25 of 52 Voices July 3rd, 2014

The C3 Leaders devotion is a peer weekly reflection from business leaders related to their journey with Christ. Each weekly devotion will be written by a different author from among the C3 Leaders community, 52 unique authors to be exact.

As we go through this next year together, we pray that these words and reflections will encourage you in your relationship with Jesus Christ.

Zac Gandara is the Media Director at Excellent Cultures

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs! | Matt 5:3 NLT

The word beatitude actually means, “the blessing of.” Jesus is not talking about attitudes, he is beginning to show the disciples what the bliss of living in the Kingdom of God is and how everything they’ve known is about to change. How their current worldview is going to be dismantled, and how their lives will begin to experience the bliss of Kingdom life on the earth.

Jesus was expressing a great excitement for the Kingdom life now available to his followers. A life of beautiful, restful, bliss. A life of joy. A life that is not altered by circumstance but is secure in the safety of the rule of a King.

The beatitudes are written in such a way that they build on one another, like learning to ride a bike or a snowball growing as it rolls downhill. They grow in our lives in progressive succession. The first down pedal motion to get the bike moving is the first beatitude:

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs!!! (NLT)

Everything begins with the recognition of our own destitute position. The Greek & Aramaic translates this first beatitude as “O the blessedness of the poor…” A true statement of being, not of attaining. This use of the word poor means exactly that: having nothing.

The beginning of our life in Christ’s Kingdom truly commences when we understand that the Kingdom is built for those that are poor, destitute, and have nothing without their King. It requires a complete surrender of all things, turning us away from our western idea of success and accumulation. It gives us blissful rest in all things being God’s. It is through him we have all we need, and so we can give all we have.