In the Beatitudes (Matthew chapter 5), Jesus lays out eight standards for Christian living. You might call these the “8 Secrets of a Happy Life.” Everyone wants to be happy – but not everyone is eager to follow Jesus’ plan on how to find happiness. We need to pray and ask the Lord to help us live out these eight characteristics in our lives. The Beatitudes show us the way to be blessed, happy. They are also eight great things we should pray become real in our own lives.
The first beatitude states, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is easy for us to become arrogant and get on our high horse. We can think we have everything figured out and everything covered. But we don’t. We never have and never will. We need God. Everybody does.
Jesus wants us to understand that we are spiritually destitute without God. We need Him. Sometimes it is easy to feel like we are all we need. Jesus wants us to understand that He is all we need.
Let’s pray for humility and dependence upon the Lord. The key is not self-sufficiency but God-sufficiency. Jesus reminds us that this is the first secret to living a blessed life. We need to accurately assess ourselves and realize that we are nothing without the Lord. But with Him, we are everything.