I am a Jesus pusher!!! “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Contained within the imagery of “hungering and thirsting” is the awareness of continuation, REPEATING. While we may overeat and say, “I will never eat again,” it is simply not true. We have satisfaction and sufficiency, but only for a brief time. In the Greek text, “peinao,” translated hunger, and “dipsao,” translated thirst, are participles in the nominative case (verbs acting as adjectives of the subject). The subject becomes “the hungering and thirsting ones.” Both of these participles are in the present tense. Some scholars call it the “present durative tense.” The present tense indicates durative or continuing action. This indicates that “the hunger and thirst after righteousness” is continuous.
Jesus expressed this truth to the “woman at the well.” He asked her to secure Him a drink from the well. He quickly moved the conversation to the reality of what He desired to give her, living water! She did not understand how this could be. Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst” (John 4:13-14a). It appears that this contradicts the continual satisfaction of thirst. But notice carefully the rest of His statement: “But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John4:14b). The idea of never thirsting again is in the context of the thirst being continually satisfied by a fountain of water within the individual. It bespeaks man’s continual thirsting and Jesus’ presence being the satisfaction in our lives. I am a Jesus pusher!!!