As most of you who read my blog know, I talk a lot about changing the way you think. In one of my earlier blogs I wrote about a 21-day brain detox that I do on a continual basis. I recently decided to begin a series of detoxes based on the Sermon On the Mount found in Matthew’s gospel.
I have probably read these three chapters more than any others in the New Testament the past few years, yet I sense that there’s still something deeper that I need to see, understand, and experience. The Apostle Paul said it so well –
“…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened…”
This, and the passage in its entirety in Ephesians, explains why I need to pick a portion of the Bible that I’m already so familiar with and let it transform me so completely that when I come out the other side, I look, sound, smell, taste, and act like Jesus. I won’t be allowed to turn back to that way of thinking that says, “Oh I know Jesus said that, but c’mon, we live in the real world.”
I have decided to follow Jesus.
Oh, the many times I sang that song growing up in an evangelical church and thinking it meant, “I have decided to punch my ticket to heaven.” If that is all it means, then it would have been better to have drowned me in the baptismal tank!
I am forty-seven days into this massive detox and I’m on Matthew 5:5 –
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
What is meekness?
The late Warren Piersol gave the best explanation of meekness I’ve ever heard. He gave the example of a horse, which as we know is one of the strongest and most powerful animals on earth. The horse is also one of the most useful animals known to man. But he is only useful if he has been broken and tamed.
Once broken and tamed, he becomes gentle and cooperative. But he still has the power and strength to kill you. Powerful, yet gentle. Gentle, yet powerful.
So it is with a man who is meek. No better example of this than Jesus.
He was God. He had the full disposal of God’s power at His fingertips. He had the power to do great harm to His enemies, even kill them. When the band of Roman soldiers, led by Judas, came to arrest Him in the garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword and cut off an ear of one of them. Jesus, who could have slain them all with one command, healed the soldier’s ear instead. That is meekness.
I’m not sure at this moment that I would be able to respond like Jesus did, but I want to. I want to be like that.
I believe this world could use some meekness right now. A lot of meekness. Meekness is not weakness. In fact, it is the opposite. You and I have the power to kill our enemies. Not only physically, but with our words. I have that power. You have that power. But there is a power that waits to be unleashed on the world that can only be unleashed through meekness. It is the power of love. The power that comes only from the One who is love – Jesus. It is unleashed when we let Him put the bit in our mouth and let Him gently guide us with His reins.
In the kingdoms of this world, the powerful rule.
In His kingdom, the meek inherit the earth.
Learning meekness,
Kevin