And I will read the inspired word of God. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Amen. Let's have a short word of prayer. Dear Father, we are your people. We are the ones that you have bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. And that is why we draw near you. We come before you this afternoon asking you to bless us, Lord. We need to be fed by your word and we pray that your Holy Spirit will be with us now as we consider your word. Please teach us, Lord, so that we can pray in a way that is acceptable to you by the merits of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Lord, please change our desires, give clarity to our minds. May your Holy Spirit apply your word to each heart. He is the only one who can do that, Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. The words that we will be considering today are probably familiar to all of us. They were spoken by our Savior in the Sermon on the Mount, right after our Lord Jesus Christ. Brother Julio, I think you're muted right now. Can you hear me now? Yes, brother. Why don't you go? Why don't you go ahead and start again? Let's just start again. And let's just have a reminder for everyone to keep their mics muted one more time. But go ahead, brother. Start again, if you could. OK. So the words that we will be considering today are probably familiar to all of us. They were spoken by our Savior in the Sermon on the Mount. right after our Lord Jesus Christ went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people, as we read in Matthew 4, 23. His fame was spreading quickly, and he very soon found himself surrounded by large multitudes coming to him from different parts of Israel and neighboring nations. Now, if you look at the first verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew, you will notice that our Lord saw those multitudes and then he went up into a mountain, sat down and started pronouncing what we commonly know as the Beatitudes. Have you ever wondered what he was doing? Well, he was explaining what true blessedness is all about. You see, many people were coming to Him because they wanted to be healed. But our Savior wanted them to understand that the main need that they had was not physical. It was spiritual. And He wants you and me to understand that same truth. What you need the most, what I need the most, What your lost family members and neighbors need the most is to be true members of the kingdom of heaven, to be numbered among those that are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. So our Lord mentions several characteristics of true Christians, the ones that are truly blessed. And it is in that list that we find today's verse. The Lord Jesus Christ said, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. First of all, you will see in these words that true Christians are people whose souls experience hunger and thirst. But you know what? That's not only true about Christians. It's also true about every human being in this world. God created man with an intrinsic desire to experience what is good. In Psalm 4, verse 6, we read these words. There'll be many that say, who will show us any good? That's just universal. And I don't really need to prove it. Everybody's hungry, right? Everybody's thirsty. People have longings. People have dreams. People yearn for satisfaction and fulfillment. And such longings make our souls experience something similar to physical hunger and thirst. And Christians are no exception. We share this in common with all of humanity. But please look at our texts again. It says, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. What really sets Christians apart, what sets you apart if you are truly in Christ, is the idea expressed by the words, after righteousness. Righteousness is what Christians hunger and thirst after. And if you know the Lord, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There was a moment when you came to see your lack of righteousness, right? You looked in the mirror of God's holy law and notice how monstrous you really were. You look at all the 10 commandments and came to see that you had broken every single one of them. You look at your own heart and you realize that it was deeply in love with sin and wickedness. You look at what you used to consider good works performed by you and notice that all of them were stained by sin. You look at your resolutions and efforts and came to a sad conclusion that you could never live up to God's standard. And you look at God. And as you saw his perfect holiness, you knew for certain that you deserve to go to hell. But at the same time, you didn't want to perish. So you became aware of your dire need for righteousness. And that drove you to Christ. and you found a refuge in his life of perfect obedience, and in his substitutionary death, and in his resurrection, and in his intercession. In Christ our Savior, you quenched all your thirst after perfect righteousness that would justify you before God. But there is another sense in which your hunger and thirst after righteousness have not been fully satisfied yet. Isn't that true? After your conversion, you came to realize that you are now at war and your enemy is sin. The old man is nailed to the cross, but he's still crying out and trying to exercise dominion in your life. And you don't understand why, but you obey him sometimes. There might even have been periods in your life when he seemed to have gotten the upper hand. So you sin. You do what God says you must not do, or you don't do the things that God wants you to do. And afterward, you just feel terrible. You are confused. You say, I hate what I did. or I hate neglecting what I should be doing, but you find yourself acting that way nonetheless. Or maybe you have some days of sweet communion with God, and you are really trusting in his promises and experiencing his nearness, but the next day you are doubting again, and your heart is strangely cold to the things of heaven, and you just don't understand. You don't want to be cold. You want to live for your savior. And you say, why am I not loving him like I should love him? The house keep creeping in and you feel terrible. And your soul desires one thing. It desires one thing only. And that is righteousness. You could be given everything this world has to offer. But you don't really want any of that, do you? That wouldn't help you a bit. You want righteousness. You want to be like Jesus Christ, your head. You want to be like the Savior, you're united to by faith alone. You hunger and thirst after Christ-like righteousness. Do you feel that, my dear brother, my dear sister? I have wonderful news for you. Please look at our texts again. