Ragamuffin Gospel

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

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“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6)

When I think of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I don’t think of when I would like dessert after a good meal. I don’t even think about when I am late for a meal and how “hungry” I feel. I think of someone who is starving to death and the lengths they will go to get food. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means more than simply wanting to in right standing with God and to please Him; it means that everything in me longs and yearns to see God glorified by my life.

The Message puts it this way: “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.”

The question is: How badly do you want God? Not how badly do you want your prayers answered or how badly do you want gifts and blessings from God, but how badly do you long for God Himself? Honestly, I seek after many other things more than I seek after God, including but not limited to approval, attention, a dating life, and spiritual experiences. Is it any wonder that these things, whether I obtain them or not, will leave me empty and hollow? Only God can fill a God-shaped hole in my heart.

The hard part is that if you love and long for God, you will love and long for fellowship and community with His people. If you don’t love and long for His people, you don’t really long for God. Jesus says, If you love me, you will love my church (and that doesn’t mean you will love a building or a campus, it means you will love God’s people). If you are pulling away from God’s people, how can you say you are drawing near to God? I know there are seasons of solitude that God calls us to, but if we have no desire to pray for and support and encourage our brothers and sisters, we really are saying we have no desire for God.

Sometimes, when someone isn’t in a place where they can seek God and God’s people, we can rally around that person and pray God’s healing and restoration for him or her. A friend of mine said sometimes when you can only give 40%, I must be the one to give the 160% to make up the difference.

What does it mean to be filled? It means overflowing beyond your capacity to receive. It means God gives you so much that it runs over in you and spills into the lives of those around you. To be filled means to have life abundantly, or life to the full, that God will give beyond anything we could ever ask or expect or hope. As John Piper says, “God will not give up the glory of being the Giver.”

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Blessed are the meek

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“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

To be meek is not to be a pushover. To be meek is to be strong, but under control. It’s strength with a purpose, focus and goal. Think of a bridled horse whose strength is harnessed for a race. John MacArthur states, “True meekness is power under control. We can see that in light of the different ways the Greek praos was used. Medicine taken in the proper dosage can be helpful, but an overdose may kill; a domesticated horse is useful but an undomesticated one is destructive; and a gentle breeze cools and soothes, but a hurricane kills.”

Again, I like the way The Message puts it: “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” To have power under control is to be content. To not fight against God’s will, but instead fight against the things in your life that oppose God’s will. If you are not content with who you are, you will expend useless energy in striving to be someone you’re not and to meet the expectations you’ve projected onto others about yourself (which can’t be done. I know. I’ve tried)

The best example of meekness is Jesus in Philippians 2:5-11. He who was God and equal with God made himself nothing, becoming a slave. His strength was geared toward laying down His life for us on the cross. He had no other focus but doing the will of God.

John MacArthur writes that some of the ways that you know can know if you are meek are obedience to God’s word, becoming angry only when God is dishonored, making peace, gentle in how you teach others and– most importantly–receiving criticism in a loving spirit and loving those who are giving the criticism.

What is the result of meekness? We inheirit the earth. That means that we belong to the God who owns it all and has given us everything we need. It means that one day we will reign with Him (2 Timothy 2:12). The best part is still that we have God with us, for us, and in us. How could it possibly get any better than that?

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Blessed are the mourners

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“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

It seems like we as a society don’t really do well with mourning. We would rather be entertained and amused. Sadness and grief are things that we move past as quickly as possible, and those that don’t are looked upon unfavorably, like “Why can’t they just get over it?”

The Message puts it this way: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

How are we to mourn and what are we to mourn for?

I think we mourn not as those who have no hope, but as those who do. Our sadness is a sadness that is based in the hope of a better day yet to come. Our grief is a grief that has joy at its core– joy that whatever we’ve lost will be restored to us a thousand-fold. We mourn knowing that one day we will rejoice and sing– and laugh– over the momentary afflictions that have been far outweighed by an eternal hope of glory.

What do we mourn for? We mourn over the loss of loved ones, because death is certain for every single one of us. We mourn over the wasted lives around us. We mourn over so many hopes we had that were unfulfilled and dreams we had that were dashed against the rocks of reality. We mourn over sin in the world, and what how it mars and wrecks and leaves a ruin in so many lives. We weep for what God in Jesus wept for– that so many will live and die and pass into eternity separated from Him and never knowing what real hope, faith and love look like. They will never know that God had a better, more abundant life in store for them if they would only say yes to Him.

It’s good to mourn for these things, but also to rejoice that all these things will one day end. Jesus has already overcome all the things that cause sadness and grief.

I would like to close this with words from Rich Mullins that may not quite fit, but I loved them so much that I had to add them here:

“It is the living who mourn at a funeral– not the dead. We mourn because the lives of the dead who made our own more lively, and since we are (or had been) so knit together, the loss of another’s strand will eventually cause our own unravelling. Fellowship is the mingling of threads that make up a fabric, and only in a fabric do we have some kind of meaningfulness.”

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Something to think about

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When Jesus rose from the grave, one of the first things He did was to find His disciples and comfort them. Think about that! These are the same disciples who ran away and deserted Him in His greatest hour of need. Jesus would have been totally justified in giving up on the lot of them and starting over with 12 fresh new disciples. I probably would have. But He didn’t. He called them brothers and dined with them and gave them His mission to make disciples of all nations.

And there’s Peter. The one who betrayed Him. The one who denied that he knew Him. He singled Peter out and got Peter to affirm his love for Jesus for every time he had denied him. These 12 men went on to radically transform the entire world. No, wait. Jesus sent His Holy Spirit, who radically transformed the entire known world through the availability of 12 former traitors.

Can God use me after I have failed Him? Can God use you after you have royally messed up? The answer to the question is a resounding YES! God can take brokenness and make something beautiful out of it. God can take a disastrous mistake and turn into the start of something dynamic and revolutionary.

So what do I do with people who have failed me? What hopefully should people whom I have failed (God willing!) do? We should be like Jesus in this and forgive them. Forgiveness is a beautiful word to me because I see daily just how much I need it and how much I need to give it. While giving up on someone is sometimes the proper thing to do, giving second chances is the better thing to do (unless they are intentionally trying to do you harm, in which case you forgive but don’t give them the chance to hurt you again).

Jesus, give me the strength to live this out and by forgiving enable people to come out of shame and into Your glorious light. Help me to remember that as I forgive them, You will forgive me. I can’t do this on my own. I will need You every step of the way. Have Your way in me.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.