Writing this devotional was exciting at first as I dove into the Beatitudes, which are kingdom principles that sound backwards in the view of cultural norms. Then I realized God was wanting me to share part of the story He’s given me. And that story requires vulnerability, which can be scary especially for a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist.
Today, we’re looking at the final verses of the Beatitudes when Jesus talks about finding joy in the midst of pain and persecution. He says in Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” What is persecution? According to Nate Sweeney in Abiding at the Feet of Jesus: A Study on the Beatittudes, the essence of persecution arises when the Spirit of God in you is at war with the Spirit of the world in others. Christian persecution occurs in all shapes and sizes. It’s the hostility experienced from the world as a result of one’s identification as a follower of Jesus. You can also say it’s the natural repercussion of becoming more like Jesus and abiding with Him. When you abide with Jesus, He gives you the boldness and courage to keep walking the narrow road even while being persecuted along the way. “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Matthew 10:22. So what does it look like to stand firm to the end even while being persecuted? Well, here’s a piece of my story that I’m excited but also nervous to share with ya’ll because I want to control how I’m perceived by others and be seen as ‘perfect.’ But the Lord constantly reminds me that I’m human, flawed, and IMPERFECT. The story He’s given me is one that will hopefully encourage you as it encourages me. College athletes like to party. The swim team at Colorado State University was no different. While I was a Christian my freshman and sophomore years, I was living more for the world than I was for Jesus. So I did go out and party with my teammates. Things were going swimmingly as I was doing well in the pool and seemed to fit in with my teammates. That all changed when God fully captured my heart the summer in-between my sophomore and junior years. When I came back that junior year, I had convictions based on my new life in Christ that lead me to stand against the crowd. I came to value integrity, honesty, and transparency with authority figures like my coaches. Junior year, we were asked to not drink for a certain time period and even signed a contract to make it official. Because my coaches asked us not to and I signed my name on that dotted line, I became convicted because of my integrity as a Christian and desire to live in the light. Yes, part of it was not wanting to get caught and lose my swim scholarship, yet I no longer had that desire to go out with my teammates like I used to. My heart was convicted as God start transforming other parts of my life. The next two years were the hardest years of my college career as I navigated my new life in Christ and the convictions He laid on my heart and how to live them out in my old environment. These new choices did not sit well with my teammates. The more I pursued my relationship with God, the more hostility it created on the team though I didn’t throw it in my teammates’ faces that I would no longer go out and party with them like I used to. However, they still were suspicious of my faith as my honesty became an inconvenience to them. So I had a choice to make - I could pursue the path I was on and follow the life God was leading me toward, which would continue the separation and isolation I was experiencing with my teammates, or I could buckle under the peer pressure in order to keep the peace with them. “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:12-17. I made the choice to take the road less traveled as Robert Frost once said although I Iost a lot of friends and became the butt of many jokes...but God. But God took what the enemy intended for evil and used it for good. He transformed tears of pain into tears of joy. “Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” John 16:20. This story does have a happy ending, ya’ll. And that’s all credit to The Man upstairs. My relationship with Christ grew exponentially despite the cruelty of my teammates. Genesis 50:20 “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” I reached out to an old college teammate of mine to follow up on a conversation we had earlier this year. When I was a senior, Veronica was a freshman. She shared with me how much she was impacted by my behavior and mistreatment on the team, which humbled me and brought me to tears. I can’t even begin to tell ya’ll how much it hurt - mentally, physically, and emotionally - being treated poorly and dealing with my first somewhat significant injury that senior year; how many times I broke down and cried; how many times I wanted to throw in the towel and quit. I’m sure many of ya’ll can relate to that one. It’s like running the last few miles of a marathon as you body screams, “STOP!” while your mind says, “One more step.” By God’s strength, I did not stop. Instead, I kept going and finished the race set out before me, as I read these words that Veronica sent me: “Essentially, the year after you graduated, our team’s culture changed a lot. Andrea, Marie, and I would invite the freshmen to church and found that there was a more Christian base on our team than before. Personally, you inspired me to reach out and join more organizations and be unapologetic about my faith. Your boldness rippled through the team after you left and the culture has continued to improve. Basically, it was watching you have patience and love for people even though they tried to shut you down in any way that they could. Even after 4 years, you were still willing to love people who could be cruel at times, and that level of steadfast love was crazy to watch. I’m sure people felt much more aware of their level of complaining around you because you were never one to complain and always had a positive attitude. The way you lived your life shined a light on the sins of others, and they didn’t like it. Most people would have backed off, but you continued to be a kind and loving person who wasn’t afraid to share your faith and love with others. There is no way anyone who didn’t have the strength of God could have survived those 4 years on the team, but you had that light in you, which got you through it, and He used it for good. Also, your continued pursuit to follow your passions as well. I remember being stunned at the amount of stuff you did outside of even the pool and despite how hard it must have been, you persisted through it all. And personally, without you, Dre, and Marie on the team showing that there can be God’s light in dark places, I wouldn’t have even made it through that year on that team. So you were a reminder every day that God is good and He gives us the strength to get through it.” Although I didn’t get to see it at the time, my obedience to God left a legacy at my school and on my team. He was there working behind the scenes the whole time. Ya’ll, I don’t know what your story is. I