And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become
fishers of men”… And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath
he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his
teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes… And
at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of
Galilee. (Mark 1:17-28 condensed)
Somewhere close to two decades ago, I found myself in my first conscious journey through the Beatitudinal Valley. I am sure I had travelled this route before, but I never recognized it for what it was.
The “Beatitudinal
Valley” is the way I picture Jesus’ introduction to his Sermon on the Mount. He
presents a list of eight blessings that we now call “the beatitudes”.
In the journey
where this all first stood out to me, I began to see how one beatitude led to
the next. Then I saw how the first four beatitudes seemed like making progress
down one side of a valley while the second set of four looked like the climb up
the other side.
I also noticed that
none of these Beatitudes were “works based”, meaning, it is not, “if I do the
first part, God will do the second”.
Rather, it is a picture of what it looks like
for people to be blessed. In other words, all eight blessings are a gift of God’s
grace, not a good work God will reward.
So, this morning,
when I first saw how Jesus called the two pairs of brothers to follow him, and
how this following him would result in them knowing how to fish for men, and I
could see how this turned into the early church at and after the Day of
Pentecost being filled with the Spirit and catching net-loads of new coverts, I
realized that the grief I was feeling about this was a blessing. It wasn’t
something I was doing to earn a badge. It was something I could feel God doing in
me.
For several years,
I have been practicing being utterly honest with God about what I think and
feel because he can’t transform me if I don’t admit where he is working. In a
practical way, I discovered that we cannot mature when we are pretending to be
someone we are not. What I found when I focused on this (to be utterly honest
with God no matter how it feels) was that God was showing me things inside me I
had never brought to him. As I admitted these things, and attached to him about
how his word applied to them, I could see God changing me rather than me
tweaking my “role”.
My point is that I
needed to see God’s leading in the Beatitudinal Valley far more than focusing
on the words and meanings of Jesus’ early training of his disciples. I had to
let myself see my poverty of spirit as a soul-winner. I had to mourn how
horrible it feels to not see people coming to Christ every day. I had to meekly
admit that I could not change this myself but had to surrender to the authority
of Jesus Christ to do his will in me. And I had to let myself hunger and thirst
for the righteousness of being “fishers of men” with the rest of the church in
my community (including the community of cyberspace!).
And part of the
blessing of seeing God work in one’s life this way is to know where it leads. I
am on my way to becoming one of “the merciful” who are becoming “pure in heart”
as they seek to be “peacemakers” who want everyone in their lives to experience
peace with God. And I can see how even persecution is a blessing of God because
it shows we are becoming increasingly more like Jesus.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
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