365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Days 290-91

My bible opened up this morning to Matthew 5 and I started reading the Beatitudes (learn meaning of Beatitudes here: http://askville.amazon.com/coined-word-beatitude-Biblical-teaching-commandments-blessedness-Matthew-chapter/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=7973818 ) I got to the third one “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” That word meek had me pause as I just couldn’t think of an appropriate way to put that into my own words so I pulled out The Message and began to read the Beatitudes from there. The Message has a way of making what is written connectable. Here is that third Beatitude in The Message: “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less.  That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.  I found this “content” last year when I finally was able to see the fears I had regarding what other people thought of me. I became content in knowing that God made me just as I am and there was nothing to be down about it. It was time to celebrate who God made me to be, no more, no less. Check out the full Beatitudes in The Message for yourselves and discover something new from this golden nugget of scripture. 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A1-12&version=MSG

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 181 & 182

We had family in town yesterday so I wasn’t able to use my computer in the morning as usual. We went to church together and both my hubbie and I were delighted with the topic being “encouragement”. Some people just have a negative attitude and are critical about everything. They tend to say negative things that really don’t need to be said at all. The sermon was about encouragement and how we should go and encourage others. I especially loved the story our pastor told about another pastor who was working at starting up a church in a 3^rd world country. For two years, he prepared sermons for each Sunday and nobody came. But every Sunday, he would look up the hill and would see a cross at the top of the hill. This cross helped sustain him through these two years. He decided to climb the hill to the top. At the top, he found a hotel and the cross was on top of one of the buildings. He went inside to talk with the manager. Let’s just say the manager was not in a very good mood. “What do you want?” he asked gruffly of the pastor. The pastor told him about his trying to start a church and preaching every Sunday with no one showing up and that the cross on the top of the hotel helped him. The manager broke into tears and told the pastor he had in the time since he put up the cross always received negative comments about it and this was the first time he had received a positive one. The pastor ended up preaching at the hotel and his ministry flourished. He was in need of encouragement himself but gave encouragement to this manager and God blessed his ministry. Some people have the gift of encouragement but all of us are capable of sharing encouragement with others. So go encourage someone today with your smile, hug and kind words.

Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.