Blessed Are The ____________
I’ve been listening to Rob Bell’s (Mars Hill) latest sermon series on The Beatitudes and it’s been challenging the way I thought I understood them.
On one hand, this enhances the fact that the more we interact with the scriptures, the more they change and deepen our sense of who God is and what it means to follow Jesus.
On the other hand it completely challenges your core and even more so, your actions as a person trying to live out their faith in an authentic way.
He highlights them as being counter intuitive to what we think they’re saying as we read them. For instance, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Rob suggests that it’s not for us to become poor in spirit in order for us to inherit the kingdom, but those who are actually poor in spirit are present in the kingdom.
As I think about this, it practically suggests that in order for me to understand the kingdom of heaven, I need to associate myself with those who are poor in spirit, not change my spirit. The action of me entering into relationship with those poor in spirit will change my heart in order to understand the kingdom.
Anyway, I’m in process of understanding this and the point of this blog post is to encourage you to listen the sermons with me. They are all online available to be downloaded and listened to.
These types of messages and conversations are important to understanding why connecting to those waiting on assistance on the NeighborLink website is so important for our transformation.
