Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, illustrating how mourning, meekness, and spiritual hunger are essential for a vibrant spiritual life. He explains that these qualities, often perceived negatively by the world, are actually pathways to experiencing God's grace and blessings. Bickle encourages believers to actively pursue these attitudes, recognizing their need for God and the transformative power of spiritual mourning. He highlights that true meekness involves understanding our dependence on God and the importance of humility in our relationships with others. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a deep hunger for righteousness, assuring that those who seek will be filled.

If you want to follow along. Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus for the Spirit of grace. We thank you for the power of God to touch our heart and illumine our understanding. Father, again we ask you for living understanding. We ask you for impartation. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well we're continuing in our study on the Sermon on the Mount. Tonight we're going to look at four different Beatitudes. There's eight. We're going to review the first one, which we looked at the last session, and a look at three more. So four total. Let's give a quick snapshot of each one of them and then in our next session we'll do the the second four. So we have a kind of a quick look at them. A little review for those that are just joining us for the first time. Paragraph A. The Sermon on the Mount is the most comprehensive statement about a believer's role in cooperating with the grace of God. Meaning Jesus is the ultimate grace teacher and this is his ultimate teaching. The reason I say that, some people think that the Sermon on the Mount, with its radical lifestyle, is somehow different than the grace of God. I've heard people say, I'm really into grace. I don't know about all that intensity in the Sermon on the Mount. Well Jesus was the greatest grace teacher that ever preached. We need more faith teaching in the church today. When we think of faith teaching, most folks think of healing or finances. And you do teach on faith for that. But I want to have focused faith teaching on walking in the grace of God for the eight Beatitudes. That takes faith to do that. So we need faith teaching on that arena. Paragraph B. The eight Beatitudes, most of you know them, being poor in spirit, spiritual mourning, walking in meekness, hungering for God or for righteousness, showing mercy, bracing purity, being a peacemaker, and enduring persecution. Number one, the first four Beatitudes, they go together. And the second four go together. Now all eight go together. There's a progression and a connectedness of all eight. But the first four are attitudes that the world sees as negative qualities. Being poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, and being hungry. They say, I don't, those are bad things. But then number two, the second four are attitudes that the world sees as positive. Being merciful, pure, making peace, and enduring in persecution with rejoicing, no complaining at all. Now Jesus promised that we would be blessed. And in one sentence, that means that we would have a vibrant spirit. The anointing of God touching us where we feel connected to God and we experience His power. That's the most fundamental definition in a practical way of what it means to walk blessed. We all want that. So few believers walk with a vibrant spirit. They go to prayer lines. They go to counseling. They read self-help books. How they can get happier and get depression off. We need to pursue the eight Beatitudes. Jesus gave us the insight on how to walk with a vibrant spirit. These eight Beatitudes, they are not poetry. Some people, you know, put them on a poster like, that's really neat. They are really the way of the kingdom. I want to challenge you, as we are in this series, to take these eight Beatitudes with the utmost seriousness in your personal life. Don't be content to define them. Say, well I think I got these down. I can kind of describe them and see how they connect. No, I'm not talking about just a theological exercise. I'm talking about focusing on these eight in a literal way, saying, Holy Spirit, escort me into the reality of all eight of them. Now each of them have several levels to them. There's several different levels of meaning and depth to them. We can enter into them in an introductory way, but we're not content with that. We want to go deep. But I want to tell you something. Your spirit will be vibrant if you pursue these eight. And your spirit will be dull if you don't, no matter how many worship services you come through. How many times people pray for you, you will continue with a dull spirit. Quick review of our last session, being poor in spirit, because we want to do these four together, but I'll just review the first one. Paragraph A. This is being aware of our great need to experience more of the grace of God in our heart, our ministry, the church, society at large. We're poor in spirit, not just for our own life, but we look at our ministry. I look at IHOP and I say, Oh Lord, there's so much more. I look at America. Oh Lord, there's so much more. I look at this generation. Lord, I'm desperate for all that you have for this generation. Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom. This is a two of the eight put the promise in the present tense. This is the, theirs is the kingdom. They will experience the glory of God to a measure right now. Paragraph A, this includes seeing ourself as spiritually poor in terms of our experience when compared to how much God has made available to us. God has made available a far greater measure of grace than any of us are walking in. When we see that, it stirs us up. We say that's not okay. Being poor in spirit implies that we don't, we know we don't have the strength to make our heart godly or to make our heart alive spiritually. Now we know that sort of, I mean, everybody knows that technically they don't have the power to make their heart alive and vibrant, but the way they live, they think they, they assume they do have the power. They just go on without seeking the Lord in the way he describes and wonder why they don't feel the presence of God. The poor in spirit say there isn't a chance that we can enter in without seeking God, seeking help outside of our natural strength and our natural abilities. We can't inspire others. We can't inspire others to walk with God in a deep way by our persuasive speaking, by our gifted music, by powerful personalities. You can't move another, another human spirit to walk with God. By your own gifting and ability, no matter how good your music is, how clever your sermons are, how great the drama is, our natural ability cannot move a human spirit. Now that's really practical when it comes to the home. Mom and dad, you cannot move their little spirit to connect with God by just the sheer dedication of motherhood and fatherhood. It takes an anointing to touch them. So we look to Jesus, but not just look to him in the sense of acknowledging we need help. We acknowledge we need help, but we line ourself up to seek it. Being poor in spirit is not just the acknowledgement, it's acknowledgement with action. We're going to do something about, we're going to respond the way the eight beatitudes say, because we can't deliver ourself or the people we love without continually connecting with the Holy Spirit. The end of paragraph B, the way we can grow in this beatitude of being poor in spirit, somebody says, I want a greater sense of that. Read what the Word says about how much God will give. Read the book of Acts. Read just different places in the Word. We read biographies from history. How much God did in and through others. And the Lord says, is that what you want? I'm not talking about the measure of impact where, you know, Billy Graham touched a million people, that's what I want. I'm not talking about the size of impact. I'm talking about the anointing of the Spirit touching you and the anointing of the Spirit flowing through you. When we read from the Word and the testimonies of history, biographies, how far God's willing to go in touching the human heart, it makes us desperate. It makes us miserable living at the low level that we live in in our spiritual experience. Top of page two. Let's go to the second beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn. Now, nobody could have thought these eight up. I mean, the only one that kind of you could have guessed would be blessed are the merciful. The other ones are like, huh? And Jesus laid them out, said this is the key to the human spirit connecting with God. I'm talking about born-again believers connecting with the Spirit and not being content merely with forgiveness for their sins and a few external blessings. I'm talking about living connected with God. He starts poverty of spirit, then spiritual mourning. Verse 4. Blessed are those that mourn. They shall be comforted. The Lord says, if you stay with it in due time, little by little, I will touch you. I will comfort you. You will have a breakthrough. The breakthrough comes progressively, little by little. The comfort happens over time. But he says, I promise you, you'll have a breakthrough if you stay with it. Paragraph A. Being poor in spirit speaks of how we see ourself. Mourning refers to how we feel about what we see. Poverty of spirit, we see our great need. There's so much more God will give us and our natural giftings and abilities can't release the anointing for us, to ourselves or through us. Mourning is how we feel about what we see. When we see differently, being poor in spirit, we feel differently about our life. Blessed are they who mourn. We feel pain. Not only pain, we still have confidence in God. We still have a dimension of joy, meaning there's a dimension of pain and of mourning and a dimension of joy. Both truths are held in tension. It's not one without the other. Both of them have a place in a believer's life, their entire life in this age. The goal isn't to enter into joy that has no mourning or mourning that has no joy. They seem like extremes on opposite ends, but both of them have a place in a believer's life in every step of their spiritual journey in this age. Now, mourning is a spiritual mourning. It's not talking about mourning because of difficult circumstances. You know, you filed for bankruptcy and lost all your money. That's tough. I mean, that's intense. The death of a loved one, a horrible accident that happens or something like that, that causes mourning. That's not the mourning he's talking about here. That's biblical to have mourning for that, but he's talking about mourning for a spiritual breakthrough. Now, Paul talks about this in 2nd Corinthians chapter 7. Jesus called it mourning. Paul called it godly sorrow. Here's what he said. Godly sorrow produces something in you. It produces repentance or it produces a commitment to wholeheartedness. That's what repentance is. Godly sorrow is the, is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in you. You can ask him for it and it will increase, or you can, I mean, that you do that along with reading what the Word says that God has for you. That produces poverty of spirit, which leads to godly sorrow. Paul says this sorrow produces something. It bears fruit. Number one, it will lead you to repentance. It stirs you up to be wholehearted in your pursuit of obedience. But it doesn't stop there. It leads to salvation. Now, Paul is talking to believers who are already saved in the initial sense of understanding the Word. He's not talking about it leads to being born again. He's talking to born-again believers in this context. He goes, this godly sorrow, when it works in you, will give you a motivation for wholeheartedness called repentance. It will lead you to the breakthrough. It will lead you to deliverance from a dull