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Do you see this promise? You shall be filled. Oh, but I am so weak. I feel so cold. I've been defeated by sin. You don't even know how dark my heart can be, you say. Yes, that might all be true. But do you know anything about the one who made this promise? It's Jesus Christ, the God-man. He cannot lie. You may not see how he's going to dispel your darkness now, but I am telling you for certain that he will do it if he has truly given you a hunger and a thirst after righteousness. God never gives holy desires that he's not willing to satisfy. He never gives his children stones when they ask him for bread. Dear Saint in Christ, you and I will be satisfied. No matter how far from Christ likeness you seem to be, God has sworn to sanctify believers on this earth and glorify them in heaven. And you can trust him. Now, one of the main means he uses to sanctify us is our own prayers. He teaches you and me to pray to be delivered from our enemies and kept from temptation. He teaches you and me to repent before his throne, asking for his forgiveness and for his strength to walk uprightly. He teaches you and me to come to him in all our weakness and failures. He doesn't want you to hide your sins from him. That's of the devil. The devil tells you that you must try to work out your own righteousness before you can come to God. But brethren, that's a lie. It's a lie. You can always come to Christ as a weary, powerless sinner, clinging to God's promise in Jesus Christ to find rest and strength for your soul. And as you hunger and thirst after Christ's righteousness, you come to him who is the true fountain of all righteousness in prayer and in his word and ordinances, and your thirst is indeed quenched. I believe that one of the reasons the visible church is in such a sad state of decline is that we do not truly believe or cling to this very promise. Many are aware of their own lack of righteousness, but instead of trusting God and using the means that he's promised to bless to give us righteousness, they despair. They think that living a holy life is some kind of unattainable dream that might be for others, but not for such great sinners as they are. When they do hunger and thirst after righteousness, they try to forget about it. And they try to replace such longings with the many full distractions of this world. They don't like being hungry, so they fill their mouths with snacks that don't really feed them, but help them forget their hunger for a few minutes. They don't realize that there is true blessedness in hungering after righteousness. Now, what about you? What about me? Do you realize, my brother, my sister, that you are experiencing God's blessing every time you are confronted with the horrible reality of your sin? Do you realize that God is giving you a reason to lay hold of him in prayer? You can come to him and say, Lord, you promise in your word that you would fill all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Here I am, God. Here I am. I know I am a sinner. I have failed you. I can feel the plague of my heart. Lord, I don't want to be like this. I want to be like Christ. Please fill me with his righteousness, the righteousness that he purchased with his own blood. Brothers and sisters, if revival comes, believers will hunger and thirst after righteousness. And they will stop turning to the broken sisters of this world when they feel their need. They will learn to lay hold of God and not let him go until he blesses them. So what I want you and me to do today is two things, really. I want us to pour out our hearts before God, asking him to satisfy our desires to grow in holiness, as he promises in this text. And I also want you and me to pray for other believers, especially for those who are asleep right now and are not turning to the fountain of righteousness in their struggle against sin, but are rather going to the broken cisterns of this world. We should pray that God would grant them the blessing to truly hunger and thirst after righteousness again, for we know for certain that God will satisfy all those who want to be more like his dear son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Brother Julio. Thank you so much for bringing us to that passage in Matthew chapter 5. It is one of those paradoxes or ironies in Scripture that those that are hungry are actually blessed. It doesn't make sense to the world, but it does make sense to us. There's actually nothing worse than when we don't have a thirst for God. There's nothing worse than even in a prayer meeting where we're not really when we don't feel the burden, when we don't feel hunger at all. We're just kind of going through the expected motions and the well-worn phrases. But man, oh man, give me an individual that is really hungry and really thirsty, and that person will lay hold on God. And that is what we're praying for, is that the Lord will even give us that hunger. The Lord often brings great trials into our lives in order to give us hunger, real hunger, because we have to be so weaned off of the snacks of the world, as our brother mentioned. And it is so true. These snacks that we fill our minds with, and those can be anything from video games, to videos, to friendships, to food even. These things keep us satisfied for a little time, so we don't really feel the hunger pains of our soul. But let's seek the Lord, and let's pray that the Lord will not only give us that hunger and thirst after righteousness, but obviously that the Lord will give it to our loved ones that we have been praying for, because that is their problem, right? They're not hungry for God. There is an emptiness to their soul, but they're filling their soul with snacks, and so they can't feel it as strongly. and let's pray that the Lord will do that, do that for all of us. Appreciate the Word brought today very much. Let's see if we can have a good season of prayer here today. Let's focus our hearts very