July 21st.

The Gateway to the Kingdom.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Matthew 5:3

Beware of placing Our Lord as a teacher first.
If Jesus Christ is a teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can-not attain.
What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it.
What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be– to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God?
I must know Jesus Christ as Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair.
But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what HE teaches I should be.
The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man that disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards of God gives are based on that disposition.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man– the very thing Jesus means it to do.

As long as we have a self righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord’s teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him.

“Blessed are the paupers in the spirit.”

That is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ’s Kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility– I cannot begin to do it. Then Jesus says– Blessed are you.
That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor!
The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.

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Some Thoughts:

My mind of I’m going to try and figure all this out on my own has been reckless over the course of my life.
All the things I have tried to fix, I tried to provide for, or make happen has came crumbling down into dust.

The truth of the fact that He is a gentleman is sometimes unconscious to us.

If we believe something is right in our mind and we go bursting forward without consent of our Heavenly Father, He will let our pride and selfishness(most of the time that is why we do not talk to Him about.), take hold and wait for us to come to our senses.
Sometimes it takes us hitting a wall or even falling to realize how far we ran off.

He has given us all the ability to make decisions, and within those decisions if we have missed it, He seems to always puts signs up for us to realize it and repent, but more than half the time we are to hard headed and just scan right past the obvious sign of  “Caution” & “TURN BACK NOW” and keep going because “it just feels right.”

I’m sorry, but feelings are not always true or right.

Sometimes I do not feel God, does that mean He is not with me? No.
He is always with me, even when I do not “feel” Him.

Sometimes I do not feel God moving when I pray for people or myself, does that mean He isn’t moving? No.
God likes to do things out of our norm just to prove that HE is in complete control and not me.

Sometimes I feel like punching someone in the face because they are a big dumb. Does that make it right? No.

Ok rewind, back on track.

Those decisions we make without truly laying them before God, if we are not careful can not just alter our life, but the lives around us.

No matter how great I think my plan is for my life, God has a 100 times better one, already in store, and locked and loaded ready to release, if I just placed my plan before Him.

Sometimes it take saying:
“Lord I’ve missed it, I’m sorry. What do you have in store?”
That is when He can truly do work in our lives.

Open vessels are the easiest vessels to fill.

We must get to the point of being poor in our spirit, but knowing whose we are.
When we realize that without Him we can do nothing, but with Him we can do anything.
Than my Friend, that is when we truly become Heirs of the I AM.

Joseph III