Seven Steps to Perfection

Mental Health and the Bible – 23 

If we think about it, we can see that every living thing grows in stages. Jesus mentioned this in relationship to spiritual growth. Do you know what the stages of spiritual development are? Learn about them in Seven Steps to Perfection.

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For Further Consideration

An extended look at the sanctification process.

Transcription

Jesus made a deceptive simple statement in Mark 4, beginning in verse 26. 

Mark 4:26 – And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. It’s a little miracle. The earth produces by itself – he continued – first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

So, what is Jesus telling us here? Well, plants develop in stages. In fact, that’s sort of an overall plan for everything God has made. Everything grows – even people – in stages. It’s likely, then, that we, in our spiritually embryonic form, are developing in stages as well. Wouldn’t you think? 

So, if that were true, what advantage does that knowledge give us? Well, let’s take an example. Suppose you know someone who is 40 years old, yet they’re acting like they are 14 when under pressure. Now, there’s nothing wrong with acting like 14 if we are 14. It’s where we are developmentally, we say. But when we’re 40 and we’re still acting like we’re 14, that can mean we’re stuck at that lower level of development. You heard the term – I think it was even a TV series by this name – arrested development. Well, what happens when we suffer developmental arrest? Well, we get stuck acting the way we were when the arrest occurred. So, when that happens to us spiritually – if we know what the stages are – then we can start looking for what the problem is.

It’s interesting, as I think back on all the clients I’ve worked with who suffered arrested development, once we went back and fixed the arrest, they soon caught up. There wasn’t really anything wrong, except that some trauma or some other event, or a series of events, had blocked their development. 

What are some of the things that cause humans to stop progressing through the stages of physical development and emotional development that God uses to make an adult human? Well, it’s usually some developmental crisis. The first thing that comes to my mind is heavy drug use. Ask someone, who is acting like 14, what happened when they were 14. They’ll often bring up heroin and meth, for example. Not that drugs are the only reason that happens. Maybe their parents still treat them like they’re 14. That might be a clue. Or, maybe they got really sick when they were that age. 

I had a little client who was 6 when she got leukemia. And, when she was a teenager -which is when she came to me – she was still somewhat delayed in her development emotionally. So the energy goes toward healing the body in that case, instead of growing the mind. 

Now, think about this: What if we’re also supposed to develop spiritually in stages? That fact that Paul used the term babes and mature when talking about spirituality in people, well, it implies spiritual growth in stages, doesn’t it? Think about King Saul: God told him not to take any of the animals or the other stuff that they captured from the indigenous when they went in to take the Promised Land. But he did it anyway. Samuel confronted him about it – God sent him to confront Saul – and Saul denied it. And Samuel’s response was, “Well, what’s all the bleating of sheep that I hear then? So, he was caught red-handed. It’s kind of hard to hide a flock of sheep, isn’t it? So, it’s like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. God told him what to do, and he said, “I want to do it my way!” Now, I recall my daughters said that a lot when they were 2, so, I’m not going to say that Saul may have been stuck in the terrible 2s, but we could think about it. So, think about how he dealt – or didn’t deal with – David’s superiority in battle. Saul was clearly jealous – chasing him all over the kingdom like a two-year-old with the family’s new baby. Sometimes they get jealous. 

So, today I want to revisit a helpful way to think about how God sets a course for spiritual growth in our lives. They’re found in the beatitudes. I’ve called these the 7 Steps to Perfection. In the TV series, The Chosen, it’s interesting. Jesus told Matthew, His disciple and scribe, that these seven attitudes are a way to identify God’s people. In the show, Jesus called them a map – a way to find God’s people. So, the idea was to look for people who carried these attitudes. So, we’re looking for a group of people who are maturing spiritually. 

But, there’s more to it than just that and in the beatitudes, we can identify stages of spiritual development. So, what would be the advantage of knowing that? Well, I think we’ve covered a bit already, but Jesus also said that spiritual growth is like being on a road traveling toward His kingdom. And I believe the beatitudes are sort of like mile markers that we pass along the way – stages of spiritual development. That’s not all they are. We’ll talk more about what else they might be as well, as we go along. 

So, if we’re having problems with behavior, however – you know, attitudes, motivation, depression, anxiety, sinful habits – we could go back in our lives and look for a stage or mile markers where we may have gotten stuck. And that can be very helpful for us. So, that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to look at the beatitudes and developmental mile markers. 

