Video transcript below.
Welcome to the final video in the Beatitude series. I think of all of the beatitudes, this one puzzled me the most when I read it when I was considering that these are blessings. Jesus is saying blessed, blessed, blessed. And so I think it’s one of the reasons I probably skimmed over the beatitudes for much of my Christian life, because I thought, man, I don’t think it’s too much of a blessing to be persecuted. And so in studying this and asking the Lord to teach me about how to live in the abundant life – right – to live life and, live it more abundantly, as Jesus promised in John chapter 10, I read this last one. I was like, okay, Lord, you’re just going to have to teach me. And so let’s go ahead and start with this.
In Matthew 5:10-12 Jesus says, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when they revile and persecute you and say, all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Now, I’m sorry, but I was just – in my human mind, I was thinking – okay Lord, this does not make sense. How is it a blessing to be persecuted? And as I was praying my way through these beatitudes, Jesus just hit me with this thought (this is the way Jesus and I have conversations): Lord, what does this even mean? How is it ever a blessing to be persecuted? I don’t want to be persecuted. That doesn’t sound like the way I want to be blessed. And of course, you know, Jesus is very patient with me, and he says, Kim, this is a fallen world you live in. And the enemies are wreaking havoc on this world. Everyone, every human being suffers; every human is enduring pain because of sin. This doesn’t say that there’s some, you know, that Christians are being singled out for pain. No, everybody suffers. What I’m saying, and this is Jesus talking. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to suffer for nothing.
You know, in a completely hellenistic culture or a culture that does not believe in the God of the Bible, you ask anybody, and they’ll tell you, suffering is a waste. Suffering is something that is completely unnecessary. Pain is a waste. A I realize there’s – you know – the people when we work out, no pain, no gain, and all that, but suffering in general, cancer, death, you know, horrible car wrecks, horrible injuries, being paralyzed, all those things are viewed without God as just a complete waste, right? But God says, look, these things are going to happen anyway. Jesus is saying, look, you live in a fallen world. You guys chose in the garden, and since then, sin instead of me. And so you wrecked my perfect world. And you have to live with the consequences because the Bible is very clear. Sin causes death. That’s God’s law. Just like jump off the balcony and you go down. That’s the law of gravity. Physical laws reflect spiritual laws, right? We’ve talked about this.
So Jesus is saying, but guess what? I’m going to give you the opportunity to make your suffering, which would happen anyway, a blessing. Now, isn’t that remarkable? I was thinking, wow, I cannot, you know, I mean, sure, you know, I’ve suffered plenty because of my own stupidity. I’ve suffered plenty because of my own sin. Matter of fact, other people have suffered because of my sin. And, that’s Jesus saying, look, I’m going to give you the opportunity, give you the opportunity as a born again believer to be blessed in your suffering as opposed to cursed in your suffering. And I’m going to tell you this, that completely changed my perspective about this beatitude. If our attitude is that each tragedy, each circumstance, each horrible thing that we have to face is faced with the attitude, Lord, how can I bring glory to you? Then it will not be a waste. And I’ve been experimenting, okay? Since I’ve been studying these beatitudes, I’ve been experimenting. Because I want to capture every blessing of an abundant life. And you know, Jesus, when he saves us, he doesn’t promise us that we won’t have trials. Now, he says, you will have trials because you live in a broken world. But I’ve been practicing this though.
I mean, just the other day, something happened. A case fell apart, and that happens, right? And I was like, okay, Lord, you know what? This is your law practice. You know that I want to serve you. You know that I don’t want to work more and bill my client more than I need to. So your law practice your case, you figure it out, and I want to glorify you and give you all the credit at the end of the story. You know what? When Jesus said for us to lay down our burdens on him, he said, come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Think about that for a minute. Jesus didn’t have a house. He didn’t have a bunch of money. He didn’t have any political power, right? He didn’t have anything. How is it he can say, lay your burdens on me and I’ll take care of your problems? He did that because he’s, as we talked about in the last video, he’s the prince of peace. He’s omniscient, he’s omnipotent. He’s already in the future, right? And when we, when we are living in these beatitudes, when we are developing these actively, we learn to face every circumstance by saying, Jesus, my life is yours. This is your problem. And I’ll be right here doing whatever you tell me to do to help solve it. You’re the commander in chief. I’m a private. What a relief. Right? Now, granted, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to do hard things. We do have to do hard things.
You know, in this case, the Lord was showing me, here’s what you need to do. Well, I had to write a brief. It wasn’t easy, but you know what? I knew I was doing the right thing because I was following the one who’s already in the future. And that doesn’t mean you win every battle. It doesn’t mean at least in the eyes of the world, right? You know, it just means that you are living with the hope that does not make us ashamed. As the Bible says, the hope, our hope is in something greater.
