Sermon on the Mount chapters 7 & 8

WOW - this week's lesson laid me flat...again.  I cannot recommend this workbook and video study that Kari has created highly enough.  It was made to go with the application and study of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book Studies in the Sermon on the Mount and it is phenomenal!!

I am not sure what to share, because I want as many other people as are able to participate in this study.  I don't want to turn people off from trying it by anything I say or fail to say, so just know what I share here does NOT do this study justice.  I just process and learn by writing, so this blog space is another avenue for me to get this truth into me in a way that I won't just gloss over it or jump to the next thing when it is over.

First of all, I love how Dr. Lloyd-Jones gives tests and questions for you to self-examine (and cross examine) your own heart in light of the truth he expounds from Scripture.  With that said, these questions are brutal, to the point of...actually bypassing the point of any possibility of excusing what it uncovers.  

Second of all, I love how Dr. Lloyd-Jones gives you straight forward answers, never leaving you in a desperate spot of trying to figure out how to apply the truth of what he is teaching.  Nothing, NOTHING, is more frustrating to me than going to church and hearing either a sermon or a Bible study lesson and not knowing how to practically apply it in day to day life.  What I love most about this collection of sermons is the straight forward application of God's Word.

This Beatitude - this is where we are meant to camp out and live and walk and breathe our moments.  This hunger - this thirst for righteousness is what propels us forward into His presence.  Nothing you or I can say or do will ever or should ever replace this desperate hunger and thirst.  Only He can quench this.  And that is to be the pursuit of life.  

Matthew 5:6

Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (or filled).