“Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich, For you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, For you shall hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, For you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, For so did their fathers to the false prophets.
“But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
“But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Luke 6
Not sure anything needs to be added to this one, it seems Yashua said it all without anyway to misunderstand it. Yet we seem to anyways.
The modern day teachers will teach in a number of different ways, the prosperity gospel, which Yashua said woe to you! When we look at the woes, and then look at the beatitudes of who is blessed. It is obvious the world in its teaching has it all backwards. We idolize the rich and successful, the athletes, movie stars… We want to be like Mike! The goat in basketball and a billionaire.
The funny thing is we all want to be someone we are not, my wife for example with what I think is as good of a body as you can get, wants a bigger booty liked most Latinas. The Mexican women all want to be white in their skin and all Us lady’s want a nice tan and color. If you have straight hair you want it curly and if curly you want it straight. We are never rich enough, successful enough and yet do not want to pay the price to get it. The point is we are never happy with anything.
Most are so scared of dying, but why? We all know it is going to happen someday. The reason is we are not poor in Spirit, we do not know God and know we will be in his Kingdom. Deep down we know we are out of his Kingdom so we fear death because we do not understand these simple beatitudes and woes. Most people live to the woes as being the prize and ignore the blessed part Yashua taught. This is why you fear death, you are too focused on pleasing men instead of pleasing God because you want the approval of men, the nice comments, the prestige. Or maybe you are so much of a sheep following the crowd that one day you are praising Yashua on the donkey and the next day you are calling for him to be crucified.
This is the problem and always has been. We are so focused on either being the one everyone looks up to and thinks if only I could be like Mike. Or we are so low on the totem pole we will just follow and believe whatever anyone tells us.
Much of my life I have lived on the part of wanting everyone to think I am it, and I had much success in life, even without Yashua directing me. I was good in sports (not Mike good, but good). I was good in sales, making a lot of money over the years, not Mike good, but good. I was good enough to have a ego as big a Mike at one time, well almost.
And even with the success I never felt the first blessed thing of the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in Spirit for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. My religious teaching always made me feel I was for sure going to heaven. I went to the catholic church, said my prayers, read the bible, went to confession, received communion, did all the catholic rituals which according to them was what needed to be done to get into heaven. I did not understand the “poor in Spirit part” because I was not poor in Spirit, actually the opposite as I was cocky and had an ego. But I still thought I would go to heaven when I died, even with the strong spirit instead of a poor spirit. And being rich according to the world, or most of it. Ad only wanting more and more. In my mind I never thought about all this even after reading the beatitudes many times over.
But then something’s changed in my life, well actually a lot of things. Because in one year I lost everything. My family to divorce and my three girls not wanting anything to do with me. Losing my career and good income. Then it caused me to lose my money which then took my ego because I lost it all. My stress level was as high as anyone could get it to. And then, instead of relying on me and my abilities to achieve at very high levels according to man. I was humbled, quickly! I remember my oldest daughter telling me (when she still spoke to me sometimes) how she was embarrassed because of my finances. She really was not old enough to understand finances at the time, but her comment drove home the same message I already had in my mind, because I was embarrassed also.
I had my life all mapped out, I was on track to be a billionaire like Mike, although it would have taken me until age 80 something to achieve it, but I was on target. We travelled the world and the seven seas as the song goes (seriously we did not do the seven seas). But again, it changed quickly from a life of worldly success to a life of embarrassment. Most people either dig themselves back out of it, or give up. Maybe kill themselves or drink themselves or drug themselves into a mental state of mind where they kill the pain until the alcohol or drugs kills them.
And why? Because we do not pay attention to these verses about the blessings and beatitudes, versus the woes and curses.
In other chapters of this book I focused on the book of Deuteronomy and what Yahweh said about blessing those who hear his voice and keep his commands, and promising swift destruction on those who do not. Isn’t this the same message?