spirit. Verse 11, Paul describes the zeal or the vibrant spirit that was worked in the Corinthians because of godly sorrow. Look at verse 11. Now, verse 11, you want to put your name on it. You want to say, Holy Spirit, I want verse 11 operating in my life. Verse 11 is what the breakthrough looks like at the heart level. It's one of the best verses I know describing the spiritual breakthrough of the heart that godly sorrow produces. It produces diligence, indignation, meaning they said, we hate our compromise. We want no place for compromise in our life again. They were actually, they had indignation against their previous compromise. Wow. How would you like it when you failed something you were committed to in righteousness instead of going, oh well, man, next time try harder. I know that. I've done that a bunch of times. Next time, try harder. What if you had a Holy Spirit indignation in your heart? You said, I am never going in that direction, but the spirit was helping you. What fear, it's fear of God he's talking about. What vehement desire, what zeal for God. Beloved, that's the breakthrough of the heart right there. Now mourning, this mourning is the gift of God working in you. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit or it's the grace of God is what I mean. You can't produce it. It's the fruit of being poor in spirit along with the Holy Spirit imparting it to you. I've asked the Lord through the years. I want godly mourning. I want greater grace to walk in the blessedness of spiritual mourning. And the Holy Spirit would say something like, well, since you asked for it, I'll give it to you. He might say to some of you, you've never asked for it ever. It's a grace. There's a blessedness that goes with it. It's the fruit of seeing our poverty stricken state in terms of our spiritual experience compared to what's available, but it's also an operation of the Holy Spirit. The two of them go together. Beloved, your desire for God, your very desire for God is his gift to you. The fact that you love Jesus, the fact that you're troubled over the gaps in your life, the fact that bothers you that you're not consistent is a gift of God working in you. It's the proof that mourning is already working in you. We just want more of it. Paragraph C, we mourn because we see how much God longs to give, how much he has proven in history he will give. And we see the gap between our experience and what God promised he would do. And we say, no, it's not God. I can't live like this. Isaiah, he was undone. When he saw the glory of God, he was undone. He said, I have to make changes in my life. Paragraph D, James talks about spiritual mourning or godly sorrow. Now notice in James 4, he describes it in, in connection to drawing near to God, which is drawing near to God. It's like the beatitude of hungering, thirsting for righteousness. James connects this spiritual mourning with drawing near to God, which Jesus called hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Here's what James said, draw near to God, read the Word, fast, pray, position yourself to be touched. And then James says, I have a great promise for you. A breakthrough will touch your heart. You will get a breakthrough at the heart level. God will draw near to you. You will feel the breakthrough. You'll feel his presence. You'll have living understanding. He'll give you a spirit of prayer. He will draw near to you if you stay with it. Then he changes gears here. And he says, I mean, James, you know, wow, he was zealous. He tells him, cleanse your hands, be serious about righteousness. Don't dabble with compromise and say, oh, well, boys will be boys. So what? He said, purify your hearts. Now he didn't mean that you can make your heart pure, but do the human response that positions yourself to receive the grace for your heart to be pure. Now we all understand this word. He goes, you're double minded. You lack follow through in your spiritual commitments. He's talking to believers who love God. He goes, you lack follow through. He goes, what you need, verse nine is the second beatitude, the grace of God to mourn over where you live and the lack of follow through in your spiritual commitments. He said, let your laughter be turned to mourning, your joy to glue. Now he didn't mean spend the next 20 years with glue because we have to read this and the whole testimony of scripture. And there's many verses on joy, but there's a good number of verses on sorrow. I'm talking about spiritual sorrow, not sorrow because of a life tragedy. I'm talking about spiritual. We hold the two truths intention, meaning at one moment of your life, maybe within even in the course of a day or a week, you'll sense the joy. Another time you'll sense this anguish to go deep with God as painful. Does it feel good now? Less people lock into the gloom. Some people do that and they get stuck on glue. Other people get stuck on joy without any desperation to go deep. Other people get stuck on the morning and the gloom with no sense of joy, no confidence with God. We don't pick one or the other. We want the grace of God in both dimensions in our life. And again, at different moments of our life, one of them's predominant over the other. And then, you know, the next period of time, and there's no, some of us this period of time talk about every day it changes, every month it changes, every week it changes. There's no roadmap to this. It's different for everybody. But we want you to know this. We need to be aware of who we are and what we have, not just aware of what we don't have. Blessed are they who mourn focuses on being aware of what we don't have. Remember, this is Jesus's teaching. I mean, you're not going to come up with a better teaching than Jesus. I've seen a lot of people try. You could get a crowd to follow you, but woe at the judgment seat when you face Jesus. We want to be aware of what we don't have. That's blessed are they who mourn, but we don't want to be aware of it at the negating of what