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“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” (Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:3) We see from these words of Jesus that being poor in spirit is the pathway to the kingdom of heaven. “That’s great,” I hear you say, “but how do I become poor in spirit, and what is the kingdom of heaven anyway?” I will cover the kingdom of heaven question in a future blog. For now, let’s investigate the poor in spirit part. As I explained in a previous blog post,

In the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us that being poor in spirit is blessed. Hearing this, many of us would think “I don’t want to be poor in anything”. You might change your mind when you learn what this really means, and why you should be poor in spirit. We all think we are in charge of our lives, at least that is what we like to tell ourselves. It is when we are hit with one of the severe emotional body-blows that life sends our way that we realize we are not in charge and need

The Gospels all stress the importance of love. Why is this? Jesus taught us the reasons why love is so important in His Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon, Jesus introduces us to the concept of a loving Heavenly Father. This is in contrast to the Old Testament version of an angry God ready to punish us if we do not follow His commandments. The God Jesus describes loves us as a father and desires that we return this love. This love of God extends to all of humanity. As a pa

Many of us were raised in a faith tradition that emphasized rules and the threat of punishment by God, but should our fear of punishment be our proper motivation? Read what Jesus had to say about this. Fear-based theology is not new. It is called “transactional theology” and means essentially “you do something good for me and I’ll do something good for you. Bad things will happen if you do not.” The book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew bible spells out rewards from God for good

If you have ever said that God wouldn’t want you back because you are “too great a sinner”, listen to what Jesus had to say about that...

There is a brief teaching of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew that causes many of us to say, “Huh?”. It has to be way up there on the...

We hear the word “hypocrite” and we associate it with someone who says something, but really doesn’t mean it, or does something...

I was reminded of a scene from the Gospel of Luke recently. The weather forecast predicted strong storms with heavy rains and winds up to...

When most of us hear the word “repent”, we think of a “Fire and Brimstone” sermon. There is, however, a much deeper meaning to this word....

There is a story in the Gospel of John that often gets overlooked, in spite of its profound message. The story is known as the “woman at...

Like many of us, I was raised in a faith tradition that taught the concept of what I call an “Angry God”. We were taught long lists of...

Do you consider yourself far from God, so far away that you can’t see a way back to God’s good favor? If so, don’t feel alone, there are...

In the four Gospels, there are a total of 89 chapters. Each one of these chapters are filled with rich content, but often with an unclear...