Introduction
Are you discipling your soul to crave God, or have you trained yourself to crave everything else first? Jesus teaches that real blessing is often the opposite of what we’d naturally call “blessed,” and in His kingdom even hunger can become a gift that leads us to God’s filling. We all understand feasting. We plan meals after church, we celebrate milestones with food, and we mark holidays by gathering around a table. But when we step into the “way of Jesus” (Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, alongside Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount), we meet a surprising, even shocking kind of wisdom. Jesus wants us to see the world radically differently than we currently do. In Luke 6:21, Jesus says:
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled.”
Hunger is painful. It’s uncomfortable physically and often humiliating socially, being at the bottom, unsure where provision will come from. Yet Jesus says this condition can be blessed. Let me walk you through how.
Main Points
Are you discipling your soul to crave God, or have you trained yourself to crave everything else first? Jesus teaches that real blessing is often the opposite of what we’d naturally call “blessed,” and in His kingdom even hunger can become a gift that leads us to God’s filling.
We all understand feasting. We plan meals after church, we celebrate milestones with food, and we mark holidays by gathering around a table. But when we step into the “way of Jesus” (Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, alongside Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount), we meet a surprising, even shocking kind of wisdom. Jesus wants us to see the world radically differently than we currently do.
In Luke 6:21, Jesus says:
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled.”
Hunger is painful. It’s uncomfortable physically and often humiliating socially, being at the bottom, unsure where provision will come from. Yet Jesus says this condition can be blessed. Let me walk you through how.
Hunger Exposes What We Call “Blessed”
If I told you, “Blessed are you when you feast,” we wouldn’t need a sermon, our hearts already agree. But Jesus deliberately confronts our assumptions. His kingdom values are “upside down” compared to the world’s.
So I want you to learn to read Jesus’ teaching with a question: Why does He call blessed what I tend to avoid? With “hungry,” Jesus isn’t romanticizing pain, He’s revealing what hunger can produce in a kingdom person: hope, desire for God, and a life of dependent faith.
Hunger Tests And Trains Your Hope
Jesus says, “hungry now”, that word matters. The Sermon on the Mount/Plain continually teaches that your current conditions are temporary.
Think about Israel in the wilderness: hunger made them feel like slavery in Egypt was better than freedom with God. Hunger whispers, “You won’t make it. You will perish.” I see this same fear in everyday life, like kids claiming they’re “dying of hunger” in the afternoon. They need someone to remind them: your hunger isn’t the same as your destruction.
That is what Jesus does for us. He teaches us to look beyond the present moment and trust God’s future provision.
Matthew records Jesus applying this directly to anxiety about provision:
- Matthew 6:31–33: “Do not worry… your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things… seek first the kingdom of God…”
So when your life contains real hunger, physical, emotional, financial, relational, or fear about the future, you must hear Jesus gently but clearly: don’t interpret hunger as abandonment. In His kingdom, hunger can become a training ground for hope: God knows; God sees; God will fill.
Hunger Is A Gift When It’s Desire
Another way to understand hunger is simply: desire. And in many cases, desire is a mercy.
Physically, one of the most dangerous conditions is losing appetite. Emotionally, depression, heartbreak, and distress can steal hunger too. Scripture captures that kind of soul-weight:
- Psalm 42:3: “My tears have been my food day and night…”
But Jesus isn’t only speaking about empty stomachs. Matthew clarifies the spiritual dimension:
- Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
Spiritual hunger is meant to drive you somewhere specific: to Christ. As David longed,
- Psalm 42:1–2: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You…”
So I’m not just asking whether you are hungry. I’m asking: What are you hungry for? Because your appetite reveals what you believe will satisfy you.
A Full Soul Can’t Taste God
Here’s a hard but loving truth: one reason people aren’t moved by God is not because the Word lacks power, but because the appetite is gone. Hungry believers can receive from God in a thousand imperfect “packages.” But when someone is full of other things, even the best “meal” won’t move them.
Proverbs gives a vivid picture:
- Proverbs 27:7: “A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”
When we get stuffed with the world, we can lose taste for God, even “honey” tastes unappealing. John Piper’s warning is piercing: if we don’t feel strong desire for God’s glory, it may be because we’ve nibbled so long at the world’s table that we’re too full to hunger.
