The Beatitudes Video Series: Part 7 See God

Video transcript below

So this is the seventh video, which is blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God out of Matthew 5:8. This is really remarkable. You think about why we don’t pray, for example, as much because it’s easier to talk to our neighbor than it is to talk to God because we can’t see God, right? How many times have you heard somebody say, gosh, you know, it’d be nice if I could actually see God like a person. I just want a person to talk to. And actually Jesus is saying, guess what? If you will develop the attitude of becoming pure in heart, you can see me. And what does that mean?  Well, I’m not going to pretend that I understand all the layers that Jesus was laying down in this first, because his mind is so far above mine, but I am going to share with you the very exciting things that He showed me in his word.

So first of all, remember these beatitudes that we’re talking about, they’re attitudes that we’re developing that bring us into what John 10:10, is speaking of what Jesus said,

“I have come that they may have life and they may have it more abundantly.”

We’re talking about how to develop a life that is so overflowing and so full and so rich that it’s incomparable to anything anyone else has. And Jesus is giving us layer after layer after layer of how to do that in these beatitudes. And we’ve – I don’t want to recap all of them – but just think about it for a minute. You know, when we are completely and utterly aware of our total dependence upon God for everything that we do, we are necessarily drawn into a deeper relationship with Him. We want to hear what He has to say. We want to do what He says to do because we know how dependent we are upon Him. When we hate our sin and love the Lord in his ways more, that draws us into this cycle of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, which helps us to see the kingdom of heaven, right? It helps us be brought into a deeper relationship with God when we subjugate ourselves to the will of God and let His power flow through us. Then again, we’re entering into a different layer of our relationship with God. And so as we work through these beatitudes, we’re now talking about this idea of becoming pure in heart. And, you know, I guess I just, when I was studying this, I was like, Lord, yes, of course, I want to see more and more of you. He reminded me of a couple things.

Number one, He reminded me of how much I love to be out in nature. I love to hike. I love to watch the sunset off the back deck. And He’s saying, Kim, as much as you love those things, I made those things. You can sit down and talk to me. You can see me in these things. And you can see them from my perspective. If you’ll become pure in heart, you know, it’d be like sitting down with Monet and talking about one of his paintings, right? It would be, it would be awesome. And God’s saying, if you will become pure in heart, you can enter into the experience of the desires of your heart with me as a center, the fountain of your desire. So it’s like, wow, God, that I never thought about that before. And, you know, God, another thing God showed me was He created us to desire beauty, intelligence, um, just these things that are the fruits of his spirit, He created us to enjoy, um, all the things that we really do enjoy. He did not create us to live after the works of the flesh. And I’m going to talk about that in just a minute. 

But let’s just take the example of a baby, okay? Y’all know I talk about my grand baby all the time, although she’s two now. So she’s not really a baby. And you know, I can give you a hilarious example. We were in the yard where my daughter lived, and one of the neighbors came over and he is a self-professed atheist. And he makes sure we know it, which is totally fine. We love the man. And I was singing my little song with Claire that I’d written for, just a little silly song, silly songs with Granny, right? It was, I love, love, love, love love, love love, love love, love love, love you. And she’s like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he starts singing. I love, love, love, love, love, love and because he wants to be in on the game. He wants to be in on the attention, the aura of Claire’s, um, personality of her, her just her beauty, her unbridled purity, really her smile just melts your heart, right? Well, what he doesn’t realize, he doesn’t, God help let him, God lets him experience the purity, the longing for purity that God created in him. Even though he doesn’t acknowledge God, he was experiencing a desire for God, that God placed in him through his enjoyment of the purity in Claire. And, you know he doesn’t understand, and we don’t either. I’m not beating up the neighbor guy. We don’t have a clue what we’re missing. If we are not seeing God the way Jesus is talking about, we can see God. 

You know, so many of us say, well, I feel like I can’t really talk to God about things because I can’t really see Him, and I rather talk to my friend or somebody else, or a pastor or a counselor. But that’s because we haven’t learned to see God. And I’ll tell you, the primary reason I struggle with this, and it may be the primary reason you struggle with it, is because I’ve allowed the enemies to define who God is. I’ve allowed the enemy to convince me that God really isn’t good. He’s really pretty boring. He really kind of wants to hold me back. God wants to chain me. He wants to keep me from doing the things I enjoy. He really doesn’t have my best interest in mind. God really doesn’t care. I need to live my own life my way, because God’s way isn’t as good as mine.

