The Beatitudes – Chapter Thirteen
Rejoicing in Tribulation
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Assignment for next week
- Complete Review and Reflect pages in the workbook.
- After the pages are completed, click on Week 13 Review and Reflect on the Workshop homepage.
- AND add a short comment on this page to help out other women and share what you’ve learned. And leave a comment replying to someone else if you can!
WOW – first of all – I again underlined and starred this statement from Dr. Lloyd-Jones “We have seen frequently in our consideration of these Beatitudes, that they do show more clearly than anything else perhaps in The New Testament the utter fallacy and futility of imagining that men can make themselves Christians by their own efforts.” (pg 123) I am more aware of the truth of this statement than ever before in my walk with God.
I have loved this study. It has hurt and I have been continually humbled, but it has been worth more than I express in words. I loved when you reminded us to pick up our crosses and not just wander around, but pick up your cross and follow Him. I have done quite a bit of wandering around in my lifetime. I also can relate to the progression of the desire to retaliate, then the resentment, and finally the depression/bitterness that inevitably follows. And when you mentioned how you typically deal with that – to make a rigid or new spiritual plan – OH BOY can I relate to that. I think to myself that I will just make a little list and get back in control of my life…the futility of that thinking. I have wasted so much of life in that futileness. But the joy of seeing and being taught a better way.
I think perhaps the best quote in all of the chapters I have read so far is this “If we are truly Christians, our desire must be, however much we fail in practice, to live for Christ, to glory in His name, and to live to glorify Him.” Oh, I pray, God make this true of me.
I think this chapter, more than any of the others before it, has in a much greater way, shown me the deep, abounding, amazing mercy and grace of God. When I consider that the Lord is not asking me to do any more than He Himself endured, and much less in fact, the gift of salvation and the reward in heaven (neither of which I can achieve or obtain on my own!) is too much to fathom.
As instructed in each of the weekly lessons reading through Matthew 5: 3-12, I have reflected back upon why that particular verse is there, what these words mean, and how each concept was built upon the preceding ones and doing so has helped me so much to remember just how much the Lord loves me.