Many people say the bible is out of date, that things no longer make sense because back then they did not have what we have to day. But is it? In my experience with God it is still the same, just with different stories which make the same point. As said many times in this book, God teaches me his truth using the bible stories and verses, but with current modern day trials and tribulations. Those trials and tribulations lead to blessings.
When you become poor in Spirit and then instead of turning to drugs, or alcohol or shopping or whatever crazy stupid dependency, but instead turn to God. The Lord will strip you down to nothing, it hurts to be made nothing, it hurts a lot. God took me from a man who made very good money, had money in the bank, traveled the world, people looked up to and wanted to be like me. To a man with nothing, even taking many of my friends. And then even after all that, he told me to move to Mexico which then took the little I had left in the world, leaving me completely alone with a messily $2,000 dollars in my pocket and $80,000 in debt from the lawyers and other expenses from the divorce. So much for being like Mike!
But in hind sight this was the best thing that could have happened to me, although going through it I would have told you how bad it sucked, and cried in my beer with however would listen. And the reason why is because the religions I went to NEVER told me how it works, they instead only talked about worldly things and how to live worldly and still get into heaven by their religious beliefs. And I have yet to find a religion which tells me differently, about how to be humble and find the Kingdom of Heaven. But then it is not a doctrine, it is a process so you cannot really explain it to people, you have to live it. However, the problem is the religions do nothing to tell you anything about this happening in your life. Instead they all teach different versions of the same thing, how to believe you are saved when you are not because you are still rich in your own spirit instead of poor. And when you have BIG issues in life designed by God to make you poor in spirit, they find a way to build you back up without God. They sow to the world instead of to God.
The religious people hate this message, and think it is of the devil, again because of the teaching of the men they heap up to tell their itching ears what they want to hear, instead of the truth. But this is the truth, and men miss the opportunity to find the righteous relationship with God because when the trials come, the men have an answer which is opposite of what God wants us to learn. I really do not know how I found it while going to these churches telling me something different, or going out with friends to bars drinking or to coffee and complaining. But all these things kept me from the truth. The truth is if you seek and knock the door will be open for you. We need to seek for the voice of God, then when you hear him obey him. He will make you poor in Spirit, let him. Don’t listen to men and go get drunk or do drugs or whatever your outlet is to forget your pain. Seek God until you find him.
Even if you are not having the problems, still seek for the truth in God. It is better you do not have to go through all the problems I went through to find God. But then I was all the way to the other side, still thinking I was OK with God, yet deep in sin and dysfunction. Again I was taught that way. Blessed would be you if you seeked God without any real problems and trials and tribulations in your life and found him. We should not have to go through the BIG problems in life to find him, and most do not find him even in these test, but find something else that fabricates God. satan is very good at this, pushing us to anything other than God when we seek for another way because our life sucks. And satan is good at making us think that anyone who hears God speak and tells us we must do the same and obey him, satan makes us think that man is crazy. That has nothing to do with God.
Bu then satan is very good. I remember a time when a brother in law died young around 40. He did not believe a god existed, but his mom was catholic. So they had a catholic religious ceremony. I went, and at that ceremony I heard satan laughing. His laugh said it all, which was how foolish these people are all believing this man who did not believe in God think he is in heaven now because of their religious beliefs. And that because of these beliefs they will also be in heaven someday. The laugh said it all, satan knew he had them all fooled and was laughing at the foolishness of the people and their beliefs.
I wish that everyone would suffer like I did and come to know God because of it, and stop believing whatever lie they believe. Those lies are what keep us out of the Kingdom of God and in our sin. You will know them by the fruit they bear, is it a life of sin and dysfunction or of peace?
God really does want us to have it all, he does not want us poor and broke financially, without friends and family and lonely. But then he also knows unless he brings us through those times we will never come to be poor in Spirit to come to know the things of God and his Kingdom.
But the cool thing is once you understand all this, and you seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness (with focus on righteousness because his Kingdom is built on it and justice). Then he can give you everything else without you having the ego and pride that comes with success. Like you will have without God.
