A.W. Tozer speaks on the profound yearning for God that many of His children experience, describing it as a divine hunger and thirst for righteousness that can lead to pain. This hunger serves as a merciful reminder from God, urging believers to seek Him and find fulfillment in their spiritual lives. Tozer emphasizes that the very existence of this desire indicates the presence of spiritual life, as a dead soul lacks the capacity for such longing. He encourages listeners to view their unfulfilled aspirations as signs of hope, affirming that the desire for God is a testament to His presence in their lives.

These words are addressed to those of God's children who have been pierced with the arrow of infinite desire, who yearn for God with a yearning that has overcome them, who long with a longing that has become pain. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Hunger is a pain. It is God's merciful provision, a divinely sent stimulus to propel us in the direction of food. If food-hunger is a pain, thirst, which is water-hunger, is a hundredfold worse, and the more critical the need becomes within the living organism the more acute the pain. It is nature's last drastic effort to rouse the imperiled life to seek to renew itself. A dead body feels no hunger and the dead soul knows not the pangs of holy desire. "If you want God," said the old saint, "you have already found Him." Our desire for fuller life is proof that some life must be there already. Our very dissatisfactions should encourage us, our yet unfulfilled aspirations should give us hope. "What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me," wrote Browning with true spiritual insight. The dead heart cannot aspire.