Going After What's Important

Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are those that morn...Matthew 5:3, 4.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount begins to crush what we commonly think about the goal of life and what life is all about.  He has turned over not only the tables of those selling in the temple, but the tables of all of us who have set up our wares somewhere seeking prosperity in this life.  For many of us, life is about maximizing pleasure and ease and minimizing discomfort and inconvenience.  By contrast, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul."  We have to reorient ourselves to what Jesus says is important.  "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies..." (John 12)  Watchman Nee says that the outer man (the soul - our minds, hearts, emotions) must be broken like the outer shell of a grain of wheat in order to allow the release of the spirit (and Spirit) within us.  Prosperity only pampers the outer man and makes the shell harder.  Prosperity only numbs and is a hindrance in the development and breaking of the soul.

By contrast, one of God's greatest gifts for the growth of the soul is suffering.  The testimony of so many who have embraced God's gift of suffering is that: 1) they wouldn't want to have to endure it again 2) they would not wish it on their worst enemy and 3) they would not trade the benefits of the experience for the world.  Spurgeon confirms:

“I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable … Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.”

Let us not seek for that which prospers the outer man, but for that which prospers the soul, the inner man, and the spirit.