don’t know how God will use it. But I do know that He will use whatever you’re going through for His glory. When you’re being persecuted, be encouraged because it means you’re resembling something that’s not of this world. We often times want to fit in yet this world is not our home. How do you make a difference in the world? By being different from the world. Heaven is our home, which is why Jesus reminds us that heaven is our reward for all the trials we endured during our time on earth. That’s the beautiful thing about the Beatitudes - it doesn’t make sense to find joy in the midst of pain. Yet, Jesus used the Beatitudes to awaken a culture that was religious, works-based, and self-righteous to an intimate, abiding relationship with Him. The Latin word ‘beatus’ is where we get ‘blessed’ from as each Beatitude describes two statements, WHO is blessed + HOW he or she is blessed. With this particular Beatitude from Matthew 5:10-12, the one standing apart for Jesus is blessed by experiencing joy in the midst of suffering and will enjoy the gift of heaven. So the next time you’re feeling down in the dumps because you’re the odd man or woman out, recognize that even the perfect Son of God was considered ‘different’ and rejected by society. We can’t live with a fear of rejection because life is short and we’ve got a mission to accomplish - to love God and to make Him known. Even if we’re the only one at our workplace, in our family, on our team, or in our neighborhood. Even if we are treated poorly as Jesus wraps up the Beatitudes with this reminder that life is hard. We will NOT always fit in and we WILL be treated differently because of our faith. Yet, that is something we should find joy in because while pain is temporary, love is eternal. And God’s love always wins. It won over the CSU swim team and it will win wherever you go with God. To answer the question I asked at the beginning, what does it look like to stand firm to the end even while being persecuted? It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Pushing through the physical pain of a marathon requires discipline, dedication, and perseverance. The same thing applies to our spiritual lives. When we’re being persecuted because of our faith, that’s when we have to keep pressing toward the goal of loving God and loving others. One step at a time.
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Matthew 5:4-5
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is taking the formula of this world and turning it upside down. He is doing that to paint an image of how you and I, as his disciples, should live our lives. These passages talk about what our lives should have the characteristics of. The interesting thing about mourning and meekness is that they are forms of weakness. In our world we want to be strong. We instinctively believe that those who are happy and assertive are the ones we want to be. Jesus doesn’t. More than that, these verses point us toward God. 1. Let’s talk about mourning. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This is a strange thing to say! I’ve never gone to a person in sadness and mourning and told them…”You’re lucky!, You’re fortunate!” It doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. But that is what Jesus is saying here! How is this possible? The key is what we are mourning. Based on the context (and some helpful suggestions from a commentary I was reading), I think Jesus is celebrating the people who are mourning sin and its effect on the world and in our own lives. I recently did a 12 step biblical recovery program. Putting to paper my inventory of sexual sins and the harms I had done to other people. It put me into a serious place of mourning and in that place I saw that I needed help. It showed me that I needed something (as Layo pointed out last week). For the Christian, mourning naturally points us to God. He’s the one who can comfort. That’s why I think this beatitude is about God! Sadness alone isn’t good. It’s the fact that we are going to be comforted by the God who knows are pain, is powerful to do something about it, and is fixing the ultimate cause of pain that makes mourning a blessing. 2. Let’s talk about meekness. Like me, you probably imagine meekness as a combination of weakness and passivity. You imagine a pushover, a wallflower, the kid who gets pushed around in highschool, the girl who does what her friends insist on. That’s not what it is. Let me give you a list of words that I think paint the biblical image of meekness (John Piper wrote an extremely helpful article on this!) A meek person: Supreme confidence in God > relies / waits on God (See Psalm 37) Rejects revenge / defensiveness > trusts in God to justify > teachable. Humble > aware of personal imperfection / confident in God’s love > Reasonable. Slow to speak. Quick to listen. Let me give you a definition. Someone who is supremely confident in God and because of that relies on God for success and waits on God. Someone who knows their own weakness / imperfection, but is confident of the outcome because they trust God and because they trust God don’t feel the compulsion to take and defend. A passive person thinks “I’m weak, so why bother resisting.” An assertive person thinks “I’m strong, so I can take what I want.” A meek person thinks “God’s got this.” In our world, we likely see this kind of person as weak and foolish because they aren’t taking what they “should get” or “defending themselves when attacked”, and, if God wasn’t in the picture, they would be! But God is the one the beatitude is pointing to. We “inherit the earth” because God is in our corner. Generally, an inheritance is received from someone. For us, that someone is God! That’s not really what Texans practice. The guy with a giant Ford 150 with guns in his truck and stickers on the car that say “Come and Take It” and “Don’t Tread on Me” has his confidence in something else. Remember Jesus during the last day before his crucifixion. He knew that His death was God’s will and that God was in control. So when Peter tried to free Him by force, he refused. When the crowds / Pharisees were yelling lies, he responded in silence or responded simply. He was meek because of his confidence in God. Lastly, meekness isn’t being passive. Jesus went to Jerusalem. People told him not to and He went anyway. He did exactly what God was calling him to. The meek person’s confidence in God leads to action, specifically doing what God calls them to. Ephesians 6:21-24
Q1- What is it about Tychius that makes him worthy of being sent to the church in Ephesus? *His Faith - Our faith in Jesus Christ birth, death, burial and resurrection is what makes worthy or eternal life. Q2- Do I know what is going on in my church body/ the world to know where the Lord needs me to use my gift of faith? - Our faith is a powerful gift and we should be using it for God’s kingdom. Q3- Who receives grace? - The Christians that are faithfully practicing the love of Christ receive his abundant grace! |
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