Sound familiar? Yeah. That’s the enemy. Because all you have to do is look at John 3:16 and know that if He was willing to suffer an incredibly painful life, then why would He not want all good things for you and for me? Yeah. So we have to get our God, our view of God, correct? In our video, which god are you praying to? We talked about this a lot. Like, you know, we create this image of God that says, oh, it’s okay to lie, or It’s okay to live with my boyfriend or whatever, and we pray to that God and somehow expect Him to answer our prayers and that God’s powerless. But when we strip away all of our preconceived notions, all of the lies of the enemy, about who God is, and learn that he is the fountain of all we desire, he is a fountain of all goodness. It should make us desire Him in a way that we will do anything to get close to Him. And so Jesus is saying, yes, you can do this. You have to become pure in heart. Well, what’s interesting is that all of these beatitudes we’ve been learning are taking us step by step closer to becoming pure in heart, right?

Because when we talk about purity in heart, we’re not talking about, you know, your outward deeds doing good things. That it’s not a purity that starts from the outside, that works in, it’s a purity that starts from the inside and works out. You know when we talk about whatever’s inside’s going to come out eventually, and when I say inside, I don’t mean that Kim Lowe’s heart is necessarily good. The Bible says that my heart’s desperately wicked. I’m talking about my born again soul and spirit that have Jesus Christ living in them. And when my soul and spirit are what I’m strengthening, what I’m feeding with righteousness, right? Hungry and thirsting after righteousness, when that’s what I’m feeding more than I’m feeding my flesh, then I am going to become pure in heart. This is going to be the strongest part of me. This is going to be the part that I’m looking through the lens of. When I view every circumstance, I’m going to be looking through the lens of God’s spirit instead of the lens of my flesh and the lies of the enemy. You know, you think about what the Bible says about the works of the flesh.

Let’s just read Galatians 5:19-21. It says, the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. I mean, that covers just about everything, right? Does anyone want to live that way? Is that satisfying? Is that going to, I’ve been caught up in lots of those sins. And you know what they were, it was a terrible slavery. It really was.

On the flip side of that, in Galatians 5, God says, but the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness. Who doesn’t want those things? Of course, we all want those things. Those are the fruits that grow from being pure in heart, because those are the fruits of God’s spirit. And so becoming pure in heart is basically learning to assimilate all these things we’ve been learning about, right? Depending on God, hating sin, subjugating our will to God’s will, learning to live in his power, not our own right? Becoming, just becoming the person who desires Him more than we desire anything else. And these gifts, these fruits of God’s spirit that will produce, produce us our ability to, to put our spiritual goggles on and see God is a natural, that’s a natural, flow, a natural result that will flow out of our, out of us when we are seeking to live God’s way. And now, these gifts, these fruits of the spirit are only reserved for those who are born again. You cannot produce the fruits of the spirit in your life. If your soul and spirit are dead to Christ. You have to be, to receive the gift of salvation and become one of God’s children before you can produce his fruit. Right? So that’s very important. If you don’t know how to do that, our website has a whole page on how to receive the gift of salvation. And I have a whole video on my testimony of how I got saved. So we have to, that’s the first step, obviously, right? But if we want to see God like we were intended to and of course, now, let me just clarify. We’ll not see God the way we will someday until this body of flesh is taken away. And I won’t bother to quote that scripture right now. We can see Jesus’ promise. He’ll  allow us to see God in the ways that we’re capable of seeing Him as his children, if we will purify our hearts. And that is a promise we can take to our grave, right? And we can live it every day, because someday we’re going to see Him face to face, right? 

In Corinthians, at the end of the love chapter, it says, for now we see in parts, right? But someday we’re going to see face to face. And won’t that be glorious? But don’t you want to  see all the parts that you can see now? Yeah, all the parts of God, I do. And I, you know, it all comes back to purity and heart comes back to making Jesus the center of all we desire. And in other words, coming to a point where we would rather lose everything than to live even one day without a strong, strong sense of his presence. I don’t want to  live in the works of the flesh. I don’t want to  live in hatred and contentions and jealousies and wrath and selfish ambition. I want to  live in the fruits of the spirit. And God says, you can just make me the center of your desire, make me more important to you than anything else in the world. And then you’ll see me everywhere. You’ll see me when you look out the window. You’ll want to  talk to me as soon as you wake up in the morning. Matter of fact, you’ll dream about me. And, you know, it’s amazing. It’s so true. When we make Jesus the center of our desire, our hearts become pure and pure. And we do see God everywhere. We hear Him everywhere. A lot of the music I write, it’s just God saying, Hey, write this down. And I’m like, okay. We need to understand that Jesus is offering us a remarkable opportunity. When he says, to have to grow in this attitude of becoming pure in heart.

It is such an amazing experience. God already desires us. We just need to build our desire for Him. And that desire will come. It’s a process. It’s not an overnight thing any more than you fell in love overnight. We strengthen our inner man. We don’t succumb to the desires, the flesh, and then He develops a pure heart in us. And that pure heart opens the eyes of our soul so we can behold the beauty and the glory of God. Perfect.