Momentum: Pursuing God's Blessings Through the Beatitudes

by Colin Smith

Overview

The Beatitudes are not telling you how to become a Christian—they tell you what a true Christian looks like.

Everyone wants to be blessed. We want to be blessed in life, blessed in death, and blessed in eternity. In the Beatitudes, the Son of God tells us about the life that is blessed and about the people who are blessed. But Jesus does more than just describe a blessed life, He gives us a way to actually pursue it.

If you want to make strides in overcoming sin, growing in godliness, abounding in good works, and enjoying intimacy with the Lord, this book is for you. And if you have lost hope that any of these things are possible, this book is especially for you. You can make progress, starting today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802493743
Publisher:	Moody Publishers
Publication date:	09/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

COLIN SMITH is President of Open the Bible and Pastor Emeritus of The Orchard church in northwest suburban Chicago. He can be heard daily on the radio broadcast, Open the Bible, and at openthebible.org. Colin is the author of many books, including: Fly Through the Bible, Heaven, How I Got Here, and Momentum: Pursuing God’s Blessings Through the Beatitudes. He is married to Karen, and they have two married sons and five granddaughters.
COLIN SMITH is President of Open the Bible and Pastor Emeritus of The Orchard church in northwest suburban Chicago. He can be heard daily on the radio broadcast, Open the Bible, and at openthebible.org. Colin is the author of many books, including: Fly Through the Bible, Heaven, How I Got Here, and Momentum: Pursuing God's Blessings Through the Beatitudes. He is married to Karen, and they have two married sons and five granddaughters.

Read an Excerpt

Momentum

Pursuing God's Blessings Through The Beatitudes

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By Colin S. Smith, Jim Vincent

Moody Publishers

Copyright © 2016 Colin S. Smith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8024-9374-3

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CHAPTER 1

I BRING NOTHING

THE ENIGMA OF EMPTY-HANDEDNESS

Some months ago, Karen and I decided to visit the Art Institute in Chicago. It is a vast place, much bigger than we had expected, and when we saw how large it was, I said to Karen, "We need a plan."

We had about four hours and so, having found a map, we worked out a route that would make it possible for us to see the whole place in the time available, assuming that we didn't stop for too long in any of the rooms.

When we had agreed on the plan, I said, "Right. Now let's see the Art Institute!" And we did. It was a marvelous day and, having completed our tour, I felt pretty good about what we had done.

A few weeks later, a friend from England, who is an artist, came to stay in our home. In the course of conversation, she asked us about Chicago's Art Institute.

"Oh yes," I said, "we've been there."

"What did you see?" she asked.

"We saw everything," I said.

It was obvious that she was not impressed.

"Oh no," she said, "that's not the way to do it. When I go to an art gallery, I go to see three or four things, and I spend time with them." I felt rather foolish. In our race to see everything, there was a profound sense in which we had seen nothing.

The artist's counsel is helpful when it comes to the Bible. You've been reading the Bible. That's great. But what have you seen? It is possible to race through the halls of Scripture, moving past the life-transforming truths that are all around you, and yet to remain largely unaffected. But wisdom takes a different approach. She stops beside a masterpiece and looks at it until its beauty passes through her eyes and into her soul.

As the Beatitudes have worked their way into my life, it has become clear to me that this is a place where we need to linger, until these words of Jesus press themselves inside us and impart some of the great blessing that they hold.

Our Lord tells us that the poor in spirit are blessed. What does this mean? Poor means that you don't have much, and there's nothing particularly blessed about that. If being poor could bring us into the blessing of God, your path of progress would be simple: renounce wealth and embrace poverty. But here's the problem: wealth and poverty each bring their own temptations, and for this reason, Scripture gives us this prayer:

Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the Lord?" or lest I he poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

— Proverbs 30:8–9

Money is a gift and a trust from God, but getting more of it will not bring you under God's blessing any more than having less of it can keep you outside.

Luke's gospel includes a shortened account of the Beatitudes in which we find four of the eight blessings recorded in Matthew, along with four warnings or "woes." In this shortened account, our Lord says, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20). But we should understand the shortened form in the light of the fuller statement of Jesus, where He specifically defines the poverty that is blessed as being "poor in spirit."

What would being poor in spirit look like in real life? Suppose that the most gifted football player on a high school team is a follower of Jesus. Does this mean that when he turns up for practice he should say to the coach, "Hey, Coach, my game's no good. I don't think I'm worth my place on the team. Maybe you should pick somebody else"?

