When we first encounter the statements of Jesus, they seem wonderfully simple and unstartling. They sink, unnoticed, into our unconscious minds. Take the Beatitudes, the teachings which open the Sermon on the Mount: \u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit. . . . Blessed are the meek . . .\u201d (Matthew 5:3, 5). At first these seem like nothing more than nice principles: mild and beautiful. We like them, but we aren\u2019t roused by them, because we find them completely impractical. Unworldly, daydreamy people might be able to apply them, we think, but for those who live in the workaday world, they have no value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We soon find, however, that the Beatitudes contain the dynamite of the Holy Spirit; they explode when the circumstances of our lives align. We\u2019ll be going steadily along, when suddenly the Spirit will cause us to remember one of the Beatitudes. We see how startling a statement it truly is, and what obeying it would mean. Then we have to decide if we\u2019re willing to accept the tremendous upheaval of our circumstances that will occur if we do what the Spirit is telling us to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t need to be born again to apply the Beatitudes literally; a literal interpretation is child\u2019s play. Obeying the Spirit of God as he applies the Beatitudes to our specific circumstances is the hard work of the disciple. Jesus\u2019s statements are entirely at odds with our natural way of looking at things. When we first begin to obey his words, it produces astonishing discomfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sermon on the Mount isn\u2019t a set of rules and regulations. It\u2019s a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us. We can\u2019t rush our understanding; we have to follow the Spirit as he applies Jesus\u2019s teachings to our circumstances, allowing him to slowly form our walk with him.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we first encounter the statements of Jesus, they seem wonderfully simple and unstartling. They sink, unnoticed, into our unconscious minds. Take the Beatitudes, the teachings which open the Sermon on the …<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":2150,"template":"","collection":[],"class_list":["post-2638","modern-classic","type-modern-classic","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/modern-classic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}