we do have. I want to have confidence and joy in what I have in Christ, and I want to mourn by that which I have not yet experienced so I can go deeper. At the end of paragraph E, we're grateful for what we have. I'm grateful for the whatever measure I have. I go, thank you. Because the Lord might say, oh, if I lift my hand, you'd be in utter darkness. You have no idea how much grace you have. A lot of believers, they go, you know, I just don't feel God at all. I said, I don't probably, they don't really want to hear what, you know, facts, the facts are they do. They're so used to feeling a little bit of God's presence. They don't know what utter darkness feels like. It's been years. If he lifted his hand, they would go, whoa, my spiritual barrenness and depression was pretty alive compared to this. We're grateful. We're confident in what he's given us. We love it, but we're never content without reaching for more. I mean, I'm grateful. Whatever measure he gives me, I want more. When he gives me more, thank you. I still want more. He gives me more. I want another measure. Tell the resurrection. That's how it's going to go. Paragraph F this feeling of desperation, this holy discontent causes us to be extreme. This is the point in reordering our life to use our life strength to seek God. When we have this holy desperation, we, you know, someone says, I don't have time to see God. When you have holy desperation, everything else pales into second place. Someone says, I don't really have time to do the prayer thing. I'm not really into that. I don't mean, I'm not even talking about IHOP. I'm talking about the generic sense. And I said, well, I think in my heart, you haven't experienced the grace of poverty of spirit or mourning, and it's blessed to experience this. But once this touches you and it builds in you, you will have a holy desperation. You will be extreme. You will spend your money different. You'll spend your time different. Your conversations will be different. You will order your life around some way to find an expression of seeking God in a new urgency. Without that mourning, without that pain, the urgency typically is not there. Now our culture so values comfort, still in paragraph F. Our, one of the primary values of the Western culture is comfort. For the record, I like comfort. I'm not putting comfort down. I like comfort. But here's the problem. Because it's so in our culture, we have the tendency to seek for it in a false way, a counterfeit comfort, and we have the tendency to give it, to give our friends comfort. I told the story of when my wife, Diane, some years ago, when she was really under this grace of God of mourning, and she was saying, I'm backslidden. I mean, she read the Bible every day. She's one of those godly women I know. Back in those early days, I mean, as a young woman in her 20s, she was pressing hard up to the Lord. I don't feel His presence. I don't have a spirit of prayer. I don't hunger for the word. I have to have a breakthrough. And I was putting my arm around her to say, no, you're doing good. I mean, that was foolishness. God was working on her. It's like, Mike, don't take water and put the fire out. Put gas on the fire, not water on the fire. Talk her into it, not out of it. And right when I was putting my arm around her to say, oh, you're doing great, some little nice kind of human sentiment flattery that was sincere, but it was wrong, I said to her, I prophesied to her just accidentally. And it hit me. It ricocheted back on me. I said, I was going to say, you're doing great. And I heard myself say, you are backslidden. Ah, I didn't. It completely bypassed my mind. And I said, so am I. And she had tears in her eyes. She looked up. She goes, yeah, I know you are. I went out. I mean, the shock was to me. I didn't think she was or I was five minutes before that conversation. Beloved, refuse to be comforted by anything less than God's highest for your life. Don't let some well-meaning human sentiment believer pat you on the back and put water on the fire. Get with believers that will put gas on the fire. Get with people that say, yeah, you are pretty dull. So am I. Let's do something about it. Let's not just talk about it. Let's do something. Let's be accountable to each other. I have written here kind of a rough sentence, but I want to say it. There are a lot of believers out there at the end of paragraph F who've never been pained by their spiritual lack. They're just kind of content with their dull barrenness. They think it's normal because everyone around them is that way. They will miss out on so much in God. They will not sort of they will. They're not even aware they're stuck in barrenness. But here's the problem. There's the majority live that way. Don't be intimidated by their proclamation of the grace of God that keeps them in bondage to their barrenness and to their superficiality and dullness, meaning they'll talk grace all the believers when somebody goes grace, grace, they go, oh, oh, well, I don't want to be into into legalism. I don't want to do that. And they get thrown off. They get intimidated by this distorted grace message of a spiritually dull, spiritually barren, superficial believer with a dull spirit who's talking about grace. I don't want to learn about grace from someone who doesn't have a vibrant spirit. I know your version of it's not what I'm after. I'm after something's going to set me on fire on the inside. Give me a sustaining grace to press into God. That's the grace I'm looking for. Top of page three. Well, I got to hurry. The next one, blessed are the meek. Now I have written here and you can read it on your own. That poverty of spirit and meekness, they are related, yet they have important distinctions. Poverty of spirit is our awareness of our lack before God, but meekness is the awareness of our lack before people. That's one part of meekness. There's a distinction. Meaning we need wisdom from other people. We're not self-contained with all