What does the blessed life look like?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” - Jesus Christ (Matthew 5:3)

(videos below)

Just about any person in a moment of peace, on a warm (but not too warm) day surrounded by loved ones and feeling satisfied — just about anyone would think to themselves, “Wow, I’m blessed.”

There is a surprising teaching Jesus gives to a crowd of eager listeners in Matthew 5 where Jesus repeats over an over again the word “Blessed”. He does so to help us understand about developing spiritual character and depth. What he says seems to turn everything upside down — the people who are blessed seem to be the people who are willing to step on others to get ahead, but we know that’s not right.

The blessed life looks like Jesus Christ. He is the one who is the most merciful, the one who most hungers and thirsts after righteousness and, in the end, the most wrongly persecuted. Christ’s life stands out as different from any other human and — though he always did everything right — it didn’t spare him from pain. His path lead to loss and destruction but he then received the prime vindication of all history on Easter morning: the Resurrection. We are invited to follow Christ on this journey.

As humans we don’t ever want to seem weak, but Christ’s teaching is going to help us to see that this “upside down” way of seeing the world is actually the way to set the world — and our lives — right side up again.

From putting our trust in God to learning gentleness, holiness, and peacemaking, we are going on a journey of developing spiritual character. We all have some room to grow in that area! But what we will learn is that though there is challenge here, there are also great promises made of blessing. Join us as we grow together!