The Beatitudes, God’s Plan for Battle – Russell Stendal
A recap of the first three Beatitudes, “If we are willing to
be poor in spirit and let God deal with our pride, if we are willing to mourn
our own deeds and our own way, God will send us the Holy Spirit that we
might submit ourselves totally [become meek] to Jesus Christ, if we
chose His way, God says that the Kingdom of the Heaven is ours, and that we
will inherit the earth."
The 4th Beatitude – A Hunger and a Thirst for Doing
and Being Right Before God.
“In Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew the words for righteousness
and for justice are the same word. God wants us to hunger and thirst for what
is right [His justice]; what He approves of, and He promises to fill us.” “Remember,
righteousness means both doing what God desire and what God designed us to be.”
Of course, doing this does not come without doing the tough
stuff. You have to be prepared to stand in the fire which is a Beatitude which
comes later – ‘Blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness’ sake..., (more about this in a couple of weeks.)
“Don’t settle for second best. Don’t settle for just a
superficial experience with the Lord. Don’t settle just for hearing from
somebody else who’s heard from the Lord. Don’t let anybody else get between you
and God. Don’t live on borrowed revelation. Don’t shy away from the fire. Don’t
be like many in America in this day and age; they want to be filled with the
Holy Spirit, they want to speak in tongues, they want to have emotional
experiences, but they don’t want the fire because the fire might burn something
up that they hold dear. John the Baptist
said:
"I baptize you with water for repentance.
But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not
fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with
fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing
floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with
unquenchable fire."
Matthew 3: 11-12
“We have taken the message of John and cut it in half…We
have decided to let God be the God of what’s wrong. He can tell us what’s wrong…then
we will repent. But we are still going to decide what is right. [BUT] We refuse
to expose our ‘good’ plans and our ‘good’ desire to his fire,…” “When it comes to the Holy Spirit, there are
those who only want the fun things…We want baptism of the Holy Spirit, but they
don’t want the fire.”
The Church has lost God’s fire. The fire is not there like
it was before. We have got to get back to the fire, we have to go back up that
mountain and hear from God. We need to plunge right into the middle of all the
fire and lightning that the children of Israel wanted to shy away from. “Oh,
no. we don’t want to hear any more from God! We don’t want to be near that fire
lest we die.” That is what it is all about: in order to be effective for God we
have to die. We have to participate in the death and the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. “
This is what the Beatitudes were teaching – the Gospel of
Jesus. “…he taught…about those who are
poor in spirit, the ones who have chosen to let go of their pride. [He taught
about] Genuine repentance is the only way into the kingdom of heaven. [He
taught] Those who mourn with a contrite heart will be comforted…The meek;
those who will totally submit to the Master, are the only ones who will truly
inherit the earth.” Once we have
successfully walked this path, “God starts giving us the desires of His heart;
we start hungering and thirsting for His righteousness, because this is what
God yearns for in us. He will give us that same longing, that same hunger and
thirst for doing and being right [before Him]. He promises to fulfill and
satisfy us.” (All quotes from Russell
Stendal – The Beatitudes, God’s Plan for Battle.)
No comments:
Post a Comment