wisdom. I know we have the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit lives in others and he wants us to be humble and teachable to receive from others. He's organized the body where we all need to reach across to other believers that have wisdom we don't have, wisdom we can't get apart from the anointing that's in another person. We have need. The oldest believer had, the Lord will teach them from the, by the youngest believer. We have to have a teachable spirit all of our days. Well, that's one part of meekness, but there's another part of meekness. It's our indebtedness to God for giving us the resources, the wisdom, the motivation, the finance, the calling, the gifting. But another part of meekness is not just our indebtedness that God gave us the increase, but it's the revelation of his ownership over everything that he's given us. Meekness is tied to the revelation that he owns everything he gave you. He owns the gifting he gave you. It's not yours. He owns the favor and the influence he gave you by giving you favor. That's his. It's not yours. So you can't take your financial increase or your favor of God in ministry or in relationships. You can't become a power broker with this increase of God because the meek understands that it belongs to him. It never was theirs ever. A lot of people, when they get increase of wisdom, gifting, favor in ministry, favor in relationships, finance, they become a power broker with their own increase as though it's theirs. And they kind of pontificate, you know, they kind of let the others under them know the way it's going to be because I'm the boss. It's my little sphere. I only have three people under me, but I'm the head of this little sphere. I want everyone to know it's my dedication. It's my gifting. It's my breakthrough. I'm the one that paid the price. It's mine. And the Lord says, excuse me, that's not the truth. I've entrusted it to you. So with meekness, with our indebtedness to God for giving us the increase of our natural gifting and the increase of the spiritual graces, both dimensions, you may be the greatest singer. You may be the greatest technology guy. You may be the greatest drama guy. You may be the greatest preacher, writer, mechanic. You may be the greatest politician. Those gifts were given to you by God. Even the natural gifting, He increases them. Well, it's my gifting. I'm, I paid the price. It's my music. And the Lord says, not really, not really carry it as though it belongs to another, not as a power broker, like it's yours, be tender with the people, carry the gift with gratitude, whether the gifting is bigger, whether it's little carry it with gratitude paragraph B. Now our most natural mindset, all of us were born this way, is to see our resources as belonging to us. You know, I worked hard for the money. We see it as the fruit of our dedication, our hard work. I practiced the instrument. I built the ministry. I raised the family. I built the business. And the Lord says, yes, it is your dedication played into it, but there's a far bigger story than your dedication. I gave you more than your dedication could have produced. Paragraph C, some people, they think meekness is timidity. Meekness is not a personality temperament of timidity. Timidity is rooted in the fear of man and rooted in a low self-esteem. It's not a spiritual grace. You know, the guy just kind of shies around. He says he's real humble. No, he's not humble. He's entrenched in the fear of man. That's not humility. Let's get him free. Meekness, look at this, paragraph C, is having power over your selfishness and your preoccupation with yourself. That's meekness. Takes the power of God to do that. Now, when we look at our life, our gifting, our finance, our influence, or lack of influence, I mean, from high to low, we complain about the low, whether it's money, favor, gifting, anointing, and then we, our power brokers, when it's high on both ends, we're preoccupied with ourself by nature. We think all of us were born with this. We came by it honestly. From Father Adam, we naturally think, all of us do, there's that moment in your life where you didn't think it, you know, when you had the most horrible, you know, failure. But as a rule, over the course of our life, we think we deserve better treatment than we're getting. We think people should treat us better. We should have more honor, more money, more favor, more recognition, and God should make it happen too. Meekness is the power to break free from that centrifugal force, that gravitational force of being self-consumed. Oh, you can't do it on your own. It's a, it's the work of the Spirit. We can repent of it all day long, but there's a gravitational pull on the inside of us where we think we're getting a bad deal with God. Now, we know we're going to heaven, not in that sense, but how come we're not more anointed? How come we don't have more recognition? How come there's not more money? How come there's not more favor? How come there's not more people in God? And the Lord says, completely the wrong question. Like I remember hearing the preacher, it's not how much you deserve. If the real question is, how come you're not in hell and in utter darkness right now? That's the real question. It's not how come I don't have more of the good stuff. It's how come you don't have more of the bad stuff. That's the real issue, because the truth of who we are, fully unveiled, we deserve the bad stuff by our natural choices. And His favors, you're in the kingdom. Yeah, I know I'm in the kingdom, but you know, I've been praying for five years and I deserve a breakthrough. The Lord says, you're in the kingdom. Think about it. You should be on your way to the lake of fire. You're in the kingdom. I like you and you like me and you have a destiny and you got a little bit going on in your life, far more than you deserve. It's the wrong question entirely. Most of us, myself included, our first question is the wrong question. Why don't we have more of