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"Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God."
(Matthew 5:8)
Happy New Year to you! I pray that the year 2022 will be your best year ever. May God bless you so that you are a blessing to many. Thank you for your partnership with DFEA to share the Word of God with many. I am looking forward to a wonderful 2022!
I am so grateful to God to be able to continue our study in the Beatitudes, the blessed statements of Jesus Christ, as we embark upon a brand new year. To know and put into practice these teachings of Jesus is to experience the peace of God and live a life that is blessed and spiritually prosperous. Are His teachings hard to accomplish? Not really. They are impossible to accomplish by our own efforts alone! Are His teachings popular? They are not popular with many in our world. Donald Trump Jr. said recently that the teachings of Jesus Christ, in particular His teachings in the Sermon on the Mount to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), have "gotten us nowhere."
Let me be candid and forthright with you: I am a work still in progress! I know the teachings of Jesus are absolutely 100% the truth and the key to living a blessed life on this earth, but I fail to live up to His teachings at times and must ask His forgiveness. The fault is not in the value of Jesus' teachings; the fault lies in me not fully obeying or trusting Him as I should.
We must all come to Christ poor in spirit and receive Him as our Savior and Lord. At that very moment, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our inmost beings. Once we are saved, we must die to self daily and ask the Holy Spirit to fill us every day and empower us so we can live as Kingdom-of-God citizens in this fallen world. Jesus is not describing some impossible way to live on earth or a lifestyle for only the spiritually elite that live tucked away in abbeys or monasteries. Rather, He is giving us the nuggets of spiritual truth that empower us to live a life of great peace and favor, that is, the blessed life.
Jesus said the blessed ones are the pure ones. The medical doctor turned pastor, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, says this about our next Beatitude: "We come now to what is undoubtedly one of the greatest utterances to be found anywhere in the whole realm of Holy Scripture. . . . We are face-to-face with one of the most magnificent, and yet one of the most solemnizing and searching, statements which can be found anywhere in Scripture." (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p. 91-92)
As we begin this study of the sixth Beatitude this week, will you pause now and ask the Lord to speak to you and empower you to be what He deems blessed, pure in heart?
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