The first one Jesus mentioned is in Matthew 5:3. This is at the very beginning, by the way, of His teachings to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. And He starts out with this one. So, seven attitudes that you have to have to be successful spiritually. 

Matthew 5:3 – Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

So, this is the first thing we need to learn or put on. So, what does that mean? Louw & Nida Lexicon tells us it means to understand that when it comes to spiritual things – the things of God – we would know nothing about any of it. Consequently, we’re poor blind beggars, totally ignorant when it comes to God’s things. We don’t know how to worship Him. We don’t know how to have faith in Him. We don’t know that we should have faith in Him. We’re completely blind and ignorant and poor, completely devoid of any knowledge of God. So, we deeply value the things He gives us and we seek His will every time we have a decision to be made, because we know He knows best, and He wants the best for us. So, if we’ll just go with Him, He’ll take care of everything. That’s pretty much what it means to be poor in spirit – to know that we don’t know anything. So, it’s about a personal reaction to knowing about God – to be poor in spirit. And the rest of the beatitudes explain what that is.

Let’s take a seasonal example that we can think about. This may get way too close to some of us – an example that may cause many of us to shake our heads in disagreement, because we don’t want to think of ourselves as proud in spirit, instead of poor. That probably wouldn’t matter to people who aren’t a part of God’s selected people. Here’s the example: In early church history, the fathers decided to add a holiday on December 25th to the church calendar. That’s right. They added it. You can’t find it anywhere in the Bible. Well, you can, but not as a holiday and not about Christ. So, here’s how they reasoned about it. And I’m not just making this up. I read books about how Christmas became a part of our worship today. So, here’s what they might have said: “Jesus told us to go make disciples of all nations, right? So, why don’t we create a new celebration that uses all the symbols used by the pagan religions and call it Christ’s birthday. Since we don’t know what day Jesus was born, we can put it on the winter solstice – the same day the pagans have used forever. And we can do it with decorated trees, gift giving, and many other symbols and customs used, from the beginning of time to the present, to worship Nimrod and all his permutations over the ages. But now we’ll use these same customs and symbols to worship Christ. Think of how much more easily we can make disciples of the pagans with this new tool.”

And over the next few hundred years, the answer from all the various Christian elements was, “Hey, that sounds great! Sign me up!” And that’s how we came to almost universally observing Christmas in Christian churches today. So, to do this they had to be deficient in poverty of spirit. How so? Well, God tells us clearly how He wants to be worshipped. It has been completely laid out for us in the Bible. It’s been clear. But we say today, “But, hey, Christmas is about Jesus, so what’s the harm?” Well, what’s wrong with it is that it’s a humanly devised observance, not God’s. God keeps the day of Jesus’ birth a secret, making it impossible to keep His true birthday. 

Now, why would He do that? Why would He do that? He has seven other days to worship Christ on, and each one of them have Christ’s name stamped all over them. Deeply imbedded in them is the deep spiritual meaning related to that day, portraying His plan of salvation. So, why don’t we say, “Hey God, what a great idea! Sign me up!”  He’s even made the dates of these days clear to us from thousands of years back. But no, we don’t do that. We’re not observing the days the disciples kept. And that, also, is just a human idea – no need to do that stuff. We’ve got our own days that we came up with. 

Simply put, then, a person who is poor in spirit seeks and applies God’s will and God’s ways in everything. He keeps his nose in the Bible to learn what God wants Him to do, instead of the Amazon Black Friday Sale pages. So, that attitude is the first step in coming to God. You have to believe that God is God. Belief is the first thing. And once we believe God is, and we start looking at what He does, it takes us down a peg and helps us realize that we don’t know everything. We don’t have control over our own destiny and God does, however, and that we need to worship Him and do it the way He tells us to. 

So, when did you learn that for the first time? For most of us, we had to come to that attitude before anything else. So, when did you take step one? It seems obvious that this has to be the first step in coming to God – to believe what He tells us to do and not to do. Do you suppose none of the rest of the seven steps are available to us unless poverty of spirit comes first? Nothing comes us unless we believe God is and that He knows more than we know. 

Now, this is all going to get complicated in a hurry. We don’t usually become completely poor in spirit all at once. We have to learn to apply it in one area, and then another, as we go along. Still, that poverty of spirit has been and is always a starting point for a relationship with God. The more areas of our lives where we apply it, the less chance of spiritual arrest down the road. So, it’s fundamental. 

