A few of our Blazing Fire Family teamed up last Saturday night to consider how our study of the Beatitudes has been impacting their lives. They shared deeply and vulnerably from their hearts how the truth of Jesus’s words have been making a difference for them:
Cynthia:
The Beatitudes are such a great picture of what God’s perfect love looks like. Love that I receive from Him, and then can extend towards other people. When we experience mercy, meekness, purity of heart and peacemaking we know we have been encountered by Love.
When I am able to acknowledge that I am “poor in spirit”, i am accepting myself as I am, not having all the answers. I am willing to be honest about my own need for help, comfort or guidance. And when I mourn, willing to be real and vulnerable about however I’m feeling and what my heart needs, I am able to receive the tenderness of His love for myself. And by receiving that kindness for myself, I can then give His compassion to others.
Sarah:
The first Beatitude, that God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for himd for the kingdom of heaven is theirs (Matt 5:3), really speaks to me.
Someone once said to me ‘Christianity is a crutch.’ I think he meant it to criticize; that there is something wrong with people who are so weak that they need to have faith in God. We absolutely do need God, but not in the way he meant. If God is a ‘crutch’, then so is air or water or light. For everything in the universe lives and moves and has its being in God (Acts 17:28). God is all around us and sustains us whether we believe it or not.
The ‘poor in spirit’ are the ones who are deeply aware of the truth of their dependence on God, both intellectually and emotionally. Jesus said this awareness is a blessing and a condition for further blessing into his kingdom.
God also made us members of a body (his body, no less) and to be in need of each other. Hebrews 11:40 says ‘For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.’ God’s wisdom designed it that we would come into wholeness together, not independently of each other. We become whole through knowing we can never be complete outside God’s presence.
Praise God!
Jim:
For me, these messages served to open my heart wider towards God. When I first heard that we would be spending the next year going through the teaching of Jesus commonly referred to as the Beatitudes, I felt a bit of trepidation because somewhere in my thinking I had categorized these teachings as “New Testament Laws” or impossible things to achieve. But I was pleasantly surprised. I found my heart engaged by these messages as they opened my heart to the beauty, goodness, and majesty of God’s character and nature. I felt an open invitation to step in closer to this God of mercy, provision, loving kindness, glory, and peaceful redemption. This was not so much about doing as becoming; not so much about trying harder to please God, but about letting God into my inner being to change me with grace-filled love.
As the panel discussion progressed, I listened to the others express the necessity to come empty-handed in order to allow room for God’s mercy and kindness to be known and experienced. As I listened, I was immediately taken back to an experience earlier in the day of feeling numb and cold-hearted towards God, and though I didn’t want to stay in that place, I was skeptical about the solutions that came to mind—engage in more prayer, listen to worship music, and/or read the bible. While, in and of themselves, there was nothing wrong with these activities, apart from God, the thought of doing any of these seemed akin to eating cardboard—thoroughly unsatisfying. Not knowing anything else to do, I decided to journal. I put into writing what I was feeling, admitting my frustration and hopelessness of being able to soothe it with my efforts and actions; the words of Jesus on the mount came to mind: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” That was me and continues to be me. I’m hungry, and I’m thirsting for the rightness and wholeness that only a knowing of the “Christ in me, the hope of Glory,” can provide.
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