Monday, October 31, 2011

November 1, 2011

EKG Day 25 Devotional

"The meek shall inherit the earth" Matthew 5:5

Jesus said the meek, the gentle, would inherit the earth. But our culture has created a different breed of inheritors. Thereis nothing remotely meek about the heroes of our day. Meekness and gentleness are not virtues we greatly admire , and this beatitude ma not appeal to us.

In our minds meekness is often associated with weakness, passivity, or even cowardice. Or we may think it's simply a person's natural disposition, a tendency to be quiet and mellow, which some have nd some don't. If either of these two is correct, (1) Jesus wouldn't have praised it, and (2) those of us who aren't so calm and collected by nature would be out of luck satisfying Christ's command.

The Bible says that gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23) - a Christlike character trait prodced in the believer's life by the Holy Spirit. And furtermore, meekness is not weakness, it is power under control. Power restrained by gentlenes. I like that.

We see this quality in Jesus. In the wilderness Satan offered Him all a man could want. Jesus could have had physical satifaction, public acclaim, universal power. But He chose to submit to His Father. In Gethsemene, His human flesh begged to avoid the cross, but He submitted to the Father's eternal plan."'Not what I will, but wat you will.'" (Mark 14:36). Do you remember the taunting cry of the criminal? "Aren't You the Messiah? Save Yourself and us!" (Luke 23:39). Everything in Jesus' human nature must have desired to come down and show them the fierce anger of the Lord. If we were there, we would have cheered if He had torn Himself free of the cross and taken His own revenge. But it was His meekness that held Him there, enabling Him to endure the shame and buy mankind's redemption.

Our ability to be meek - or not to be - is most often seen in our relationships with other people. When you're in difficult situations, are you in control of your emotions? Do you have meekness - power under control?