So, let’s see what comes along after we become poor in spirit. Well, the next verse:

V-4 – Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

What does that mean? Well, just to simplify things a bit, blessed are…what does that mean? Well, it means happy are you – blessed are you. It’s a benefit for you when you mourn. So, how can we be happy about mourning? Or, be happy and mourn at the same time? Well, the next word that we want to think about is the word mourn itself. The Louw & Nida Domain Oriented Lexicon says it means “to be depressed and lament as an expression of sorrow.” It’s used in Luke 8:52 – the same word. We’re breaking into the middle here:

Luke 8:52 – Everyone there was crying and mourning for Jairus’ daughter. 

If you think about people at a funeral, they’re mourning. So, that’s what it would mean – to suffer loss – the loss of a loved one, in this case. So, it’s not about the feeling that comes when we’re wrong, nor is it about the trials of this life. It’s different and it’s more. 

So, how does that connect back to poverty of spirit? Well, in Jamison, Faucet and Brown’s Critical and Explanatory Commentary of the Old and New Testaments – that’s a handful, or mouthful – it says: Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted…and then they comment: “This mourning must not be taken loosely for the feeling which is wrong for men under pressure of the ills of life, nor yet strictly for sorrow on account of committed sins.” So, it’s not just a sense of loss that we feel when we’re unhappy about life or worried about life, or feeling guilty because we’ve done something wrong. So, what is it then? Well, they continue: “Evidently, it is the entire feeling which is the sense of our spiritual poverty begets. The second beatitude is but the complement of the first. The one is intellectual, the other the emotional aspect of the same thing.” 

So, poverty of spirit is understanding, “I am weak, vulnerable, blind. I am desperate for help. I’m in danger without God’s protection.” Paul said it well: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Can you hear the desperation, the helplessness, the weakness, the exposure? That’s a feeling that he is expressing. And that feeling is mourning. Mourning because we’re not as great as we thought we were. 

So, what would this kind of mourning lead to? Well, let’s read the next step – meekness in Matthew 5:5:

Matthew 5:5 – Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Wow! That’s quite a blessing! What would it be like if you were the king of the earth? Well, we’re all going to inherit that. 

Blessed are the meek…so what does it mean to be meek? Well, if we have mourned our own blind, foolish, proud view of ourselves, meekness is the logical response. So, what is the biblical definition of meekness? And why is it that meek people will inherit the earth? Well, again, if we look at Louw & Nida, we can read that “gentleness of attitude and behavior in contrast to harshness in one’s dealing with others; gentleness, meekness, mildness.” So, this one – the first two have been kind of internal, realizing within ourselves that we’re not as great as we thought we were and that God knows everything and we know nothing – we’re helpless, we’re poor – and then, being frightened and sad, feeling small, and realizing our own smallness, actually – rather than just feeling it. So those are internal things that go on with us. But meekness is an extension of that out into the world. Gentleness of attitude and behavior in contrast with harshness in one’s dealing with others. To be gentle, mild, meek. Jesus said he was that way, didn’t He? This is tied to God’s admonition: Love God, love neighbor. It’s the fundamental element of the law of God related to other people. 

So, we’re all in the same boat when it comes to weakness. We’re not better than other people. We’re all caught up in this human state of weakness. So, let’s think about Moses. There’s something to learn here about him. God said that Moses was the most meek man in the world. I think about the time his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, a Gentile – I think a Cushite, an African man…. By the way, do you know who the Midianites are? The Midianites are the Gentiles that God said did the most to draw Israel away from Him toward other gods. So, Moses’ father-in-law – Jethro – is kind of a mixed bag, isn’t he? He is Moses’ father-in-law, and he’s a pagan priest, and he’s a pagan priest over the people that were the most detrimental to Israel. So, the situation was that Moses was burdened with judging the people from morning till night. And Jethro suggested that he create a structure so that he only had to deal with the most difficult cases. He could delegate the complaining or ejudication to captains of ten, fifty, hundreds, etcetera – kind of go up the line, kind of like our judicial system does today – all the way to the Supreme Court. So, they set up a system where all the difficult filtered up to the top, and all the simple ones got taken care of by others, so that Moses didn’t have spend from morning till night doing the work himself. And it proved to be a good system. 

