Blessed are the meek...

Climb This Mountain

Heather, Laura and I climbed up Bald Knob last night to catch the sunset. ^^

Of course Josie came along too. 

There are so many good resources out there that can give us insight and knowledge from a different perspective on who God is who how to pursue holiness with greater desire. Some good, others are more fluff than biblical truth. There are so many believers around me and all are showing different speakers or new books that changed some aspect of their walk and revealed to them a little more the character of God, but there is danger in this. These resources are someone else's perspective or revelation. I think one reason we get so excited about the newest book or sermon is because it feeds us revelation so easily without us having to do much thinking or relying on the Holy Spirit. Most of the information we pass along and believe about God is stuff that has been pre-chewed and digested from someone else. I for one am hugely guilty of this realizing very few times have I ever had an individual thought toward God, especially when it comes to they way I disciple other believers. This is hugely convicting, how can I claim to walk so closely with the father when I haven't yet trained my mind to think through scripture and to be moved by God's grace. This had become such a problem in my walk that I was realizing how little I knew Christ for myself. I didn't have that longing to be with him or even a want to want to be intimate with him. So much so that even upon reading the Bible when I saw phrases like, "Christ who died for us" who "wiped away every sin" and went on to describe what an immeasurable gift and sacrifice I had received; I felt nothing and often times mostly skipped over these passages. Constantly frustrated at why men and woman around me so easily stirred up emotions for God and I often sat there during lengthy prayer times emotionless and only thinking about how to best arrange my schedule that afternoon so as to squeeze in a run before night. This all became too much to bear 3 miles into a run one afternoon when I realized with gut wrenching reality that I could look up myself plunging nails into my Savior's wrists and feel nothing. I could see his eyes staring back at me, with each blow only increasing the depth of love in his eyes never letting his gaze deviate from slicing straight through to the depths of my soul. There is no way I can believe in the Son and still have a soul so apathetic and unbelieving. It was time for some serious examining and testing, but I didn't have to look far, I knew what was at the heart of my unbelief without looking very hard. It was "an evil desire to shine" that made me want my own pride far greater than I wanted to exalt Christ. So I did this by constantly looking out for myself and being completely lazy in nurturing and cherishing my relationship with Jesus. This soul had dropped to such a low because it had come so easy up to this point that when it stopped being easy, I found something else in which that I could chase after but it only brought turmoil. That being said, I am going to place an exert from a book. Yes, after that huge rant I know. A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God Chapter 9 on the meekness of Christ. 

Meekness and Rest

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. — Matt 5:5

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The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means aload carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is notsomething we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within. First, there is the burden of pride.  The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, “Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.” The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the Kingdom of their Father. He is willing to wait for that day. In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings.

-A.W. Tozer.