Expectations Part 3 - What is Blessed?

I have been trying to write this last section for about two weeks and God has prevented me through circumstance and today I understand His purpose. It was my limited understanding, or should I say He had not fully revealed the lesson He needed to teach me regarding "Blessed".

The premise of upside down living is that our expectations are not necessarily God's best. Though "things" look good and we believe they would give us a life that makes us happy, God's purpose is not really tied up in our happiness. I have to tell you sometimes I think that stinks. I know it hurts and life for many of us is less than pleasant. It doesn't match our dream of what we want or even think we deserve from God. After all we are "blessed", right? God loves me and has a plan for my life, right? Why can't that feel good? Shouldn't that be enjoyable, happy, painless, peaceful (add your own adverb/adjective) here. I have friends who I believe are Christians who are struggling with broken marriages, family crisis, mental illness, addictions, marriage struggles, health problems, financial crisis and have cried out to God. Are doing all they know how to get God's attention with the expectation of some kind of relief. I struggle with emotional eating and I surrender each day, praying that I will ultimately learn to manage my emotions without using food to numb them. I cry out to God for relief and deliverance.

WHERE IS THE BLESSING HERE LORD? YOU PROMISED! I EXPECTED!

When I originally was studying "Blessed" in the beatitudes Matthew 5, I believe and still do that "blessed" is positional, it has to do with relationship with Christ, the residing power of the Holy Spirit that give us the power to live "under" or should I say "above" the circumstance of the struggles the pain-promise dynamic describes in this passage. Today however, I believe that God has given me more clarity and perhaps is the reason for my inability to finish this series on the BE-attitudes.

Larry Crabb in his book Shattered Dreams God's Unexpected Pathway to Joy explains this with great clarity. When it seems God is unresponsive, when it seems He simply will not remove this cloud of grief, loneliness, sadness, despair, hardship; this suffering and pain. When all your cries appear to go unheard, there is a purpose in God's silence. In order for us to truly experience what it means to be "blessed" suffering, pain, hardship must proceed. It's goal and the heart beat of God though it feels unloving, is love; His indescribable love for you and me. God longs for relationship with us. He created us for relationship, intimate relationship with Him. Ever had a divided heart? You know where you want one thing and you really want another as well. Which one wins? For me most times it the easiest, the one I can get the quickest. Instant gratification, pain relief, satisfaction. For example, I long to be at a healthy weight for my age, body etc, but I love, love, love sugar. The two cannot exist together. One cancels out the other. God's desire for me is an undivided heart. He's desire is that I long for more of Him and less of me, the world etc. He wants me to experience His fullness as much as is possible this side of heaven. That fullness cannot be realized until all the dreams and expectations for my life, this "happy" life here on earth are demolished, creating room for Him. It in the creation of that space for God that we truly realize, even in the midst of pain, His deep abiding love for us.

"Blessed" folks are the people who in the middle of all their pain, cry out to God and even if it "feels" like He's left the building. They trust that in this mounting pressing downward, underneath is the sure foundation of a God who loves and desires our deepest heart to yearn for more of Him.

When you can't see His hand trust His heart. If you don't know His heart search for it. He promises you'll find Him. But don't be surprised if where you find him is at the bottom of the pit of despair.

Betsy Ten Boone said as she lay dying in a German concentration camp,

"No pit is so deep that God is not deeper still."

Underneath are the everlasting Arms Deuteronomy 33:27