Hello Friends!
Ever eaten too much? I mean, have you ever been at a meal that was so wonderful, so delicious, that you just kept eating and eating?
One of the regular highlights on our trips to Mexico is the two or three meals we get to eat at the taco stand. Simply the best tacos you can find! Grilled Asada over mesquite wood, homemade salsa and the works! Each year we arrive hungry and leave full, but each year someone always pushes their limits just a bit too far! There is only so much guacamole one should eat!!!
I’ve been enough times to pace myself and learn to “just say no” when it comes to more than five tacos at a time.
We’ve been looking at what are often called the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve read Jesus say the spiritually broken are blessed, and those who mourn that brokenness even more so. We’ve compared it to a man stranded on a deserted island, realizing he is lost and hopeless to save himself.
The third saying is blessed are the meek. To be meek means humble or weak. It goes hand in hand with the first two. Broken, mourning, too weak to fix it. Now we come to a key point in any survival situation, the will to live.
A lost person who is delusional or gives up entirely is much more likely to perish than the one who is aware and diligent to seek a way out. This is true both in physical lostness as well as spiritual.
To be saved, one has to want to be saved. To be forgiven one has to repent and seek forgiveness.
In the first verses of Matthew 5, we see Jesus showing us the staircase to salvation.
Step 1 = you are blessed when you realize you are spiritually broken
Step 2 = you are blessed when you mourn that brokenness
Step 3 = you are blessed when you realize you are too weak to save yourself
Step 4 = you are blessed when you long to be made right (righteousness).
Blessed when you hunger, you thirst, to be made right with God.
Why?
Because you will be filled!
Jesus and the Bible put a lot of emphasis on seeking, on passionately pursuing the God who passionately cares for us.
Here in the fourth “blessed are”, Jesus brings the pursuit of rescue to a climax. Hunger, thirst, long, seek, pursue, cry out for rescue.
If a person believes they are a good person, then they don’t need saving. Salvation is for those who know they are destined to perish without it.
You are blessed (happy) when you cry out to be filled, because it is at that moment that we are open and can receive the mercy, grace, love, and new life the Father wants to pour into us.
We empty ourselves to be filled anew.
We die to selves to be born again.
And so God gives us a tiny bit of grace, a dash of mercy, and a pat on the back in love…?
NO!
“they will be filled”! Full, completely satisfied, overflowing!
Like the Mexico team staggering away from the tables at the taco stand, the sinner walks away from the altar of repentance completely full of God’s grace, mercy, and love.
No wonder Jesus says, “happy are those who hunger and thirst”. I long to be filled to the fullest extent with His righteousness.
Blessings,
Chris
Read His Words and Paul’s prayer…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Matthew 5:6 NIV
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-19 NIV