You don’t have to live a life of anger. You don’t have to just accept it. Receive Jesus. Heed His warnings in Matthew 5:21-22. You’re in danger. Only Jesus saves. Live the life of Faith and, by obeying the truth, have your soul purified so you can actually love each other with a real, genuine, and love you can feel the warmth of. That’s what the goal of the gospel is… Faith expressing itself through Real love proceeding from a clean conscience… You can be free.
What is one of the simplest ways to teach faith? The Beatitudes.
Right here, the Teacher demonstrates one of the simplest ways. As small as it is, it can grow to be the largest of all “garden plants”.
Take any dire situation you have as a Christian. Take any lack, or any shortage, any place where your feel worn thin, and pressed hard. Everyone encounters these, and even Jesus said that we would experience storms, even when we were built upon the rock.
Most Happy are those who are poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
The question that comes around today in churches a lot is, How much authority does the believer have? As much as Jesus can trust you with.
All authority comes from God. God created government, stewardship, and the one authority structure that pertains to us everyone on the Earth today, the family. God delegates His authority, that is, He gives individuals the responsibility to manage certain things, and so much as they faithfully execute their duties, they are permitted to continue.
An entire oak tree is contained well within a tight, easy to carry package. It has it’s own leathery cover, and even a handy carrying cup attached to the top. You could, in fact, carry a hundred complete oak trees just in your pants pockets alone (assuming you’ve got big pockets). The only thing you need to add, in order to convert your easy to transport oak tree into an immovable pillar is some sunshine, a plot of dirt, some water, and a hundred years or so!
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, that when planted, it is the smallest of seeds, but when it grows, it becomes the largest of all garden plants, and the birds of the air make their nest in it.
The more I read and understand the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12, the happier I get. Hugely Happy. Ultra Happy. Maximumly Happy. Macro happy even, which is what the word translated “blessed” actually means, if you look it up. It doesn’t mean “blessed”. That would be eulegio. This is Macagredso… horribly transliterated, but… macro + agredso… macro meaning big, agredso meaning… well… HAPPY! Read more…
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Matthew 6:22-23
The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.
Luke 11:34-36
The teaching of the Kingdom is a simple thing. It is, actually, the smallest of all seeds, even though it produces the biggest plant.
You could put a whole lot of effort into studying the teachings of Jesus, and cataloging them, and indeed, many have, and many of these works have been profitable. However, whether they are understood and lived is an entirely different matter.
He spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”
Matthew 13:33
“It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”
Luke 13:21
Yeast is an invisible, yet active agent, acting and working throughout an otherwise inert lump of dough. In various places in the Old Testament, it depicted the nature of evil within a body, either a single person or a group of people. Hence, the phrase, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” was used to indicate much the same thing that a phrase like “one bad apple spoils the bunch” does.
The first few clauses of Matthew 5 are so amazingly profound, and directly simple. They are plain words that anyone with simple understanding can receive. But, they seem trivial until you realize they are the life of faith, they set the attitude for the whole Christian walk, and they make us very, VERY happy. Read more…
