It’s common today to see people take Bible verses out of context, twisting them and misapplying them to support all sorts of ideas that aren’t true. If we as a church want to base everything we do on the Bible, then it is critical that we know how to study and apply the Bible to our lives correctly. We can best do that when we pay attention to the context of a verse, let the Bible help us interpret the Bible, and only then apply it to our lives. By doing that with John 14.13-14 we realize that Jesus isn’t offering us a blanket promise to do anything we ask as long as we tag “in Jesus’ name” on the end of the prayer. No, the context of the passage and other Biblical passages that talk about prayer remind us that—when it comes to prayer—in ways we might not fully understand many things matter and factor into God’s response to our prayers. Our relationships with others matter. Our motives matter. Our faith matters, and—most importantly—God’s will matters. When we keep these things in mind we can pray as God invites us to—asking boldly for what we need but always trusting the results to His wisdom, goodness, and timing.

It’s common today to see people take Bible verses out of context, twisting them and misapplying them to support all sorts of ideas that aren’t true. If we as a church want to base everything we do on the Bible, then it is critical that we know how to study and apply the Bible to our lives correctly. We can best do that when we pay attention to the context of a verse, let the Bible help us interpret the Bible, and only then apply it to our lives. By doing that with John 14.13-14 we realize that Jesus isn’t offering us a blanket promise to do anything we ask as long as we tag “in Jesus’ name” on the end of the prayer. No, the context of the passage and other Biblical passages that talk about prayer remind us that—when it comes to prayer—in ways we might not fully understand many things matter and factor into God’s response to our prayers. Our relationships with others matter. Our motives matter. Our faith matters, and—most importantly—God’s will matters. When we keep these things in mind we can pray as God invites us to—asking boldly for what we need but always trusting the results to His wisdom, goodness, and timing.

While the Beatitudes talk about the character of Jesus’ disciples, in the verses that follow Jesus uses images of salt and light to describe the impact His followers can have on the world. Salt reminds us that we are called to live differently, to be distinct from the world in order to have a potent and preserving impact on it. Light reminds us that we are called to go into the world and share the good news of life that can be found in Jesus. In using these images Jesus was both critiquing the nation of Israel for failing to live out their unique mission while also inviting us to consider how we can best impact our world when we remember the new identity we have in Jesus and the full mission that God is inviting us, in His power, to live out in the world. 

One of the hardest pills to swallow in the Beatitudes is when Jesus says that we are blessed when we are persecuted. When we follow Jesus we shouldn’t be surprised if we face persecution or resistance, because the Beatitudes are an invitation to live against the grain of our culture—and that always generates push back. While Christians in American rarely face physical violence, we are often insulted for our faith and we have to listen as people speak falsely about our beliefs. We face persecution both because of our commitment to God’s full definition or righteousness and our acceptance of the exclusive claims Jesus made about Himself. While persecution isn’t fun, it can help us follow Jesus by doing a deep work of spiritual formation in us and by creating a space for God’s power to work in our weakness. If we choose to see persecution as something that God can use for our good we can thrive in the midst of those trials. 

When Jesus said “Blessed are the pure in heart” he was tapping into two important things—his culture’s focus on ritual religious purity and the idea that one’s heart is the center of your very being. In calling for purity of heart he was calling his followers to go beyond the letter of the law, choosing instead to allow God’s spirit to transform them internally so they became the kind of people who lived out the law from the inside out. When His followers do that, God promises that they will see God. While that will fully and finally be true when Christ returns, in real ways we can see God today as the Holy Spirit helps us understand and follow the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. That Holy Spirit can help us live with integrity before God and respond to his call for “purity of heart” today.

In the Beatitudes Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Mercy is a major theme in the Bible, and it can be used in a number of ways. But all of those uses have an idea in common: mercy involves choosing to give people something they don’t deserve. As followers of Jesus we are called to show mercy to others because God has shown mercy to us when we didn’t deserve it. Part of how we respond to the love God has shown us is by loving others we aren’t supposed to love. When God’s people truly show mercy to others they become a signpost that points to Jesus, and their actions can help break the cycles of escalating revenge that have marked our world since the fall.

Meek is a hard thing to define, as we tend to think of it as weakness. But the Biblical idea of meekness is strength under control, it is choosing to lay your own strength aside as you trust that God—in his strength—will help and vindicate you. In this Beatitude Jesus quotes directly from Psalm 37, using his listener’s knowledge of that Psalm to reinforce the idea that those who receive an inheritance from the Lord are those who trust in Him and in His strength. We can put this into practice in our lives today by trusting that God is at work even when we don’t see it, by trusting that God will provide for all we truly need, and by inviting the Holy Spirit to help us imitate Jesus, the Biblical model of meekness.