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July 21, 2008
THE GATEWAY TO THE KINGDOM
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Matthew 5:3
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=mt+5:3&sr=1
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.
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LOOK GREAT, FEEL GREAT: 12 KEYS TO ENJOYING A HEALTHY LIFE NOW, by Joyce Meyer
Joyce guides us to a healthier way of living, reminding us that turning
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http://shopping.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/link?250
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MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST - by Oswald Chambers /\/\
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