Stop Trying to be Successful
Pete Portal
There is something of a chain reaction that’ s set off when we become friends with Jesus. We receive the blessing of his faithful presence, his freedom from pains of the past, joy for life in the present, and hope for what lies ahead. We also receive adoption into his family and experience his love for other people. It is the most natural thing in the world to desire for everyone to know this same blessing. Blessing has become religious jargon, a spiritual-sounding cliché tending to refer to“ nice things God gives me for being good.” This is closer to a greeting-card platitude than Christianity. Nor does blessing simply mean— though it can include— God’ s favor and abundance.
We know it must mean more, because Jesus used it to describe very different states of being. In the Beatitudes, Jesus declared that the blessed are those who recognize their neediness, grief, and pain, who desire more of God but who won’ t take power to try and get it, who extend mercy to others, who exhibit purity and pursue peace, and who will probably face criticism for all of the above. With this in mind, I wonder if a reasonable definition of blessed might be“ partakers of the divine nature”( 2 Peter 1:4); to be someone not immune from the heartache of living in a broken world but, through sharing in the life of the Trinity, somehow able to transcend the despair experienced by those who have not yet received this blessing. In that sense, could
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