When a Christian goes for a job interview, and the interviewer asks, "Now tell me, why we should give you this job?", should a Christian respond by saying, "Well, I'm not sure that you should. There are others who could do this job better than me"?

No. Being poor in spirit has nothing to do with false modesty that denies your God-given gifts and talents. "Poor in spirit" means that you recognize your poverty before God. It is an attitude toward yourself in which you know and affirm that you have not lived the life to which God has called you, and that, without Him, you cannot do so now.

To be poor in spirit is the first mark of a person who walks with God. You may be a multitalented sports star or a high flyer in business. You may be a mega mother, a brilliant musician, a technical guru, or a political genius, but if you have truly met with God, you will know that you do not have what He requires of you.

A GREAT PROPHET LOST BEFORE GOD

Isaiah was a gifted and godly preacher, and the people of his day would have celebrated this silver-tongued prophet for his remarkable ministry. If he were in ministry today, people would be cramming into conferences to hear him speak, and if he were on Twitter, he would have millions of followers.

Sometime into his ministry, Isaiah had a remarkable experience in which he saw a vision of God "sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up" (Isa. 6:1). The sheer size of the throne dwarfed everything else. Giving us a sense of scale, Isaiah says that the train of God's robe filled the temple. God is greater by far than all that was going on in the temple. His presence makes everything else look small.

Angelic creatures flew above and around the throne, calling out to each other, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." When this announcement was made, the foundations of the building shook, smoke filled the temple, and Isaiah, the gifted and godly prophet said, "Woe is me! For I am lost" (w. 1–5).

If Isaiah pronounces himself lost in the presence of God, where would that leave the rest of us? The world saw Isaiah s gifts and talents, but in the presence of God, Isaiah saw only his own need. Coming into proximity with God made him poor in spirit.

Pride can only live in the soul of a person who is far from God. It puts its foot on the gas to get you as far from God as possible because pride cannot exist in the presence of God. When God comes near, pride has to go. So picture this: the smoke of God's presence coming down into the temple of your life, and pride staggering out from your soul, coughing and spluttering because it cannot live in the awesome presence of God. This is what happened to Isaiah. In the presence of God, the gifted prophet became poor in spirit.

The gifted football player has much to offer his team. He will be celebrated at school. He will be offered scholarships and all the rest of it. But if he has any knowledge of God at all, he knows, with Isaiah, that he is among the poorest of the poor.

The gifted graduate has a talent that she can offer to her company. She graduates summa cum laude, and she will be fast-tracked for promotion. She will draw the company of other gifted people who want to attach themselves to her because she's going somewhere. But if she knows God at all, she sees that however much attention she receives, and however celebrated she may become, she stands before God empty-handed.

BEING HUMBLE IN A SELF-AFFIRMING CULTURE

Becoming poor in spirit goes against the grain of our self-affirming culture. Writing in Great Britain in the 1950s, Martyn Lloyd-Jones described the mood of his time: "Express yourself, believe in yourself, realize the powers that are innate in yourself and let the whole world see and know them." That is the spirit of the age.

Not much has changed today! In our culture of affirmation, it sometimes seems that parents, teachers, counselors, politicians, and advertisers all conspire to tell us how great we are, and apart from a miracle of God's grace, we will believe them.

Wisdom calls us to trust God and doubt ourselves. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding" (Prov. 3:5). But our culture turns that on its head and says, "Trust yourself and doubt God." That inversion is as old as the garden of Eden, and it's all around us.

The teaching of Jesus is directly opposed to the creed that says, "Believe in yourself." Jesus does not say, "Believe in yourself." He says, "Believe in God; believe also in me" (John 14:1). The person who says, "Believe in yourself," is putting himself or herself in the place of God.

The person who is far from God will often feel that she has the ability to face whatever challenge comes her way. "I can do this! I'm up for it! I can handle it!" But the person who walks with God will say something different: "Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken" (Ps. 16:8). There is all the difference in the world between these two things.

I'm a dad, and having raised two sons, I've stood on the sidelines at their games and shouted "You can do it!" with everyone else. I regularly tell my sons that I am proud of them. Affirmation matters. But let's be thoughtful about how we speak to our children, especially in the teachable moments of life. It is not a good reflection of faith in Jesus Christ for a father, mother, counselor, or friend to pump a Christian's ego by constantly reinforcing the "You can do it" message that pervades our culture. It is a far better reflection of faith to say something like, "The Lord is with you and He will not fail you, and in Christ you can do all things."

