Read First:
MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST - by Oswald Chambers
Read Below it:
"Utmost with the Leastmost" - Michael James Stone
THE GATEWAY TO THE KINGDOM
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Matthew 5:3
Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first.
If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can not attain.
What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near?
I am happier without knowing it.
What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure
in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God?
I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair.
But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only:
He came to make me what He teaches I should be.
The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that disposition.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the
natural man -
the very thing Jesus means it to do.
As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance
over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and
receive from Him.
"Blessed are the paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God.
The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession;
not decisions for Jesus Christ,
but a sense of absolute futility -
I cannot begin to do it.
Then Jesus says - Blessed are you.
That is the entrance, and it does take
us a long while to believe we are poor!
The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.
by Oswald Chambers
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"Utmost of the Leastmost" - Michael James Stone
I can NOT, but He can.
I so thank God everyday that I can look back at times when I read a devotional like today and rearranged my life, my theology, my understanding and got even more personal with Jesus and my Father in heaven.
The Message Jesus gave with Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, I listen to and read that message in Matthew and Luke that I wnat to laugh, cry, dance and sing ans shout tot he world the greatest message I ever heard for it is just as he said it and it needs no one to try to "tone it down" or spritualize it.
It is God speaking and I love it.
Pluck out an eye? You bet if you really think that is what is causing you to sin, you will learn from the experience,
Love Your Enemies? Of course, what else would God say?
Man will always say otherwise.
Man will say Jesus message it too impractical...I agree.
Too absurd...I agree.
Lack common sense...I agree.
Would change everything and you're liable to get killed doing it...I agree.
It is the Good News.
I know I know someone will call it the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount or the Teaching of the Kingdom etc, but a little secret is this, ALL THE PEOPLE who heard it who were Poor and Sinners, KNEW IT WAS GOOD NEWS,,,,It was GREAT NEWS.
They, at that time, Got it.
They knew waht He was saying.
They knew there was no compromise.
They knew if he said it would cost thier life to follow Him , He meant it.
They knew, that aall Jesus taught was literally God teaching them and in time they knew exactly what it meant, which is what is read.
Jesus Freaks did too, when we heard it, we said, "Far Out" and went and did it.
That is Jesus to you.
What you cannot do, He can.
Will you Let Him?
If so, then get out of the way, God is coming thru.
Through you.
Michael James Stone