You know, the other day I was in court and we had an adoption delayed because something hadn’t been done. And it was, you know, it was a situation where we didn’t know that this particular thing was going to be required. So of course, the family was disappointed. I was disappointed. And we wasted a bunch of time. And, you know, I was talking to my staff person who handles our adoption cases later, and she goes, I’m so sorry. We wasted all that time. I said, no, don’t apologize, because as I was walking through that, and as I realized that I had just wasted the whole morning, the Lord was saying, no, you didn’t. Because while you were here, you handed out two of your testimony tracks. You talked to a person who had never heard the story of salvation and of your salvation, and you planted seeds, and then you spent time with your clients explaining that God has a plan, that you’re not worried about it, it’s going to happen. And so all those things would not have happened had you not had to sit in court for three hours. And it’s okay, child, I got you. And guess what? I got back to the office and did everything I had to do on my to-do list. And that’s just the way that God works. He has a plan.
And, you know, the thing about it is too, even if we are persecuted, even if we are persecuted for our faith, which may happen sooner than we realize depending on how our government, you know, decides, and a government can go south at any point and begin to persecute Christians. I mean, you look at the history of the world – the persecution of Christians, oh my goodness, it’s prevalent, right? But we have in the United States right now, we have such an open door. But even if that door closes and we are persecuted, the darker the darkness, the greater the light. You know, that does not mean that we lose opportunities. It just means our opportunities are magnified.
You know, the harder the trial, the greater the story, right? I mean, who watches movies where nothing bad ever happens. You watch a movie and there’s always that climax point, the struggle, right? And then the resolution, whatever that looks like, and hopefully it’s a good one. We know, because Jesus defeated death, that we have a good resolution to our pain, to our suffering. And when we learn to face it head on, like, Jesus, you know, I know that you’ve got this, whether it’s cancer, whether it’s a breakup in a relationship, a child who’s suffering, a child you’re estranged from, a crisis at work, you’ve lost your job, whatever it is, you know, God has, if you are developing these attitudes of complete dependence upon God, of knowing that his strength courses through you of abhorring sin, of really wanting to read your Bible, to grasp every precious gem from it and plant it in your heart. If you are growing in your mercy and your compassion for people around you, then every opportunity to walk through a hard time, or every time you’re confronted with a painful situation, you can turn it on its head. It can be a situation where you watch God bust down the door, cross the river – whatever you want to call it – and he does. He will. He promised to be with us and never leave us and never forsake us. And you know, when we’re his children, we can’t ever not be his children. My children are all genetically related to me. That genetic pool can never be erased when we are born again. And Jesus Christ is our brother, God is our Father. We have spiritual genetics that can never be changed. We are always his. And you know what, he allows us to go through things because that’s part of life. That’s part of the world we created, not the world he created back in Eden.
And so this is to me, Jesus having this beatitude, this attitude for life, the very last attitude, he was setting them up for the rest of the sermon on the mount. I’m just going to read this. He said in Matthew 5:14-16, he said, you are the light of the world. And this is after these beatitudes, okay?
You are the light of the world. A city that’s set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand. And it gives light to all who were in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
The greater the darkness of pain and suffering and persecution, the greater the radiance of light. You know, when we are in a dark cave and you put a tiny little pin light on, everybody in the cave can see it. But if you’re out in a sunny park and you put a pin light on, you can’t see that light, can you? So the darkness illuminates the light. It emphasizes the light. And so when we, whatever we’re facing, whatever you’re facing, you’re suffering. If you are developing this attitude that you can glorify God in your suffering, your suffering is not wasted. Oh, isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t that give you great hope and great courage? I mean, I still, as I think about this, you know, the call to action is by Jesus, is that, you know, we can’t expect this world culture to love us. We shouldn’t expect that we should be getting all of our love from Jesus and from each other, right? As brothers and sisters in Christ.
I can’t imagine, you know, well, let me just say this. I’m so glad that the Lord showed me – led me to these beatitudes because these beatitudes – they are attitudes this earth that lead us to experience the double blessing. We are able to walk through this treacherous life that we have, right? We’re only five minutes from death, right? If we stop breathing – our heart stops beating with hope, right? And with blessings, blessings today. That doesn’t include the blessings that we will get someday. I think the best blessing I will ever receive in heaven is meeting the people that I was able to lead to Jesus. I mean, think about that.
You know, I can’t wait to see all the people that I led to Jesus Christ, because someday we’re going to be reunited. And that would be the best blessing, right? I think that when we pursue Jesus Christ, if I were to sum up these beatitudes, I would say it is making Jesus the center of our life. Because when he’s the center, our life is unmistakably full of abundant blessings. And you can’t hide, you can’t hide Jesus when he is the center of your life. The fruits of his spirit, his love, his joy, his peace, his goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness, his wisdom, his strength, they flow out of you.
And I just pray that this Beatitudes study has been as remarkable for you as it’s been for me. And thank you so much for spending your time with us on this study. And we have a book that’s coming out that’s going to be just a condensed version of this study, so that you can put it on your tabletop, and you can review these things from time to time and remind yourself of these winning attitudes of Jesus.
