Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”


As we mourn our own spiritual immaturity, our lack of faith and character, and confess that to our Father, He draws us closer and comforts us with hope. These failings are no surprise to Him who knew them in eternity past (yet still saved us), but they are often crushing for us to admit. When we humble ourselves and throw ourselves on His grace and mercy, we gradually grow in our relationship with Him.

But if we run away from our failures, our sin, by pretending to be someone else, or by being a spiritual loner, our failures can harden our hearts, and we go uncomforted. He will always draw near to the broken-hearted and contrite of heart.

At work, home, and elsewhere we can often be unkind, selfish, demanding while knowing it’s not right. If we excuse it to “it’s just business,” or “I was in a hurry,” or “they deserved it,” we can short- circuit our growth and God’s comfort.

Let’s be people who call our stuff what it is—sin. Admit it, let it’s reality hit us, mourn it, and willingly receive His grace to move forward. Anyone who really grows spiritually is no coward, for they’ve learned to face themselves. Those who don’t become posers.

Lord, I humbly come to you, AGAIN, with my failures, my sin. I’m so sick of this. I mourn my hardness of heart. Please comfort and grow my relationship with you. Keep me from wallowing in guilt and help me accept your love and forgiveness.

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dave@youronedegree.com

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

On the side of a mountain with the breeze probably blowing and the sun shining, Jesus teaches his disciples and the multitudes the keys to life. Many of these go counter to the way the world thinks, for Jesus is trying to help the people think the way the Father thinks.

He starts with "blessed are the poor in spirit." Those who are very aware of their deep need for Him will have access to the riches of a close relationship with Christ. We strive to be independent and in control. He wants our total dependence and surrender.

It has been life-changing for me over the years to realize that the only qualification I have for fellowship with other believers is my unworthiness in myself. Yet by His grace, the Father has made me worthy because of Jesus.

To be disappointed with oneself is to have trusted in oneself. He wants us to depend on His grace, not on our own efforts. When I fail, it is because I've depended on myself, not Him. He wants me to trust Him for direction, guidance, next steps, strategies, conversations, etc. If we trust Him, He will guide and strengthen us.

Lord, help me to better understand and live out a life of total dependence on you and not myself.

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dave@youronedegree.com

Subject: Ben Stein's last column]

I didn't like Ben Stein very much before reading this email.
Now, I love him and what he now stands for. Read it, it is worth
your time.

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called
"Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of
Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people
from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move
on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a
few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

============================================

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in
Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say,
which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it.
This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write
it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even
recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so
long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as
a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small
scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many
stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves
and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days
ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had
a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we
agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's
is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be
again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think
Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly
pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve
to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for
memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no
longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and
lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a
"star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role
model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines
or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating
only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes
to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry
Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit,
Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.
Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all
of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb
next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb
went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is
the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a
piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding
a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it
exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl
alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who
have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of
Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their
bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect
Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the
covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape
by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and
on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous
as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has
such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by
pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American
firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South
Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies
and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible
accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who
throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the
kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs
at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you
have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only
one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can
put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great
an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin
Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or
Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close
to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife
and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for
me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well
with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my
parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to
them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got
sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered
immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of
the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to
realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters
and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has
devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is
my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God
will.

By Ben Stein

We truly take a lot for granted.

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her
pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."

The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure"?

"Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead," he replied.

"How can you be so sure"? she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever.

As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom.

He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out, and returned a few moments later with a cat.

The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100 percent certifiably, a dead duck."

Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried. "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead"?

"The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the lab report and the cat scan, it's now $150.

There was a professor of philosophy at USC who was a deeply committed atheist.
His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester attempting to prove that God couldn't exist.

His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic.
For twenty years, he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him.

Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation.

At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students, "If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"
In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, "Because anyone who believes in God is a fool.

If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do it."
And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces.

All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare.
Most of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll.
He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor.
He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.

Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped.
Finally, the day came. The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.

The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!!
If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!"

He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.

The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour.
300 students stayed and listened as he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.