Of course, for some, the source of that has been problematic for the non-meek. It wasn’t from an Israelite, for example. So, how could it be a good thing? It was from a lowly Gentile – pagan – and his father-in-law to boot – someone who’s religion was abhorrent to God. But just because he was pagan didn’t mean that he wasn’t a good organizer. And Moses was meek enough, gentle enough, humble enough to listen to him, and to recognize that truth is where you find it. Not every good idea has to come from us, or people we know, or people in our church. He was able to heed and to listen because of that. Truth is where we find it. 

Do you remember the story of what Moses’ father-in-law said to him when he saw Moses laboring so hard? He made a very blunts statement. He said, “What you’re doing is not good.” That’s very blunt, isn’t it, to say that to the leader of three million people. Of course, Jethro was older than Moses, and he was his father-in-law, and maybe that gave him some currency there. But here’s the point: It didn’t seem to bother Moses. He just listened and learned. And even if the way he said it was offensive, that wasn’t as important to him as what he was learning – just brushed the offense aside and listened. 

Notice, too, that Moses got quite angry on a number of occasions in the past. But none of them was about him being mistreated and always about him defending God or God’s people. So, you see, the difference there. He was protective of other and of God, but he didn’t mount an ego defense every time somebody implied that he wasn’t perfect. 

So, how does meekness, then, apply back to mourning? Well, when we mourn, we say, “Who am I to judge? I have my own problems that I can’t overcome by myself also.” So, when we say that, we’re learning that we’re weak and sinful and vulnerable without God. If we have an spiritual sense, any maturity, we realize we’re not the only ones in that terrible situation. So, we’re not above anybody else, or deserving more than others. We’re not spiritually entitled people, but right down in the mud with them. We’re all together in this. So, the logical response to that heartfelt sorrow is to ease off on everyone else, and to empathize with their weakness as well as being aware of our own. We have no room to demand or criticize. And that’s the kind of people who will inherit the earth. Their meek. They’re people who can get along with others – who listen to other people and don’t think of themselves as superior spiritually to others. 

Like Jesus said, it’s a map. If you’re looking for a place to attend church, look for those people, if you want a safe congregation to be a part of. And that says something to those of us who are a part of a congregation too, doesn’t it? It says that we ought to be meek in our dealings with all the other people in our church. 

So, let’s look now at the fourth beatitude. How do we apply this stage-oriented approach to overcoming? Let’s say you suddenly realize you just found yourself looking down on a fellow Christian. You should not have said that, which is possibly true. “I would never say anything like that.” Well, that’s not meekness. So, where is the problem? Well, quite possibly, it’s with a lack of mourning – understanding one’s own sin. So, if we know that, we can work on the cause, instead of just trying to keep our mouths shut so we don’t spew out more difficulty for others. 

So, let’s look at the next one then. This one – hunger for righteousness – grows out of meekness. How is that? How does that work? Well, first, let’s understand what that hunger is.

V-6 – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

So, what’s that look like? Well, I always go back to the time I was the most thirsty in my whole life. I was backpacking the John Muir trail in the Sierra Nevada with friends. And we were climbing what was called the Golden Staircase – an all-day wicked set of switchbacks, which faced westward so that, in the afternoon, the sun beat down on all the slow-moving hikers. And this being one of my first multi-day trips, I foolishly drank all of my water early in the day, and so had to do these switchbacks without any. And that was the thirstiest I had ever been – certainly worse than any fast I’ve ever been on. The level of craving for water was incredible. And when I finally arrived at the top, I was standing at the shore of a beautiful high-mountain lake filled with delicious, clear, ice-cold water. I could just see down into it – down into the depths. And that’s what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness – not just a flippant, “I wish I were a better person.” No, a deeply, sadly held desire to be like God in every way – longing to be like God, while knowing from before that we are way off from that – weak and miserably deficient in the character of Christ, but hungering and thirsting. 

So, you see how that all starts with realizing God knows best and He’s greater than we are. He’s superior. When we get to that stage, then it causes us, down the road, as we go through these stages to hunger and thirst. As we learn these things – maybe one at a time – once we accumulate another one on the list – like hungering and thirsting – we can see that in a progression of thought, we can almost go instantly from one to the next, to the next – once we get each one of them under our belt. So, being poor in spirit causes us, through these other phases of mourning and meekness, to then want to be like God – and greatly so – longing for it, hungering for it. 