the good stuff where the real question should be, why don't we have more of the bad stuff? When all the truth is on the table. Now we don't see the whole truth. We imagine our dedication being more dedicated than it is. Paragraph D, the essence of meekness. Here it is, very important concept. I'm saying here it is like, I want you to note this to go think on. The essence of meekness is rooted in who you're preoccupied with. That's the essence. The meek are preoccupied with Jesus as their source and as the owner of everything they have, even their influence, their sphere of ministry or their low sphere of ministry. So when they see Jesus as the source of everything, they have good bigger, little sphere and the owner of it, they have a grateful spirit and a servant spirit. I mean, they may have a huge stewardship, but they have a servant spirit with gratitude because they know it's not theirs. But when they're preoccupied with themselves, which we all are, I mean, it's a miracle to break free of this gravitational pull in our being. That's why it's blessed for the meek. They're preoccupied. We are preoccupied with the sense we deserve more. We deserve more honor, more recognition, more money, more anointing, more favor. Come on, Lord, how much more do you want for me? Or it's this wrong question. Totally wrong question. Results in a sense of entitlement. And the way that you can tell you have the entitlement, the way I can tell, I'm not, I didn't get this from a book. I got this out of my awareness of my sinfulness. This isn't, this came out of like, ah, this didn't come out of a book. The way that you tell you have the sense of entitlement every time you complain or demand more privilege, honor, because of your great achievements, dedication, your great skill, you demand more honor and you complain you don't have it. Entitlement, entitlement, not meekness, not meekness, red alert, not meekness, dull spirit coming soon. You already probably have it. No vibrant spirit in that mindset. Paul said it really clear. Now, just so you know, this is torturing me to say this. I'm looking at myself and I got two more services tomorrow to say this again. And I got a bullseye on me. I mean, this is like, ouch. First Corinthians four, Paul lays it out. Paul, the, the ultimate grace teacher, second only to Jesus. He says verse seven, for who makes you different from another? The idea is superior. Why do you deserve more is the idea. Why do you imagine you're getting the bad deal instead of having a servant spirit with gratitude for whatever measure you have? Because what do you have? You didn't receive anyway. Well, yeah, but I was dedicated. I worked hard and the Lord says, yes, and you deserve a, a two, but I gave you a 10, whatever relative that means. I mean, whatever standard the Lord says, what Paul said, what did you have in the natural or even in your spiritual where God didn't, most of it wasn't God's free gift responding to your response. I mean, we do respond and we get more, but he gives us so much more than our dedication deserves. He said, if you, if you did receive it, the guy goes, I know I received it by grace. It's all the Lord. Paul says, good. I got a question for you. Then it's all the Lord. Why are you carrying on as though it's your dedication and you deserve more honor? He called it boasting. He goes, if it is all the Lord, why are you complaining and boasting about your position in your place? Because we boast. I boast when I complain, that's boasting. We boast when we use our increase thinking it's ours, like a power broker to kind of command the few under us around because it's ours. It's our music, my ministry, my family. I'm the boss and there's a place for leadership. I'm not talking about not exerting leadership. I'm talking about having a spirit that's less than meekness that doesn't have gratitude and servant spirit and generosity in it. Carrying our increase with a lack of gratitude, servant, spirit, and generosity. How dare they overlook me? How dare they resist me? Don't they know I'm the head of the worship team? Don't they know I'm the head of the home group? Don't they know it's my business? I started this business. I started this ministry. Don't they know I've lived in this neighborhood longer than everybody else? How dare them resist me? The Lord says when you, when you don't have gratitude, a servant spirit, when you lack those things and generosity in your spirit in the form of stewarding your increase, then you're, you, you are in need of meekness. Well, I could go on, but let's go ahead and turn to page four. Running out of time. I want to encourage you just to read through some of that, and this is only just introductory stuff, meaning these truths have so many levels beyond what I understand. You know, I've talked to somebody, they go, boy, you kind of understand that. I go, well, for, for the Peewee level, I understand it. Yeah. But compared to what Jesus had in his mind, I'm at the beginning of the beginning of understanding these. These things are massive, multi-layered. Top of page four, the final one for tonight. