Transcription
This is not a moralism. This is not like you gotta, you can't have any bad thoughts or you can't, you know, have any uh wrong emotions like pure, like moralistically pure. It means undivided. It means single-minded, like this is what I'm here to be, and my being is informing my doing.
Moving through the Beatitudes, we've we've walked through the progression that Jesus is walking the crowds through about what it means. How does a person live the life of a kingdom person today, presently on earth, as if you're in heaven? And the preamble of the Beatitudes is the process. Get empty. You have to get empty of anything that would prevent you from receiving everything that God has for you. And then you want to be sad and compassionate about the specific things God made you to be sad and compassionate about. And He will comfort you in those. And then there's the challenge in that sadness, in that compassion, to move to action where all your passions are directed towards that solving those issues, answering those questions in our world, um, that just need help. They need the blessing of God. They need us to address them. And that's meekness. Blessed are the meek. And the Lord's um blessing on that is, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. We can, we can win this. We can inherit the earth in the way that it's supposed to be inherited, as in, as in the original design in Genesis. We can be in that place again. We've never really lost it. And so our passions have to be directed in that way. And Jesus will, will be in, will inherit the place. Incredible. It's mind-boggling. And that as our passions are directed, we become hungry and thirsty every day to see things made right. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. That God will fill us in that hunger each day. And then the next day, we're hungry again. And we keep moving to higher and higher levels of innovation and invention and creation to come up with solutions for the issues that we face in our world, not just giving up, not just quitting, but hungry and passionate and sad and empty, all these, this beautiful progression.
And then as we hunger and thirst for righteousness, um, with the Lord filling us, Jesus's challenge next is in that, in that drive and in that passion and in that hunger and in that, that compassion, you have to be meek. I mean, you have to be merciful. We have to remain merciful, which is different than meek. Merciful is the idea of of um, having forgiveness for other people all the time. It's the, the word merciful. Mercy also is from the root mercantile, which means give and take. Mercy is sort of like the, the oil, the grease that keeps the whole thing moving smoothly. So in my passion and in my longing to see things made right, we have to have mercy on everyone. We have to be constantly living in God's mercy, receiving God's mercy because we will make mistakes. We will fail. We will fall. We will wander off the path. And as we come back and God brings us back, we have to receive His mercy. It's almost like going back to getting empty all over again. If we feel condemnation, if we feel fear because of, you know, failure along the way, then we'll stop or we'll go backwards. Like the Israelites looking at the promised land going, "We can't. We're grasshoppers in our own eyes." We have to receive God's mercy all the time. We have to be recipients of His mercy. It's like a waterfall that we're standing in of His mercy, just constantly flooding over us. And it doesn't run out. It can't run out. And then we have to extend that mercy to others. So if, so for us, like we move into um, countries where where we might be at war, our country might be at war with the other country, and it takes incredible mercy to live in those situations. Both mercy, us receiving God's mercy for our own failure and weaknesses, but extending mercy to the people that resist, that push back, that want to hurt us, people that arrest us, people that want to kill us. And this is all involved in forgiveness as well. But blessed, um, blessed are the merciful, for they, for they shall receive mercy. That's the blessing. So just think of it like, like oil that keeps parts moving without friction and burning up. It's that beautiful, gorgeous mercy of God. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. We live in mercy, we give mercy. I, I always tell people when someone pushes back against you or is mad at you or angry at you, it's because they're afraid. It's because they're wounded and hurt. And so that should, the response to that should always be mercy. It's always turn the other cheek. It's mercy. And then the kind word turns away wrath. It's this whole idea that I love it. Right in the middle of this process is, and blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. It's the oil. It's the lubricant. So that we constantly live in mercy and extend mercy.
In that process, you become pure of heart. You become pure of heart. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Think of what, think of what that means. I'm, I'm emptying myself, only receiving what God has for me. I'm sad and compassionate about what God made me sad and compassionate about. I'm directing my passions to be an innovator, a, a person who creates solutions in these situations in the world. I'm hungering and thirsting to make it right. I'm extending mercy and receiving God's mercy. And in all of that process, my heart is pure. And we, this is not a moralism. This is not like you got, you can't have any bad thoughts or you can't, you know, have any uh, wrong emotions like pure, like moralistically pure. It means undivided. It means single-minded, like this is what I'm here to be, and my being is informing my doing. And if you're walking in the truth of who you are and who God is and who your neighbor is, the evidence that your heart is correct and moving in the right direction and undivided is you can see God in what you're doing. You'll see His act. You'll see His movement. You'll see His presence. When you can't see God, we need to, it's like jump back, get empty. Like just jump back, get empty, like immediately into the process of, Lord, what's preventing me from seeing You? What's preventing me from receiving from You? And then how did I become distracted by this? Why am I sad and mad about this over here when it's, it's, it's really just self-protection and self-promotion. I've lost track and I'm, my heart is now divided and my passions are split. Do you see that? It's like coring them all back in, like this, and just, this is just contemplative time with the Lord, fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. Your imagination is back-directed on God, and you start to feel the peace because we're kept in perfect peace when our mind and imagination is fixed on God because we trust Him.
Back when we're talking about the creative process, when you hit that plateau period, there's, there's a tendency to wander off. But the pure in heart will stay the, they'll stay the course because they're undivided. I'm not going to get distracted by this. I'm not going to be discouraged by this. I'm going to, I'm going to be focused and intentional about my pursuit of, of being who God made me to be and being the gift, giving the gift of my identity to the world. That's what pure in heart means. And that's what it means to see God. I, I, I think of time even recently in my life when we're, when we feel invited into something and and we're, we're pursuing it and and we're in like the third year of the pursuit and it, like, it's not here. It's not there yet. Like we're working towards it. We see it in our imagination. We see it in faith. Faith is the substance of the things we hope for. It's the evidence of things we can't see yet. This is the real pure imagination. And the writer of Hebrews says, "Without it, it's impossible to please God." Without that imaging forth the unseen real, without seeing it in your mind, you'll, you can't please God because you'll give up on it. It's like, I mean, it's like Einstein's understanding general and special relativity in his mind and then leaving German formal education because it keeps distracting him out of this intuitive vision. So he gets a job in a post office and he writes four papers demonstrating the theory of relativity that look like complete lunacy. I mean, people read it and they're like, this guy's insane, but he's pure of heart in it. Like he's undivided on the pursuit of this, this revelation that he's working in. Newton's the same way. Kepler's the same way. That it's like we're consumed with this idea and we're going to pursue it and we're going to demonstrate it. And that's what people of faith do. And I, I, Hebrews says even though they were sawed in half and tortured and the world's not worthy of them and they didn't see actually in life what they had in their mind, they never gave up. They never pursued. I love that. And the world is not worthy of them. That's what pure in heart is. It's this undivided. We're going after this.
And so for us, even at this is the beginning of of 2026 and just reviewing things that the Lord put on our heart three years ago that hasn't happened yet, um, and asking the Lord, what do You want us to know coming into the new year? And He's like, stay the course. Run the race. Stay in it. Pure of heart. Stay focused. Don't let your passions go off in other directions. Keep walking. You're in the plateau period of the creative process. It's coming. It's coming. And I would say in the last, yeah, three days, four days, you start to see God. You start to see Him, just like there He is. There's the work. There's what He's doing. Because we've remained undivided in the pursuit. Because we remain pure of heart. Not morally better than other people, just undivided, undistracted from what we're chasing after with the Lord. So that's where we are. That's where we are in the process. And as you do that, as you start to see God, then then the Lord will lead you into the next part of the level, the process of the Beatitudes, which is really the culmination of the whole thing that Jesus is saying.