So, how does this one connect to the last? Well, in the face of the sin we see in ourselves – the inability to live a Godly life is our own weakness in spiritual endeavor. And when we compare ourselves and the rest of the world with Christ, we see how pitiful our attempts are at righteousness, and how desperately we all need the grace of God to cover our sins. So, that’s hungering for righteousness – righteousness by faith rather than our own efforts alone. Remember, Paul said that he counted everything as rubbish for the sake of being covered by Christ’s grace and free of sin that way. 

So, what grows out of that understanding – that we are desperately in need of God’s righteousness? Well, Matthew 5:7:

V-7 – Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

What is that? Well, it’s the natural outgrowth of hungering for righteousness. When we struggle along, hungry, longing for and yet not having righteousness, we come to realize that God is extremely patient with us. He loves us, no matter how weak we are. It’s says, “For they shall receive mercy.” That’s what’s going to happen to us who hunger for righteousness, and for those then who become merciful. 

Think about it from Jesus’ perspective. He said, “Come you, blessed of My Father, Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and thirsty, and a stranger, and naked, and sick, in prison” – vulnerable – “and yet you ministered to Me.” He later said, “If you do that to others, you’ve done it to me.” So, if we act mercifully to His other children, to Christ, it’s like being merciful to Him, which is the same way He acts for us. Louw & Nida says, “We cannot disown in those who are merciful to others the image of Himself.” So, our mercy, extended to others, draws Him closer to us and us to Him. 

So, how do we connect back, then, to the last one. Well, I think we just did. When we really understand how merciful God is to us – for our deficiencies – as we long for righteousness and find mercy in God’s forgiveness for our total inability to be righteous, it causes us extend the same mercy to others that God extends to us, because we long to be like God. The people that are not able to extend this mercy are the self-righteous people – people who don’t hunger for righteousness because they think they already are. So, Christ is merciful and so should we be to others, as He is to us. 

Okay. So, that leads to the next one:

V-8 – Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

So, what does it mean to be pure in heart? Well, Paul models that for us. Have you ever wondered if Paul, as he was writing these letters to the churches, realized that they would all be compiled at one point? And that they would be an explanation of the finer points of what it meant for Jesus Christ to come into the world? How that would change Judaism? Change from Judaism? It’s pretty amazing, really. So, he’s writing here about his own personal experience with God and his feelings. In Philippians 3:8, beginning there – he said:

Philippians 3:8-11 – Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Paul had been a Pharisee and that was a very exalted position in Judaism. So, he was in the upper edge of society, so to speak. So, he had a lot to lose. And he said: For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law – you know, “I would never do that!” – but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – a belief that God has forgiven our sins. And he says he’s doing that – verse 10: that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death – and he did, you know. He was beheaded by Nero around 55 AD. The man only worked in the ministry about 20 years before he died. And what a change he made! A change in himself and a change in others. … share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

Do you detect any doubt there? Any equivocation? Any at all? No! Paul is pure in heart. He’s whole-hearted. That’s another word that we could use to replace pure in heart. He has one big thing in his life: God. And he has dropped everything else and is purely focused on Him. 

So, how does being merciful lead to that? Well, he explained it. Because Jesus Christ apprehended him on Damascus Road and turned him around 180 and sent him back the other direction. God said, “You belong to Me now. I love you.” And all his sins, even killing Christians, were forgiven. He had been shown great mercy. And that set him on a headlong dash toward God, whole-hearted repentance – pure in heart. He said that merciful people are merciful because they know God has been merciful to them. And Jesus said that is how He would draw us all to Him – by being lifted up in death, so we won’t have to die – the most merciful act ever. And that extends out to us and it causes us to become filled with zeal for God, knowing that someone mercifully did that for us – helped us jettison everything else and become devoted like they were – single-minded, pure hearted, seeking God, and seeking to be like Him – meek, merciful, hungry to be like Him. Now, not perfect – while still dragged down by our own sins and yet forgiven – every day a fresh start for us. Seeking God and seeking to be like Him in our weakness, to be meek and to be merciful to others, and hungry to be like Him. 

Now, before we move on, I want call your attention to something that happens as we develop spiritual maturity. I’ll use an example: To help people get past their past, I ask them to make a list of hurts, losses, traumas they have experienced in the past. And I ask them, once they’ve got this list, to sort it chronologically. So, we start working all the way through the list, from earliest childhood to the present – very tough slogging for most of us – painful memories – but at some point down the list, we look at the list, and even though we have not processed everything, nothing remains on it that seems hurtful anymore. In EMDR, this is called generalization. We process enough of the painful events and, suddenly, the brain starts modifying the whole greater structure. 

