Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus opens by saying, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit.” One of the first and most critical lessons for us in engaging with the Spirit of God is learning to count ourselves as spiritually small and acknowledging that God is really big and really good. As we grow in humility, we learn to put the plans of God above our own plans, and we grow closer to God in the process.
The Preeminence of Christ
We are blessed to serve a God who is so much bigger than we can fully understand. Whatever we may face in life, our walk with God doesn’t hinge on how much we understand or how much we produce, but on trusting in how big he is and exercising faith in relationship with him. In order to keep growing in both our calling and in the knowledge of God, we must learn to make Jesus preeminent in every area of our lives, especially the areas that feel big or difficult for us.
Who is Jesus to You?
Is Jesus big or small to you? Do you believe that Jesus is working in your life even when you are in the wilderness? (Matthew 16:25)
He Makes Our Paths Straight
There are times in life when the Lord convicts us or speaks very clearly to go in one direction or another. Even so, God doesn’t expect our lives to become a script, where we only carry out specific orders from him. Instead, God invites us into a relationship where we walk with him and make decisions with him, and he breathes life into us wherever we go.
Climbing Mountains with God
As we follow Jesus, we will all encounter areas of life where we struggle to live in freedom and walk in alignment with what God says is good. We were designed to overcome these struggles with the help of the Holy Spirit who works in us. When we fail or have trouble overcoming, God is not disappointed in us, and he doesn’t want us to give up. Every setback is an opportunity to learn how to keep trusting God and keep persevering, until one day the Lord leads us up the mountain and into a new level of freedom and intimacy with him.
Discovering the Joy of Jesus
What does life look like with the perspective of joy that Jesus has?
Testimony: Salvation for the Whole Family
Serena shares a testimony of how her parents recently encountered Jesus. After decades of prayer, God was faithful to bring her family together and to bless them with new life.
The Good Shepherd
In John 10, Jesus says that as the good shepherd, he comes to the defense of his sheep when they are in trouble. In all the highs and lows of life, our heart posture as his sheep should be to lean on God and trust him. His power and his blood are enough to lead us through anything that may come our way.
Retreat With The Lord
In our busy lives the Lord asks that we spend time with him alone. Are you retreating with the Lord?
A Life Free of Fear
When we decide to follow Jesus, he brings us through a process of being made perfect in love, so that fear can have no part in us (1 John 4:18). This isn’t an instantaneous process. However, as we walk with God through different stages of life, he invites us to learn how to lay aside our fears and fix our eyes on him.
Eating at the Lord’s Table
Like the apostle John, we are called to a life of intimacy with Jesus, not because of our qualifications, but because he loves to be near to us and to share what he’s doing with us. To access that place of intimacy with God, it’s essential that we lay down our priorities and visions of what our lives could look like and come into agreement with his ideas for our lives. God’s plans for us are always bigger and better than anything we could come up with on our own, and we can trust him to lead us every step of the way.
New Endurance for a New Year
In his epistles, Paul often compares the Christian life to a long race that we run with endurance. At the beginning of the new year, we remind ourselves of the places God has promised to bring us as we keep on running this race. We choose to celebrate those destinations with joy now, before we get there, because we are intended to run forward with hopeful expectation that God will do all that he has promised.
Emptying Ourselves Before God
In Luke 21:1-4, we get a glimpse of what it looks like for one widow to give all she has to God. God’s priority, in her life and in ours, is not about finances; rather, he is looking for people that are willing to empty themselves in worship, holding nothing back from him. God will always provide all that we need; our part is to agree with him and surrender our lives to him in faith.