Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
The Beatitudes – Part 4
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
We are continuing with the 4th installment in an eight part series on The Beatitudes. If you haven’t read the previous articles, I want to encourage you to take a look at them. This is a great series on the heart attitude that God desires for His kids to have. It is crucial for us to develop these heart attitudes if we are to experience the fullness of God’s grace and presence in our lives. I pray that it both blesses and challenges you to go deeper with God.
Matthew 5:6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."
The promise of this beatitude to be satisfied is something that all of us long for. We all desire to live lives in which we are satisfied and fulfilled. This is a God given drive that is common to all mankind.
From the foundation of the world God intended for the desire for righteousness to be a driving force in the way men and women live their lives. But when sin entered the world in the garden, our desires were high jacked. The God given desire for righteousness was stolen and replaced with selfish desire and the lusts of the flesh.
The call of Jesus in this beatitude is a call to return to the original intent of God’s design for all of us. It is a call to return to the "ancient paths" that the prophet Jeremiah talked about in Jeremiah 6:16.
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The Beatitudes – Part 2
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
As we gain entrance to the Kingdom of heaven through the blood of Jesus and the revelation of our own spiritual poverty that leads us to cast ourselves upon the mercy and the sufficiency of Christ, we find ourselves as new creations in Him. We are forgiven of our sins and the righteousness of God in Christ is imputed to us as sons of God. What a glorious state to find ourselves in.
We, mankind, were in a hopeless predicament. The penalty for our sin is death and no amount of righteousness on our part could make right what we have done. But God, in His infinite mercy, has done what we could never do. He made away for us to be restored back into relationship with Him. He forgave our sin, canceled our debt, cleansed us from the wicked corruption of sin and caused us to be the righteousness of His Son. He now calls us sons, kings and priests to Him forever. He has placed His word in our hearts and put caused our weak frame to be the dwelling place for His infinite Spirit.
When this regeneration takes place in our hearts there is a sense of bliss. The weight of sin and our deserved condemnation has been lifted from our shoulders. We are able to breath deep breaths of true freedom for the first time. The inexpressible joy of being newly free in Christ is overwhelming. The sun is brighter, the revelation of God’s nearness and His love is tangible. We have truly tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
Unfortunately, for many of us this state of bliss does not last forever. We soon find that temptation is not foreign to us and immaturity in our love sometimes leaves us doing things that we swore we would never do again. The question then arises in our hearts if whether our experience with Jesus was real. “If God really made me a new creation, then how was I able to do this sinful thing?” we ask. We come face to face again with the bankruptcy of our spiritual condition.
(more…)
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The Beatitudes – Part 1
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Acknowledging our spiritual poverty is the starting place for relationship with Jesus and the entrance into the Kingdom of God. The pride of man’s heart and a religion of works tells us that with enough effort and struggle we can make ourselves desirable to God and therefore have something of value to contribute to our own salvation. Although relationship with Jesus does require effort on our part, it is not the starting place. On the contrary, it is merely the appropriate response to the gift we have been given.
Until we recognize our complete inability and overwhelming insufficiency to change the state of our spiritual condition (a.k.a being dead in our sins), we can’t even begin the process of entering into the salvation that the Father offers us through the life of His Son. Jesus says in the Sermon on the mount, recorded in Matthew chapter 5, that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit. In order to understand what poverty of spirit is we must first understand what poverty in the natural is.
Poverty is not something that many of us in the west really have a proper understanding of. Most of us, when we look at our current situation, can say that we still have options now matter how dire our circumstances look at first glance. We can work or find gainful employment. Most of us have a some sort of support system in place to keep us financially independent if we happen to fall on hard times. But for those of us who do not have these security lines, life looks very different.
Poverty produces in us a genuine sense of dependence. Real poverty is the complete and total lack of the resources needed to change our circumstances. That means, you can’t find work, there’s no money in savings and you have nothing of value to produce wealth. You are totally dependent upon the mercy and generosity of others. All the backup plans have failed and there are no more viable options left to consider. The only thing left to do is to humble yourself and ask for help.
For most of us we would say that this is the last place we want to be. We don’t want to find ourselves in a place where we don’t have options and where we are not in control. Even though we are talking about physical/financial poverty, the things we have learned stand true for spiritual poverty as well.
“There is no amount of effort, talent, or desire that can move us from death to life. We are stuck in our sins and there is nothing that we can do about it. Until we come to grips with this fact we can never really experience salvation and start our journey of eternal life with Jesus.”
When we look at this concept from the spiritual perspective, we need to realize that all of us are desperately impoverished. None of us have the spiritual resources to change our circumstances. There is no amount of effort, talent, or desire that can move us from death to life. We are stuck in our sins and there is nothing that we can do about it. Until we come to grips with this fact we can never really experience salvation and start our journey of eternal life with Jesus.
Inside of each one of us is the deep seated spirit of pride and independence that rebels against this spiritual reality. (more…)
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