BLESSED, ARE THE ONES WHO KNOW THEY'RE NOBODY WITHOUT JESUS...

Matthew writes that Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the Kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.  News about Him spread all over Syria, and people brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures and the paralyzed, and He healed them.  Large crowds from Galilee, from the Decapolis, from Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed Him.  

When He saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down.  His disciples came and sat around Him and He began to teach them, and the crowds listened...

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven..... 

Back in those days, much as it still is today, you were considered blessed if you had lots of money and possessions, or if you were healthy and problem free, but when Jesus sat on that mountainside and began to teach what we now call The Beatitudes - His words turned that definition upside down and inside out. 

The first truth He declared, was that in the Kingdom of God, the blessed ones are those who are poor in spirit - those who realize they are nobody without God.
 
The Greek word Jesus used for the word POOR describes a person who has nothing and no hope of ever having anything more than nothing.

Jesus used the exact same word when He talked about Lazarus, the beggar, who was lying at the gate of a rich man 'longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table'.  He was desperate for scraps, for peels, for garbage, for leftovers, for just a crumb.  This man was so helpless that he was unable to ward off the stray dogs that came and feasted on his oozing sores.

So what Jesus was actually saying was more like, "Blessed are those who know that without the generous, kind, merciful benevolence of God, they would for sure die..." 

William Carey was born in 1761.  After he came to know Jesus, he was driven by an intense burden for those in India who had never yet heard His Name.  At a conference of pastors he got up and expressed how their was a need to go across the seas to tell those living in darkness what we were so fortunate to know.  His passion was ridiculed and he was told to sit down - but William Carey refused to let go of what He knew Jesus had put in his heart to do. 

He writes in his journal, "If Jesus were The Lord of India, what would it look like?!  What would it look like?!?!  What would be different?!?!"  

In 1793 he took his pregnant wife and three boys and boarded a ship for India, a land Jesus had told him to love and serve, a land that desperately needed to be ruled by TRUTH, not deception.  

It wasn't easy, in fact he writes that it was miserable. He had no money, no food and no friends. He and his entire family got sick with malaria which resulted in his five year old son dying and his wife having a nervous breakdown.

"I'm in a strange land.  Not one Christian friend, a large family and nothing to feed them - but I have GOD and His Word is sure!  This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me - but nonetheless, I rejoice that I am here, because GOD IS HERE!!" 

In 1799 a page turned and he began to see fruit from his labor.  In 1800, after SEVEN LONG YEARS of loving on the people, he baptized his first convert and two months later he finished translating the New Testament into Bengali.  Over the next 28 years, he translated the ENTIRE Bible into India's major languages - of which there were 209!!!! He also did his best to stop some of the horrible practices that pervaded India, such as widow burning and the killing of children for human sacrifices.  By the time William Carey died, he had spent 41 years in India without ever going back to his country!!  Throughout those four decades he said he just did whatever Jesus told him to do.  And throughout those four decades he suffered from a recurrent fever, he limped from an injury he'd sustained in 1817 and his wife never did recover from her emotional anguish.  If you were to visit William Carey's simple grave today, you would see a stone with the following inscription that he requested be written. 

WILLIAM CAREY
Born - August 17th, 1761
Died - June 9th, 1834
A wretched, poor, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall...

William Carey was intentionally poor in spirit to his last breath.  He knew he was nobody trying to tell the world about THE SOMEBODY that had rescued his soul!!  He knew that on his own, breathing, let alone enduring and being productive in God's  Kingdom, just wouldn't be possible.  He knew that without His Father's constant care and nearness, life just wouldn't be doable - but he proved every single day, that as long as he was in the arms of his God that he could expect great things and that anything was possible!!  

The way he lived inspired countless hearts, including Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, George Mueller and David Livingston, to leave what was known and cross the seas to make Jesus famous.  Although they never met, William Carey taught them by example that the only way to endure the darkness and hardships that always accompany an abandoned 'YES!' to Jesus - and the only way to be blessed and fruitful amidst that darkness and hardship, was to live in the shadow and rest in the arms of The Almighty!!

Every day we are reminded by our own weaknesses that we are nothing without THE SOMEBODY who died so that we could LIVE!!!  We are reminded that HIS strength is made perfect in our weakness and that HIS grace is always enough for every single need that presents itself!!!  What a relief it is to know that HE is The One with the pen - that HE is The One who is in control - and that all that's required from us is to stay in His arms!!!!  

Please continue to pray for Haiti - and for us as we do what Jesus tells us to do each day. 

Two little worms in Haiti who are so thankful for that place between His shoulders...

M & S

P.S.  This is a brand new song that's worth listening to...