Day 2447 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.


Matthew 5:3 NIV

There's been something on my heart for a little while now and I think it's something that we all need to think about. What if we could learn to see things through younger eyes? What if we could find our way to the childlike faith that the Bible talks about? What if we could strip away all the complexity and struggle that we've turned faith into and just get back to the simplicity that it was always meant to be?

Sadly we lost that somewhere along the way. We lost it behind a bunch of rules and expectations. It got hidden underneath this desire to be perfect and to show the world that we're not as messed up and broken as we really are. We traded away that opportunity to approach our faith like children for the worldly pride and power that we've been taught to pursue and prioritize. And in doing so we've turned the whole concept of a relationship into a job that we wear ourselves out trying to fulfill.

This doesn't have to be as complicated as we've made it. It really is a relationship. It's a thing that runs on humility rather than pride. It works better without any preconceived notions about what we need to attain or complete along the way to ensure we've done it just right. Faith isn't about seeking perfection but realizing that we'll never reach it and humbly accepting the love of God that tells us that it doesn't matter. But we've spent so long living like we have to earn His love that we don't really know how else to approach this.

As this verse in Matthew tells us, blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are those who realize how badly they need God. Blessed are those who finally understand that there is nothing that we can possibly do that can earn His love, buy His forgiveness, or acquire a ticket into Heaven. It's all a matter of moving beyond the rules, getting past the self-serving need to boast, and understanding that we're imperfect children who are loved by a perfect Father.

Friends, the more we complicate faith the harder it is to get it right because all of these added things become stumbling blocks that take our focus off of our Savior. We get lost in checking boxes and making sure we adhere to some specific procedure instead of approaching our Father's throne with the humble realization that His mercy is our only hope. We can't afford to keep seeing faith as something we can work to earn because that puts all of the focus on us and that's just never where it should be.

The kingdom of Heaven doesn't belong to those who are perfect and get everything right all the time. If it did it would be a pretty desolate place. In truth, Heaven is the eternal home of a bunch of broken and wretched scoundrels who got a whole lot of things wrong and realized that they needed Christ more than anything else. It's the refuge of a group of people who humbled themselves and turned to their Savior like some homeless beggars looking for something to eat in order to survive.

That's how we find salvation. Not in seeking perfection or getting lost in our inability to achieve it. Not in working to earn our way into those gates but in understanding that we could never do enough good to make up for all the wrongs that we've done. So it's time we get back to the basics. It's time that we learn to see God as our Father who simply loves us because of Who He is and not what we've done or who we've been. It's just that simple and looking at it any other way just makes it into something it doesn’t need to be.

The more we understand our desperate need for His grace the more we’ll seek it. And the more we seek His grace the more we realize that He’s the only One that can offer it and there is nothing we can do but accept it with an open heart and the understanding that it’s a gift that we just don’t deserve.

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