{"id":3931,"date":"2024-08-21T07:05:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T11:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2024-08-21T07:05:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T11:05:39","slug":"desperate-for-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/21\/desperate-for-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Desperate for God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

When Michael Jordan announced the first of what would ultimately be his three retirements from the NBA, Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, made this proclamation:

\u201cHe\u2019s living the American Dream. The American Dream is to reach a point in your life where you don\u2019t have to do anything you don\u2019t want to do, and can do everything that you want to do.\u201d

The truth, of course, is that our culture\u2019s entertainment icons and sports heroes, who appear to be hogging the inside track to the Good Life, rarely lead lives that morph into Happily-Ever-Afters.\u00a0

If there really is an American Dream beckoning for your allegiance, you should know that Jesus of Nazareth also has a dream for your life.\u00a0

It is a radically different dream \u2013 the antithesis, in fact, of doing whatever you want and turning your back on whatever you find unacceptable. Jesus\u2019 version of the Good Life has a startling and sharp-edged quality to it that appears in its rawest form in the opening words to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12), which have come to be known as the Beatitudes.

Jesus\u2019 dream for your life is that both your outside appearance and your inside reality will progressively become just like his.\u00a0

So who\u2019s most likely to experience such a transformation?

According to Jesus, it isn\u2019t the educated or the powerful or the self-confident or the make-it-happen people in the world \u2013 the high achievers who hit the big shot or close the big deal. The people who are most likely to cast all their hope on him are those who are poor \u2013 both materially poor and spiritually poor \u2013 because their poverty compels them to be desperate.

\u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit,\u201d he says, \u201cfor theirs is the kingdom of heaven\u201d (Matthew 5:3).

In a trivial way we may count ourselves blessed if we find an open parking space in front of Target on a rainy day. Biblically, perhaps the best way to render \u201cblessed\u201d to modern readers might be, \u201cyou incredibly lucky, jackpot-winning person.\u201d Being showered with God\u2019s favor is like hitting all the Powerball numbers in the game of life.\u00a0

\u201cHow incredibly lucky are the poor in spirit,\u201d says Jesus. What does this mean?\u00a0

Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay notes that the concept of \u201cthe poor\u201d in ancient Israel had an interesting evolution. At first, poor people were identified as those who had little or nothing. Because they had little, they had no influence, even on the course of their own lives. Because they had no influence, powerful and irresponsible people were left free to crush them. Because they were crushed by others and were desperate for help, poor people were those most likely to place their hope in God.

They hoped in God because they had no other hope<\/em>.

Jesus opens his Sermon on the Mount by saying, \u201cBlessed are those who are so desperate for help that they totally depend on God, because they know they cannot depend on anything else.\u201d

And that presents a problem for affluent people in the United States. If Jerry Reinsdorf was right about the American Dream, we\u2019re living in a society that is urging its citizens to figure out how not to be<\/em>desperate for anything.<\/em>

Jesus doesn\u2019t say, \u201cBlessed are the comfortable, because that means God must be taking care of them.\u201d He says just the opposite. Only those who are desperate for God as their only security are likely to sell out to him.\u00a0

And unless we sell out to Jesus, we\u2019ll just play religious games in Jesus\u2019 name and call it \u201cgoing to church.\u201d

TV commercials assure us that we can count on Oil of Olay to reverse the effects of aging. And we can count on Pennzoil to work like liquid ball bearings. And we can count on Diehard batteries to start our cars, even if they\u2019ve been sitting on frozen lakes all winter in Minnesota. Videographers try to document such claims and display them on the screen.

Right now, could an advertising agency build a credible campaign that features you saying, “You can count on Christ”?\u00a0 If the camera closed in on your checkbook, and your calendar, and the last argument you had, would everybody watching be led to conclude, “You know, Jesus really is a person you can totally count on”?\u00a0

Jesus has a dream for our lives \u2013 that we will feel so desperate for him, in contrast to all spiritual rivals, that our dependence will be something people can actually see.

In the Beatitudes Jesus goes on to say, \u201cBlessed are those who mourn \u2013 who grieve their own spiritual brokenness. Blessed are the meek \u2013 who know that they cannot leverage God with spiritual Brownie points and therefore must simply trust him.\u201d\u00a0

Matthew 5:6 says, \u201cBlessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness [that is, to be totally right with God and to display God\u2019s \u201crightness\u201d day by day], for they will be filled.\u201d

It’s worth noting that in the Greek language the words for eating and drinking are usually followed by what’s called the genitive case \u2013 specifically, the partitive genitive. In Greek, to say that I hunger for pizza is to say literally, “I’m hungry for a piece of pizza.”\u00a0

This Beatitude is different. Here Jesus follows the verbs for hungering and thirsting with the accusative case. That gives them the special meaning of desiring the whole thing.

In other words, “I don’t want just a slice of a walk with God. I don’t want a one-course serving of spirituality to make me happy on Sundays. I want all<\/u><\/em> <\/em>of it \u2013 for all<\/u><\/em> of my life.\u201d

Jesus says that anyone who is that desperate for that much of God is blessed, for they shall be satisfied.

May your deepest dream for your own life start looking more and more like Jesus\u2019 deepest dream for your life.

Because if that happens, you won\u2019t even notice that you never did get around to winning the lottery.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here When Michael Jordan announced the first of what would ultimately be his three retirements from the NBA, Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, made this proclamation: \u201cHe\u2019s living the American Dream. The American Dream is to reach a point in your life where you don\u2019t have to do anything you… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,201],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beatitudes","tag-poor-in-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3933,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions\/3933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}