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be filled again. It's progressive little by little. Now this hunger and thirsty, being hunger, uh, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we are called by Jesus to press into God. Some people say, I don't like the pressing in thing. Well, it's the teaching of Jesus. It's his grace teaching. There is no biblical teaching that does not have us receiving the free gate grace of God to gain entrance of the family. And then in gratitude, responding to that free grace by pressing in to experience more. That's biblical teaching. New Testament one Oh one. There is no grace teaching that does not hunger and thirst and press in for God and for righteousness. Now it says righteousness where it's pressing into God because you're not going to have a breakthrough of righteousness without connecting with the king of righteousness. He's the author of righteousness. We don't just press in for ourselves. We press in for our loved ones. There's people that I'm praying for. I'm pressing into God for their breakthrough. That's in this verse. You're doing it. We're pressing into God for our nation. We press into God for our city, various ways. We're hungering and thirsty. We're pressing in to experience more because though our entrance into the family is free. Our experience of the grace of God is a God's response to our response after we've entered into the family on the free grace of God. Then he relates to us based on our hunger in terms of how far we go in the spirit. Now we could be spiritually dull and stay in the kingdom and be loved by God. He loves us all the same. But I want to experience more in the Holy Spirit, not just outwardly. I want it outwardly. I want to experience it inwardly and outwardly. Paragraph C. Paul. Look at this. The great grace preacher. Here we go again. Paul said, not that I've already attained it. Now he's writing Philippians, the book of Philippians at the very end of his life. He dies soon after this. So here's a mature apostle in prison in Rome at the end. He said, I haven't attained it yet. You haven't? No, there's more I want. Whoa, Paul, you have written, you know, 12, 13 books of the Bible. If we throw a book of Hebrews in, I mean, you've had a couple dynamic encounters with Jesus, pretty intense. You made the book of Acts a whole bunch of times. He said, I haven't attained it. There's more. Wow. I press on. You do what? I press. Why? I want to lay hold of everything that God laid hold of me for. I want everything. I don't want to come up short at all. I press because he laid a hold of me for a certain destiny and I want more of it. Now we don't know what our full destiny in God is, but our destiny is an internal experience as well as an external ministry. Our destiny is not only external, it's internal as well. A lot of people, when they talk of their destiny, they only talk about how big their ministry is going to be. I go, you've got a huge destiny that's internal. Does that call the first commandment? Is that on your mind? And a lot of people say yes, which is good. But here's the point. Paul pressed in at the end of his life. I mean, the guy, he's in prison at the end. He's not drawn back. Like, Paul, chill. What about chill, Paul? Paul goes, I don't do chill. I got a short amount of time before I step into the age to come and I'm pressing in. I don't do chill. I'll do chill on the other side. Whatever that means. I hear people talk about chill all the time. I don't exactly know what it means. Probably a hundred definitions. But I know what Paul means. I'm pressing. He goes, I got to lay hold of that which I was laid hold of for. Then he goes in verse 14. He says it again. I press. Press for the call. The fullness of the calling. The internal and the external dimensions. Paragraph F. We care about righteousness. I'm shifting gears a little bit because we're seeking righteousness. Well, we're seeking the king of righteousness who is the source. He's the, he's the vine and we're the branches. We, he's the one that we get the life from. But I care about verse 15, uh, verse, I mean, uh, paragraph F, the small issues of the heart. And Jesus laid out six different areas, right? Following in the Sermon on the Mount. Resisting anger, all of its levels, resisting immorality, all of its different levels. There's many levels to each of these six. We want a breakthrough of righteousness in our life, but we want a breakthrough of righteousness in the lives of others that we're ministering to. And we can't talk them into righteousness, but there's an anointing that we can operate in. And we won't necessarily know when we are, but there's a grace of God. We're talking because a warmed heart causes other hearts to be warmed. You get a warm heart. You'll impart fervor to others without even, I must say you stir yourself up and talk to a real hard, real fast. And that's fervent. That's not what I mean. I mean, there's a fervency in your spirit. There's a, there's a gripping of God. There's an engagement of God and you'll impart that desire to be engaged deeply with God. Paragraph G hunger is one of the most important signs of life. You know, you go to the hospital and the patient has no hunger at all. That's bad. When there's no hunger, there's no life. You died. How long the guy had no hunger for days. He's been dead. That's why he has no hunger. That's death. But before death, there's no appetite, which is a sign of extreme sickness. If it stays on, if it goes on now, here's the problem. It's a whole lot of believers that are in the spiritual intensive care unit and they don't know it. They don't desire the word. It's boring. They don't desire prayer. I mean, they'll go to the prayer room, listen to the music, but they don't talk to God. It's too boring. And I just real fidgety. I move around a lot. You're in spiritual ICU unit and don't know it. You have no hunger. You love God in the general sense. You're sick, but because so many others are sick, you don't think you're sick. You are on the verge of death. Well, I'm just in the grace. No, you're in the ICU unit right now. It's abnormal Christianity, not to desire the word and prayer and the presence of God. Now, I know in the Western culture, that's very normal. But from the biblical point of view, that is abnormal, sickly Christianity. It's not normal. Hungerless, passionless Christianity is not normative to God. And the eight Beatitudes tell us the way out of it. Paragraph J. Jesus said, I promise you, you'll stay with it. You progressively will be filled. I will stir even you. I'll end with a very short testimony of my, of my personal life. I'm going to have a worship team come up. I've said this many times over the years. I remember when I was 18, 19 years old in college, my youth pastor said, Mike, you got to read the word. I went, Oh, the word was so boring. And they