I think this happens with the beatitudes as well – with a spiritual set of mile markers. The more we experience God’s mercy, somehow, the more merciful we become toward others, for example. Or, the more we see we are sinners, the easier it is to stop judging others for their sins. And I think there is an element going on with each new step. 

So, let’s look at our last beatitude. Matthew 5:9 says:

Matthew 5:9 – Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.  

So, what does that mean? What is a peacemaker like? What are Matthew’s words, “Blessed are the peacemakers?” We’re blessed, and as we’ve seen six times already, if you have that attitude, you will be blessed. And the word peacemakers…I’ll read it to you from the Word Studies in the New Testament: “The word peacemaker should be held to its literal meaning – to make peace with others. The founders and promoters of peace are meant not only to keep the peace, but seek to bring men into harmony with each other and with God.”

So, do you argue with your mate, instead of solving problems together? When this happens, we need to back down the list to find out where we’ve gone off track. Sometimes, we have to go all the way back. When people think they’re right, and they’re arguing with others because of it, it might go back to not understanding we’re all wrong and God is the one who is right. Sometimes, it only goes back to not being merciful or meek, however. So, these stops can help us figure out where we need to put our effort, if we’re really trying to obey God. We’ll say, “Well, I never think like that. Why don’t I give it that much attention?” Well, it all starts with being poor in spirit. So, go back there, if you’re not sure, and rework your way all the way forward. There are so many things about going back to the beginning. We say, “If we suffer spiritual arrest” – which is what we’re talking about – “go all the way back to the beginning.” If you’re depressed or discouraged, start at day one – the first time you ever recognized God was working with you – and progress your life through, seeing how God has interacted with you through the ages – through your years. So, if you use these steps as diagnostic tools for ourselves, it will become much easier to grow spiritually, and eventually become a peacemaker. 

But how does peacemaking come out of purity of heart? Well, someone who is a hypocrite says he’s one way, but in reality, he is not. He might say, “I am a peacemaker,” and believe it, and yet, he argues with his mate, or his boss, or his friend. Not pure hearted then. Peacemakers are so serious about keeping the peace that they are willing to suffer the loss of all things, like Paul said. That’s what meekness is . Moses was willing to suffer the loss of his personal ego support – self-support – in order to get along with people. “Let them have what they want.” You know, “If they want my tunic, give them my cloak also.” So, being whole-hearted about being Christlike is more important than winning an argument, because it’s really essentially inconsequential, if we start at the beginning and work our way through these attitudes. And they’re so single-minded, they are willing to suffer the loss of all things. And there is a loss of being right all the time. 

Now, sometimes, it seems to me, that in the early days, when I was in the church I was in, being right doctrinally in the face of everybody else’s beliefs to the contrary was all important to us. So, do you see how it connects? If you’re a peacemaker, it’s worth suffering loss for. 

So, there they are – seven steps to perfection. I skimmed over these today mercifully. It’s already way overtime, but, if you want to learn more, I have two series of presentations on the beatitudes. One is a more detailed explanation of each one and then the connections. And the second in the series is how to apply each one in our lives. But then people say, “Well, there are two more beatitudes. Both essentially say, “Blessed are you if you are persecuted.” Why don’t I add those? Well, first of all, they’re not attitudes. They are challenges to God’s beatitudes. I think the thought is here with both of these is, we need to maintain these seven attitudes under all circumstances, the most challenging of which is persecution – you know, push back. 

And beside that, one final thought before we conclude. When there us a process with steps in it, it meant that God will not all of them at once. So, this becomes a lifetime thing. He expects all of us to start at the first one. And, as we progress down the road – development on each one of them happens over time. And that would mean it’s not the end of the world for us if we’re not yet merciful, or meek, or good peacemakers, or even poor in spirit. But since He has given this set of steps, we can look into our hearts to examine our behavior – know where we need to go next. Most of us just muddle along, instead of what God has given us. And that might be one reason we’re so slow to grow and so immature. But speaking up can be accomplished by our effort, understanding these points. 

And I said, “One more…” but now there’s one more after that. Besides these being a progression, they are also interdependent. We can see each one proceeds from the previous, but once learned, they’re also a lightning fast progression of thought, emotion and experience all bound together.