Disciples of Grace Today

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth - Matthew 5:5 My Grandfather would often say, “Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean that you should.” At the time I had no idea what he was saying to me but as I’ve grown, and particularly as I’ve grown in Christian Faith, what he said makes perfect sense, especially in regard to being meek. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is strength under control. But how is it that those who are poor in spirit and mourning over sin have strength? How does the eternal worldview play out in the area of meekness and inheriting the earth? This statement is extremely nuanced because it carries with it a humble submission that defers to another. Remember this entire sermon is a description of how people of God are to live in relation to God, each other and those around us. Our meekness towards others stems from our submission to God. The first act of meekness is to lay our rebellion down. We have all sinned against a Just and Ho...

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted –  Matthew 5:4 As we continue our walk through the first blessings and promises of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we want to make sure that we keep the entire sermon in mind. This sermon spans 3 chapters in the Gospel of Matthew (5-7) and even though chapters and verses make it easier for us to find things, it may also contribute to our picking out parts and parcels and forgetting that Christ is conveying a central idea in this sermon, and that overall idea is the heart of the law and the prophets. He summarizes this in Matthew 22:37-40, where He says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In these two commands hang all the law and the prophets. Here, he is spelling out what that love looks like and He starts with God. We started this by defining blessing as being happy, content, satisfied and prosperous; with that in mind how is...

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3 This is the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on The Mount. It is so simple that a child can grasp its points and so profound that it has perplexed theologians and scholars for centuries. My aim here is not to enter the fray of the theological and scholarly debates, though I commend them to you, but rather to encourage you if I may, with that perplexing child-like understanding that produces an absolute dependency upon The Holy Spirit to speak to us individually and as One Body in Christ. Everyone wants to be happy. We seek it out and sacrifice for it in a myriad of ways, and contrary to popular preaching, God wants us to be happy, but that happiness is not to be found in our 21 st century Western Worldview, for that is ever changing and those things which promise it perish with the using. God intends for us to find our joy in Him. He wants us to be eternally happy and that’s the whole point of the first 12 ...