said, you got to do more than that. You got to pray. The only thing worse than the word was prayer. The only thing worse than prayer was fasting. They gave me all of them. It was horrible. Again, if you'd have told me, and I prayed, I read the word a couple hours a day. I hated it. I hate it all the time because this is the most boring thing I've ever done in my life. I did it because my youth leaders told me to. And I thought, well, you know, I'm so, I was miserable though. And I, the prayer was, was really bad because I would pray, pray for three minutes. I'd pray for an hour. Three minutes later, I had 57 minutes to go. It was torture. I just said, I just started, then I started really praying. I said, God, you run your kingdom in such a way. It's so boring. Couldn't you be more interesting? And truthfully, from heaven's point of view, the Lord was saying something like, you're now, you're praying. We're doing it. Now you're doing it. But I didn't think that was prayer. I felt bad about that. I was telling God, your stuff is boring. Your presence is boring. I mean, I got a lot to offer you. You're not taking me up on it. This is for real. I said, it's, you know, it's your business, but I got a lot I can do for you. And anyway, I didn't like the Bible and prayer. This goes on for some years. Now I'm about, I don't know, 23 years old. I'm pastoring. It's five years later and I've been staying steady with it. The word and prayer and fasting and not liking it. I'm in a small group meeting one day. It was a question and answer time with about 30 people. I was sitting around in a group and they said, well, you know, how do you enjoy the word? And what about the Bible? And I said, the shocking statement, it just knocked the wind out of me when I said it. I said, well, I really enjoy the word because here's what I do. And I was answering their question and I stopped. There's only 30. We're sitting in a circle. I went, oh my gosh. They're looking at me. I go, I enjoy the Bible. I don't know when that happened. And they're looking at me going, are you having a breakdown right now? I go, no, no, you don't understand. My pickle doesn't like the Bible, but I do now. I don't even know when it, I said, I got to like in this meeting right now, I'm having an epiphany. I like the Bible. I said, God, it worked for even me. I was convinced I would be the only guy who stayed, who pressed and it never worked ever. I would end up dying at 90, not liking the Bible, but gutting it out the whole time. I really believed I would, it would never change. I mean, it was really boring to me. And I just, again, it's five years later. I don't know when I started liking it, but I heard myself say, well, I really enjoy the word. And tears coming down my face and they're going like, are you okay? And I go, I'm no, I'm not okay right now. Then I left. I said, God, I like the Bible. It worked for me. It worked for me, the main guy that would never like the Bible. Now I realized that that was a long time ago. So a lot of 20 year olds, you go, Oh yeah, you're my big one. You're the IOP guy. You have to like the Bible. No, I didn't like any of it. If you'd have told me when I was 20, I would be leading a prayer ministry. I would say more bitter than death. No, mean it. That would have been torture that concept. God hid it from me because I just would have collapsed in anguish. No, that is not a joke. That's funny, but it's not a joke. He would have told me 20 years old, an angel. Hey, you shall lead a prayer. No, I would have fasted and prayed right then to break free. I mean it. I mean it. I'm not joking. Let's stand. I tell you, you will be filled. It will work for you. You stay with it. Well, I'm ADD the whole world's ADD right now. Don't do that one. Literally the whole world is ADD, but about 1% of the people, they all work in libraries. I mean that a lot of people, they cast aside their entire destiny under the I'm ADD. The whole earth is ADD. Stop that one. You have a destiny. Go for it. I'm going to respond first in the chairs because once we let our beloved Koreans up here, there is not going to be any space. So no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I said the K word. I said the K word. No, I want us to respond for about five minutes, for about five minutes, and then we're going to open it up. I love that's hunger. There's nobody has hunger like the Koreans. Nobody. No, that's glorious. That's awesome. But let's just close our eyes for a moment. Lord, I want this. I want the beatitudes. I want the vibrant spirit. I want the blessed. Are they who? I want that blessedness on my spirit. I want meekness. I want spiritual poverty. I want spiritual mourning. I want a hunger and thirst. Next session, we'll look at the next one. I want to encourage you right now. Say, Lord, I'm going this direction. I don't care what it costs me. I don't care how many years until I feel the response from heaven. I am going in this direction. It's years before I feel anything. It won't be years. I don't know when I started feeling it. I never, I still to this day don't know when it happened. Somewhere in that first five years. I don't know. It won't take five years, but it's the beatitudes. It's not just Christian meetings, not just services. It's not just outreaches. It's the eight beatitudes. That's the future for your life. Let's talk just for another moment or two. Jesus, I love your ways, Jesus. I love your ways, Jesus. Poverty of spirit. Morning, meekness. Those are my ways. I don't have another way. That is the way. I love your ways. I don't have another way, says the Lord. Poverty of spirit. Spiritual morning. Meekness. Meekness and loneliness. Lord, I love your ways. I love your ways. Meekness and loneliness. I love your ways. I see your heart, says the Lord. I see the garden of your heart, says the Lord. I see your face all over the room. I ask you, says the Lord, seek my face. Will you say yes? Will you say yes? Will you not give up? Will you not give up?