Do you see the difference between these two ways of speaking? One is godless. It puts self in the place of God and exalts the individual to the place of the divine. The other reflects the humility of one who knows that his or her strength lies in the presence and the blessing of a sovereign God.

Pursuing humility will be a challenge, not only because it goes against the grain of our culture, but also because it goes against the trajectory of all religion. Religion works on the idea that you must live a life that is pleasing to God in order to win His favor. Every religion in the world offers some variation on this theme. Did you make the right choices? Pursue the right disciplines? Follow the right paths? At the end of the day, this approach boils down to merit. Did you earn it? And that trajectory always promotes pride.

If you read the Bible, pray, serve in the church, and try to pursue a good and moral life, your flesh will announce to you that you have done something good. Then it will occur to you that others should do the same and before you know it, arrogance will have crept in through the back door of your attempts at a godly life.

A third challenge in pursuing humility is that the blessing of God makes humility harder. Here's the irony: the poor in spirit experience the blessing of God, but the more you experience this blessing, the harder it is to remain poor in spirit.

The more successful you are, the easier it is to believe that you are something, and the harder it is to humble yourself before God. If your children believe while others are rebelling; if your marriage prospers while your friend's is falling apart; if your business succeeds while others fail; if your ministry grows when others are in decline, it is hard to avoid the sneaking feeling that you must have done something right Success of any sort, in any sphere, tends to make us think that we are something special.

So if you are religious, reasonably successful, and live in a self-affirming culture, the pursuit of humility will be a steep climb for you Thank God for the work of the Holy Spirit, who comes to convince us of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:9). Without Him we would never know the blessing that belongs to the poor in spirit.

What do you know of this poverty of spirit in your own life?

People who are poor in spirit don't flaunt their gifts. They don't blame their sins and failings on others. Instead, they are unimpressed with their own attempts at living a godly life. As Thomas Watson says, "The poor in spirit, when he acts most like a saint, confesses himself 'the chief of sinners.' He blushes more at the defects of his graces than others do at the excess of their sins."

In a world where personalities loom big and God is often regarded as a prop on the stage of our own performance, people who are poor in spirit know that they are a small blip on the radar screen of eternity They know that God is glorious and awesome in His holiness. They know that He owes them nothing and they see that, even if viewed at their best, they are unworthy servants who hang and depend completely on the mercy of God.

ENJOYING A TASTE OF HEAVEN

To be poor in spirit is where the blessing of God begins. This is the gateway blessing that leads to all the others, and without this none of the other blessings can be reached.

The blessing promised to the poor in spirit is "the kingdom of heaven," and it is promised in the present tense. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3, emphasis added).

Since heaven is a future blessing, we might have expected Jesus to say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs will be the kingdom of heaven." But our Lord doesn't say that.

What makes this present-tense promise even more striking is that all of the other blessings are promised for the future:

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (v. 4).

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (v. 5).

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied" (v. 6, all emphases added).

But the promise of heaven breaks the pattern. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." That's present tense — Jesus is talking about a taste of heaven that you can enjoy now.

Life in this world is a long way from heaven, and the things that may come to your mind when you think of heaven are a world away from the realities of earth. Streets of gold? I've never seen one. Redeemed people made perfect? Not where I live. Lions lying down with lambs? Nations no longer waging war? Every tear wiped from our eyes? None of this is ours yet. So what taste of heaven can the poor in spirit have now?

The poor in spirit taste the greatest blessing of heaven, which is the presence of God. As the Almighty declared to Isaiah: "Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit" (57:15).

Do you see what is being said here? The sovereign Lord of the universe lives in two places. He dwells in heaven, the high and holy place, but He also lives with the person who has a contrite and lowly spirit. Heaven is to live with God, and the poor in spirit get a taste of it, because God comes to live with them. Heaven comes to the humble before the humble get to heaven.

This same truth is repeated in the Psalms: "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" (34:18). And again, "For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar" (138:6).

God knows the proud from afar, but He lives with the lowly. If you want to move beyond relating to God from a distance, and feel His presence in your life, you must begin by humbling yourself.

This promise of God's presence with the poor in spirit opens the door of hope, because the blessing is promised not on the basis of what we have, but of what we lack. C. H. Spurgeon describes the paradox of this first beatitude:

It is worthy of double mention that this first blessing is given rather to the absence than to the presence of praiseworthy qualities; it is a blessing, not upon the man who is distinguished for this virtue or remarkable for that excellence, but upon him whose chief characteristic is that he confesses his own sad deficiencies. ... Not what I have, but what I have not, is the first point of contact between my soul and God.

