Month: December 2024

“God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way.” (Mt. 5:10-12 NLT). Here, Jesus turns the natural world upside-down by teaching us to rejoice in persecution. Why would he do that? There will be times when people will persecute us just for being good. This may happen at your job, school or even at home if people are hostile to God. Sometimes we are marginalized at our church because we are trying uphold higher Christian standards. Some people just don’t like the presence of someone who is good because it highlights their corruption. Continue Reading →

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7 ESV). God promises to bless us and have mercy on us if we are merciful to others. Jesus told a parable about an unforgiving servant who had a debtor thrown in jail even though he himself had been a debtor to a king who forgave his debts. The king heard about it and told the unforgiving servant, “Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18:33 NLT). The point is that God has been far more merciful to us than we can possibly be to others because he had to forgive so much sin in us. This truth should compel us to be merciful to others. Yet, it isn’t easy to be merciful to others who offend us, and sometimes they do not even appreciate our mercy when we give it Continue Reading →

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” Matt. 5:6 (ESV). God is pleased when we hunger and thirst for righteousness. This isn’t just judicial righteousness that we receive when we first believe; it is also lived righteousness, that is, living a godly life, a life that is truly good. And this is something that Jesus wants us to passionately pursue, that we would actually thirst for righteousness. He hopes we realize that we are parched and dry because we do not have the water of God’s righteousness. Remember, this passage is at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which he describes a way of life that is far beyond natural human living. And the encouragement is that if we adopt this thirst for righteousness, then God will satisfy us; he will wine and dine us with his goodness so that Continue Reading →