So the key discipleship question becomes: How do you become hungry for God again?
Repentance Restores Your Appetite
Repentance is often described as a change of mind and direction. But here, I want you to think of repentance as a change of diet.
Just like a doctor might tell you your health issues come from what you consume, God confronts what we take in daily, news, feeds, entertainment, endless notifications, things that often cultivate an appetite for the world while starving the soul.
The hopeful part is this: your appetite can change. What you repeatedly consume becomes what you start to crave. If you want hunger for God, repentance may look like stepping away from what fills you without nourishing you, and stepping into God’s presence, Word, and will.
Jesus gives us a vivid picture in Luke 15, often called the prodigal son, but it could be called the hungry son. He feasted on the world until it left him empty. Then a famine came, and physical hunger exposed spiritual hunger:
- Luke 15:14–17: he ends up so hungry he wants to eat pig food, and then “he came to himself.”
That’s repentance: coming to your senses and saying, “Why am I eating this when my Father has bread enough?” And what happens when he returns? Not scolding, a feast. That is the gospel: your hunger can become the very path God uses to bring you home and fill you.
Redemption And Radical Faith Keep You Hungry
When repentance is real, it’s often marked by two companion realities: a renewed desire for God and a fresh experience of redemption, the grace of God proving deeper than your sin. That’s why new believers often have such strong appetite:
- 1 Peter 2:2: “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow…”
New life in Christ comes with new hunger. And it’s a gift to the whole church when someone is newly redeemed and simply wants to be fed, to grow, to serve, to learn, to obey.
But hunger isn’t only for “new Christians.” All of us can live with it through radical faith, a daily dependency on God’s will. Martin Lloyd-Jones observed that revival is always preceded by thirst for God and hunger for His will.
And we see this hunger perfectly in Jesus Himself. In John 4, while His disciples urge Him to eat, He says:
- John 4:34: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.”
So if you want hunger for God to be renewed quickly, one of the most direct paths is this: step out in faith to do what God is calling you to do. Obedience feeds hunger. Dependence strengthens appetite. When you risk faith, you discover anew that God sustains.
Conclusion
Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled” (Luke 6:21). Hunger can hurt. Hunger can embarrass. Hunger can scare you. But in the kingdom of God, hunger can also become a blessing because it trains hope, awakens desire, drives repentance, magnifies redemption, and calls you into radical dependence on God’s will.
So I want you to take a gentle inventory: Where are you hungry right now? And what have you been feeding on? Don’t waste your hunger by trying to silence it with the world. Bring it to the Father. In Christ, hunger is not the end of your story, God’s filling is.
Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus and for the surprising blessings of Your kingdom. You see every place of hunger in our lives, physical needs, emotional needs, unmet desires, fears about the future, and spiritual dryness. Forgive us for the ways we have filled ourselves with the world until we had little appetite left for You.
Teach us to hope again. Train us to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness. Lead us into true repentance, a change of spiritual diet, so our cravings are restored. Thank You for Your redeeming grace that welcomes us home and promises to fill what is empty. Give us radical faith to do Your will, and let our deepest hunger become a hunger for You.
We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclusion
Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled” (Luke 6:21). Hunger can hurt. Hunger can embarrass. Hunger can scare you. But in the kingdom of God, hunger can also become a blessing because it trains hope, awakens desire, drives repentance, magnifies redemption, and calls you into radical dependence on God’s will.
So I want you to take a gentle inventory: Where are you hungry right now? And what have you been feeding on? Don’t waste your hunger by trying to silence it with the world. Bring it to the Father. In Christ, hunger is not the end of your story, God’s filling is.
Closing Prayer
Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus and for the surprising blessings of Your kingdom. You see every place of hunger in our lives, physical needs, emotional needs, unmet desires, fears about the future, and spiritual dryness. Forgive us for the ways we have filled ourselves with the world until we had little appetite left for You.
Teach us to hope again. Train us to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness. Lead us into true repentance, a change of spiritual diet, so our cravings are restored. Thank You for Your redeeming grace that welcomes us home and promises to fill what is empty. Give us radical faith to do Your will, and let our deepest hunger become a hunger for You.
We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.