The Greek word for blessed is makarios It comes from the root mak indicating large or long duration. The word is an adjective suggesting happy, supremely blessed, a condition in which congratulations are in order. It is a grace word that expresses the special joys & satisfaction granted the person who experiences salvation.
Psalm 37:4-5 NLT) Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.
5 Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you.
These verses teach that as long as we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts. I have learnt that letting God give me something is so much better than trying to get it for myself. Most of us struggle greatly in our lives, trying to make things happen that only God can do. He wants us to seek Him, & He promises that He will add the things we desire if & when the time is right.
We are to commit our way unto Him & let Him bring the things we desire to pass. Jesus said “All those who labour & are heavy-laden should come to Him”. (Matthew 11:28-29) His ways are higher than our ways, & His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. In other words God knows much better than we do what we need to do!
I spent so much of my life struggling to do something, I worked really hard at life, but life still was not working for me.
My first Bible was a gift from my grandfather when I was quite young. Little did I know when he gave me that Bible so many years ago, how long it would take for me to let go of my ways & submit to God’s.
I do not know why we tend to be stubborn, but we do. I encourage you to let go of your ways & let God be God in your life. He wants to give you the desires of your heart as you commit your way to Him.
Psalm 37:23 The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.
God will tell us the way to go, but we have to do the walking. A walk with God develops by taking one step of obedience at a time. Some folk want the entire blueprint for their lives before they will make one decision. God does not usually operate that way; He leads us one step at a time.
By faith we take the step God has shown us, & then He gives us the next step. At times we may fall down & must get back up; we may stumble, but He always helps us. We continue on by His strength & His grace, knowing that every time we face a fork in the road which is a place of decision, God will guide us.
The poor have a right to everything in heaven; this is one of the richest places which Jesus brings us.
Dare to believe it, I do. I dare. I believe & I know that I was very poor. When God’s Spirit comes in as a ruling controlling power of our lives, He gives us His revelation of our inward poverty & shows us that God has come with one purpose: to bring heavens best to earth. He also shows us that with Jesus He will indeed freely give us all things (Romans 8:32).
An old man & an old woman had lived together for seventy years. Someone said to them, “You must have seen many clouds during those days.” They replied, “Where do the showers come from? You never get showers without clouds.” It is only the Holy Spirit who can bring us to the place of realisation of our poverty; but, every time He does it, He opens the windows of heaven, & the showers of blessings fall.
But we must recognise the difference between our own spirit & the Holy Spirit. Our own spirit can do certain things on a natural level-it can even weep & pray & worship-but it is all on a human plane. We must not depend on our own human thoughts & activities or our personalities. If the baptism means anything to you, it should bring you to the death of the ordinary, where you are no longer putting faith in your own understanding but, conscious of your own poverty, you are ever yielded to the Holy Spirit. Then it is that you body becomes filled with heaven on earth.
To get nearer to God, to be in the place of helplessness & see a tide rising go back to our verse Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. God is making us very poor, but we are rich because our hands are stretched out towards Him in this holy day of His visitation to our hearts.
Exercising lordship over another is not of God.
Psalm 37:40 NLT) The LORD helps them, rescuing them from the wicked. He saves them, and they find shelter in him.
We learn from this verse that the primary thought is trust in God to bring about economic justice in His time.
When we grasp the idea of being poor in spirit & identify ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, we have come to a place where we can now see that all things are possible with God. We recognise that God has unlimited supply, & our poverty of spirit, we are entitled to all that God has for ours is the kingdom of heaven.
When Jesus came to Sychar, a city of Samaria being wearied from his journey (John 4:6), He sat down by a well. His disciples were not with Him because they had gone to buy food in a nearby town (v8). When they returned they saw Him at peace. He was not looking for food but was quite relaxed. When Jesus was not interested in eating the food they had bought, the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought Him anything to eat? (v33) This shows us the possibility for a man to live in God, to be absorbed in God with no consciousness of the world under any circumstances. & He said to them Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe[a] for harvest. That is food, the spiritual life in God, which is joy in the Holy Spirit.
He comes to enrapture our souls, to break every bond of mere human affection & replace in us the divine instead of the earthly, the pure instead of the unholy, the eyes of faith that see God instead of human feelings. The divine Son of God is to be in us, mightily moving through us, as we cease to be. This poverty of spirit spoken in this Beatitude helps us.
In spite of our meekness, humility & helplessness, all that God has is ours.
Matthew 5:4 NKJ) Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.
Those who mourn are not necessarily people in bereavement, but those who express the sorrow of repentance.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NLT) And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died[a] so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.
15 We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died.[b] 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died[c] will rise from their graves. 17 Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words.
Those who have fallen asleep in verse 13 are those who have died, in the time of Paul puzzlement arose how the dead could benefit from Christ’s return. Paul pointed out that they shall rise first & the living will follow them (VV16&17).
In verses 15-18 we learn of the threefold announcement of the Lords coming. This is
one of the most beloved passages about the second coming, & it is also one of the most detailed. We are told that there will be a threefold announcement of the Lords coming; a shout, the voice of an archangel & the trumpet. In addition there is a threefold promise to believers: 1) the dead in Christ shall rise. 2) we who are alive will be caught away with them; & 3) we shall always be with the Lord.
