“The Beatitudes aren’t a list of activities but a character profile for one who is becoming more like Jesus.” 4/4/2016 JD Walt, seedbed.com
When the LORD showed me this truth about the Beatitudes in 2002 as I studied his Word, I was totally flabbergasted. All my life I had been taught that these were various types of individuals who were blessed and were received into the kingdom by virtue of some condition of having experienced certain things- becoming poor, grieved, meek, hungering for righteousness, needing mercy, seeking purity of heart, desiring peace, enduring jjpersecution…Actually, when the LORD revealed that these “conditions” were part of the journey of a single person as she turned her back on the world’s relationship and desires and began walking in relationship with Christ, I was intrigued…I became a student of the LORD’s process of transformation and redemption…of me, of people in general, of his world. That’s when “disciple” began to really resonate in me. It was a tough go at the time, as this view was not widely taught or understood. It took me 10 months and a lot of looking to find others who had similarly understood the Beatitudes. I was careful not to leap out into something without testing it against traditional ways of viewing the Word. In the process I believe that the LORD led me to the apostolic tradition…what the disciples of Jesus himself learned as they gathered around him and followed him from place to place. In that quest I discovered writers like Martyn Lloyd Jones, Brother Lawrence, and others to whom the LORD had shown this truth! Now, it seems that most people understand the Beatitudes this way. I am grateful to the Holy Spirit for the reward of adventuring in the Word with His illumination to guide me. I am grateful for godly teachers and preachers who adventure in the Word, too, instead of simply telling us what others have said about the Word. One must ask, seek, and knock herself….not merely sit and absorb someone else’s discoveries, like a tourist casually touring, seeing the kingdom through someone else’s eyes. CBB 4/4/2016