A Heart Hunger for Holiness

BLJ: A genuine heart hunger for holiness is necessary to becoming entirely sanctified. I fear many ministers do not preach with enough conviction to press the needs on their people to have a heart hunger. It is not about entertainment, prosperity, or fellowship. It is about relationship with Almighty God and having a pure heart. All the other things that are necessary will flow to the one that is walking on the highway of holiness.

HEART HUNGER FOR HOLINESS

One of the very most important Scriptural prerequisites to obtaining a truly sanctified heart is soul hunger. The hunger for a pure heart and the Person of the Holy Ghost must be so strong that it refuses to be denied, whatever the cost. In like strain, Dr. J. O. Peck affirms:

God never left me a single year without a gracious reward in which many souls were given as seals of my ministry...but in the summer of 1872 a deep heart hunger that I had never known began to be realized ...I longed for I scarcely knew what. I examined myself and prayed more earnestly, but the hunger of my soul grew more imperious. I was not plunged in darkness or conscious of condemnation, but the inward craving increased. 

BLJ: How is your hunger, you that are not sanctified?

In a camp meeting service preached about 1960, Dr. L. B. Hicks told his audience:

"If you get hungry enough you'll die out...and if you don't get hungry enough for it, you're not going to die out...If you get hungry enough you're going to set your will to get it....You'll get sanctified if you get your mind made up...drape over a mourner's bench like an owl over a tombstone on a wet night at midnight. Stay there till the last nail's driven and the epitaph's cut on the tomb of the Old Man!"

BLJ: When you are hungry enough, you will pay the price and die out to self.

Sheridan Baker, one of the giants among Holy Ghost preachers, and ardent soul-winners of the past, when seeking a pure heart, declared: "My hungering and thirsting after righteousness now became so intense that I could do nothing but pray for a clean heart.... There can be no true trust or soul rest while there is anything in the heart contrary to love, or any sense of impurity." 
Many have testified that their heart-hunger for holiness became so strong that they were happy to pay any price to receive it. D. L. Moody, for example, pled: "Let it be the cry of your heart day and night ...Young men, you will get the blessing when you seek it above all else...I had to come to that state I think I would have died if I had not got it."

WESLEY'S GROANING GOSPEL

Records show that many of Wesley's preachers, in the early days of the Modern Holiness Movement, followed Mr. Wesley's injunction to " groan after holiness." There is evidence that when Wesley's "groan emphasis" began to die, the depths of true holiness began to shallow out proportionately. For this reason a great deal of the power and purity of true Bible holiness has been lost from the holiness movement, and has never been brought back to its original state.

BLJ: I love the expression to "groan after holiness." When is the last time you heard that expression? Have you ever heard that expression? Isn't it time that you began to wonder why you are not instructed to groan after holiness?

A LONGING THAT LINGERS

Hannah Whitall Smith divulges: "I began to long after holiness; I began to groan under the bondage of sin in which I was still held. My whole heart panted after entire conformity to the will of God and unhindered communion with Him." 
"Once there lived another man within me, Child of earth and child of Satan he;
But I nailed him to the cross of Jesus
And that man is nothing now to me.
Now another man is living in me;
And I count His blessed life as mine.
I have died with Him to all my own life I have risen to all His life divine."

Many famous Christians have testified to the fact that God placed within them, through the influence of the Holy Spirit, a deep longing, hungering, thirsting, panting after this experience of entire sanctification.

Dr. R. A. Torrey affirms: "No man ever got this blessing who felt he could get along without it." Dr. Torrey cried out from the depth of despair when seeking this experience, "I cannot take another step in Christian service until I know I am baptized with the Holy Ghost!" 
When Holy Ghost conviction, accompanied by heart-hunger for holiness, lacks depth, then the results will fail. If one does not have sufficient conviction and heart-hunger for holiness, he should ask God to increase it. Since God is more willing to give the Holy Spirit than earthly parents are to give good gifts unto their children (Matt. 7:11), surely He would be willing to increase the hunger for sanctification if one would request it.

"In the twinkling of an eye God my Lord can sanctify."
Many have testified that a revelation to their soul of the awfulness of the carnal nature has produced a deep hunger for cleansing and filling with perfect love (Matt. 5:6).

BLJ: Are you ready to meet Him? Are you on the highway of holiness? If not, you can be. Start groaning!