People get the wrong idea about mourning. In Switzerland, they have a day set apart to take wreaths to graves. Smith Wigglesworth questioned the people’s ignorance & said “Why are you spending time around graves? The people you love are not there. All that taking of flowers to the graves is not faith at all. Those who died in Christ have gone to be with Him, which Paul said is “far better” (Phil 1:23).
Smith’s wife once said to him, “Watch me when I’m preaching I am so near to heaven when I’m preaching that someday I’ll be off.”
One night she was preaching, & when she had finished, off she went. He was going to Glasgow & had said goodbye to her before leaving the house, the doctor & policeman met him at the door. He knew she got what she wanted. He could not weep, but was in tongues praising the Lord. Humanely, she was everything to Smith; but he could not mourn in the natural, & he just laughed in the Spirit. The house was soon filled with people. The doctor told him that he could do no more for her. Smith went to her lifeless corpse & commanded death to give her up, & just for a moment she came back to him. God said to him, “She is Mine; her work is done.” & Smith knew what He meant.
They laid her in a coffin, & he brought his sons & daughter into the room & said, “Is she there?” They answered” No, father.” So Smith said that they would cover her up.
If you go on mourning the loss of loved ones who have gone to be with Christ-I say this in love-you have never had the revelation of what Paul spoke of when he showed us that it is better to go than to stay. (2 Corinthians 5:8). We read this in Scripture, but the trouble is that people will not believe it. When you believe God, you will say, “Whatever it is, it is alright. If You want to take the one I love, it is alright, Lord."
Now the mourning that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 5 is mourning in the Spirit. God will bring you to a place where things must be changed, & there is a mourning, an unutterable groaning until God comes. Jesus mourned over Jerusalem. He saw the conditions; He saw the unbelief; He saw the end of those closed their ears to the Gospel. But God gave a promise that He would see “the labour of His soul, & be satisfied” (Isaiah53;11) & that he would “see His seed” (v10).
What happened on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem was a promise of what would be the results of His travail, to be multiplied a billion fold down through the ages in all of the world. AS we enter in the Spirit into travail over conditions that are wrong, such mourning will always bring results for God, & our joy will be complete in the satisfaction that is thereby brought to Christ.
Faith removes all tears of self pity.
Psalm 23 is so comforting. In it the Psalmist David tells us the Lord leads, feeds, guides & shields us to lie down & rest, & He refreshes & restores (v3) our lives. I like the way the Amplified translates this verse He refreshes and restores my life (myself); He leads me in the paths of righteousness [uprightness and right standing with Him—not for my earning it, but] for His name’s sake. & the O K J puts it this way He “restoreth my soul” The soul is comprised of the mind, the will & the emotions.
With our souls, we process our circumstances, we entertain our thoughts, we feel & express emotions & we make decisions. What a wonderful promise-that God will restore our souls! The word restore means to bring back into existence or use; or to bring back to an original sate or condition. The word is often used in a situation when a dethroned ruler is put back on his throne. Restore also means to make restitution, to cause to return, or to refresh.
When David says that God will restore our souls & our lives, I believe he means that God will return us to a state or condition we were before we erred from following the good plan He had predestined for us before our births, or before satan attacked us to draw us out of God’s plan for our lives.
WE can take confidence that God will lead us in the path of righteousness, uprightness & right standing with Him. I believe Davis is saying that God individually leads each of us in the path that is right for us, a path that restores us in every way to the good places He has for us.
God has a path predestined for your restoration. If you will allow Him to do so, He will guide you by His Holy Spirit along the unique way that leads to restoration & to being able to fulfil the great purpose He has for your life.
We must live in such a pure atmosphere that God will shine in & through our souls. I am satisfied that as we get to know the Son of God, we will never be weak anymore. The tide will turn. Let us look at Matthew 5:4 again Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.
Did Jesus mean mourning over death? No He meant mourning over our sons & daughters who have not yet reached heaven, who know nothing about the things of the Spirit Life. When God places within us a morning cry to move the powers of God, then He will send a revival in every home.
It is possible to get a spiritual mourning over lost souls without having the very next thing
that God says, [you] shall be comforted,” As though God could give you a spirit of mourning over a needy soul, then not give you victory! It is the mighty power of God in us. & when the Spirit brings this mourning attitude over lost souls & over all failures that we see in professing Christians, until we can go into the presence of God with that mourning spirit nothing will happen. But when that happens, rejoice God will bring you through.
Revival is coming. God’s heart is in the place of intense passion. Let us bend or break, for God is determined to bless us. The joy of the service, the joy of the suffering to be utterly cast upon Jesus. God is coming forth with power. There must be no coming down from the cross but going on from faith to faith & from glory to glory with an increasing diligence so that we may be found in Him “without spot & blameless” (2Peter 3:14). The spirit of mourning will turn into rejoicing as we are faithful before Him.
The end of real faith is always rejoicing.
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