God can use brutal circumstances in your life to bring you to a place of being poor in spirit. When you find yourself saying, "I don't have what it takes to face this," God says to you, "I will dwell with you here."

When you feel overwhelmed by the power of temptation, God can use the intensity of your struggle to shatter your pride and make you poor in spirit. And if that should happen, the battle that brought you to the brink of despair can be the means of bringing you to a new place of blessing.

There is hope for you here when you know that you have messed up. If your failure should lead you to genuine humility before God, Christ will come and live with you, and the very sin that would have led you down the road to hell may, in God's kindness, be the means by which you find the path that leads to heaven.

People who feel they have something to offer God come to Him with their hands full, but as long as our hands are full, we are not in a position to receive. Watson says, "If the hand is full of pebbles, it cannot receive gold."

People who are poor in spirit drop the pebbles because they want the gold and they know that it can only be received by empty-handed believers. When you know that you have nothing to offer God, you are in a position to receive all that He offers to you. When you accept that you cannot claim His blessing as a right, you are in a position to receive it as a gift. Empty-handedness is where the blessing of God begins.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Momentum by Colin S. Smith, Jim Vincent. Copyright © 2016 Colin S. Smith. Excerpted by permission of Moody Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Gaining Momentum, 11,
1. I Bring Nothing: The Enigma of Empty-Handedness, 29,
2. I Take Ownership: The Power of Spiritual Mourning, 49,
3. I Give Up Control: The Freedom of Total Submission, 71,
4. I Long to Be Righteous: The Energy of Renewed Affections, 95,
5. I Care about Others: The Joy of Complete Forgiveness, 113,
6. I Go after One Thing: The Focus of Single-Mindedness, 133,
7. I Give Up My Rights: The Gift of Making Peace, 155,
8. I Endure the Cost: The Price and Reward of a Godly Life, 175,
Conclusion: Use Your Momentum, 189,
Notes, 191,
Acknowledgments, 197,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book is at once delightful, convicting, and practical. Delightful, because it is so well written with excellent illustrations; convicting, in that it aims at the transformation of our hearts; and finally, practical, because it spell out exactly what we can do to gain the momentum in the Christian life that we all seek. What you hold in your hand is a treasure that helps us understand the beatitudes and that motivates us to become what Jesus redeemed us to be. Read it and you will want to share it with a friend!

ERWIN W. LUTZER
Pastor Emeritus, The Moody Church, Chicago 

Without fail, my mind, heart, and walk with God are always stirred by Colin Smith’s messages. Solid biblical exposition, heart-searching insight, and practical exhortation make this study of the Beatitudes a rich resource.

NANCY DEMOSS WOLGEMUTH
Author, Revive Our Hearts teacher and host

I have never before thought of the progression in Jesus’ Beatitudes. And I’ll never read them the same way again after Colin Smith’s insightful book, Momentum. From the poor in spirit to the persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Christians all along the sanctification spectrum will be edified by this wise work.

COLLIN HANSEN
Editorial Director, The Gospel Coalition
Author, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

The Christian understanding of blessing has been greatly watered down to represent a few shallow aspects at the cost of the rich biblical connotations that go with it. Colin Smith redresses this with a deep, enriching exposition. Usually when I seek this kind of enrichment I go to writers of previous generations. This book has the same depth but is also written in a vibrant, contemporary style.

AJITH FERNANDO
Teaching Director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka

In Momentum, Colin Smith leaves behind our culture’s superficial use of #blessed as a hashtag to brag about favorable circumstances to mine the counterintuitive wisdom of what Jesus says it really means to have a life that is blessed. This book will cause you to look deeply into your own heart and life for signs of genuine spiritual life as well as equip you to pursue more purposefully the Giver of life.

NANCY GUTHRIE
Bible teacher and author

Colin Smith’s series on the Momentum is a soul-searching investigation into Jesus’ teachings on the Beatitudes. The beauty of this study is that it asks the right questions and then it answers them in straightforward and plain English. Here is a gift that would bless many a church and many a Bible study group.

WALTER C. KAISER, JR.
President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

I love this book. Thank you Colin for the refreshing, insightful, and compelling way in which you open the Beatitudes to us. Indeed, the Beatitudes are the marks and evidence of new life in Christ, as well as a practical model for growth in the Christian life. This book is for every follower of Christ who wants to get unstuck and experience momentum in their walk with Christ. What a gift!

CRAWFORD W. LORITTS JR.
Author, Speaker, Radio Host
Sr. Pastor, Fellowship Bible Church, Roswell, Georgia