This is the kingdom of the humble, not of the arrogant, or the powerful; not the self-willed or self-righteous; not of the religious. It is NOT the kingdom of winners, but the kingdom of the broken. It belongs to those who’ve learned to leave the leadership of the universe up to the God who made it. The first four principles deal entirely with our inner heart and mind before God. They involve the way we see ourselves before God. And the last four -- the beginning of which we will look at this

 

In our world, we often fixate on lesser things which keeps us from growing our appetite for God. Let’s stop settling for the lesser things of this world. Jesus gave us right standing before God; now He asks us to lean upon Him daily so that we can stand right!

 

Meekness is the virtue of Christ Himself. He submitted Himself to death on a cross for you and for me. In the end, He submitted to His Father’s will and gave up the rights of a King in order to forgive and save all who believe. Is it too much for Him to ask us to follow in like manner and live in meekness -- our power under His control? Following Christ is not for the weak -- it is a difficult road -- no, impossible without the fullness of Christ Himself.

 

The human experience includes pain, sadness and loss -- no matter if one is righteous or wicked -- rain falls on us all at one time or another. One can be sad for the right or wrong reason. There are legitimate sorrows that are common to all humans and for which reasonable mourning is appropriate (losing a loved one, etc). The blessing of comfort that Jesus promises in Matthew 5 comes to a certain kind of mourner. Those who mourn for the right reason can be assured of the comfort of God. The

 

As followers of Christ we do not celebrate the day, but rather the miracle that happened this day -- not because we can explain it all exactly, some things are supernatural, above our reason. The resurrection is one of those things. But when Jesus Christ introduces Himself to YOU, like Claudius, “what one hears may be unexplainable, but what one sees in Jesus is undeniable.” God’s calling is a summons to another world, that can only be entered one way -- through the mediation of Jesus Christ,