Everyone wants to live a blessed life, but we often find ourselves confusing the blessed life with a life of financial abundance, having all of the cars, jewelry, gadgets or branded clothes we want. Jesus defines the blessed life in a whole different way and enables us to live this radically different blessed life that the world has so easily forgotten.
The sermon on the mount was arguably one of Jesus's greatest teaching stints of all time. He taught so much timeless and valuable truth here. One of the lessons He taught was the lesson on beatitudes (Matthew 5:2-11) that lines up for us what a blessed life looks like.
Jesus says that people who experience mourning, persecution, righteous hunger, spiritual poverty and vileness are blessed. I can only imagine how many of those people who were listening to that sermon will still want the blessed life after hearing all of that.
God does not measure the blessed life based on the material wealth, comfort or recognition that we get. We look at the biblical examples of the blessed life and see that not all of their days were beautiful. In fact, many experienced a lot of bad times.
Joseph got sold as a slave, David was neglected by his father, Jeremiah was beaten by his own family and friends, Paul was persecuted over and over and Jesus died on a cross. Blessing doesn't mean that we will always have things good and easy.
Blessing, as a matter of fact, is more a matter of the heart and mind over a matter of the wallet. God desires that we be blessed beyond measure that even when we stand against the greatest challenges, we will find inner strength to say, "It is well with my soul."
Money, material wealth and earthly success are not God's ultimate blessings and He doesn't want us to look only to those things. He teaches us to look to spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:3), fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), faith and perseverance (James 1:2) and devotion and intimacy with God that are made available only through the revelation of Jesus Christ and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.
When we limit God's blessings to having a high-paying job, a nice house and a fat bank account, we miss out on the things that really matter most. God even teaches us to remove all anxiety over earthly things and look to things that last much longer than that. Luke 6:45 says, "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil..."
Becoming more blessed means more than having more things, but having more of the unlimited presence and joy that comes with being with Jesus Christ. All things on earth will pass, but the things of God will never pass away. That is a blessing that goes beyond earthly measure.
