Every Blessing Is Yours: Letting Jesus Transform You Through the Wisdom of the Beatitudes

By Judy Nichols

In Every Blessing Is Yours, Judy Nichols offers helpful insights and interesting personal stories while comparing the New Testament Beatitudes with the Old Testament wisdom of Isaiah. Highly recommended.

Bill Deckard

Senior Editor

Crossway

One of my weekly joys is reading Judy Nichols devotions. This collection is long overdue.

Kevin Springer, Camarillo, CA

Author of the highly acclaimed Power Evangelism

and Power Healing (Harper Collins)

As I read Every Blessing Is Yours, there was a sense of freshness brought to the study as Judy intertwined the Matthew and Luke passages with Isaiah 61.

Richard L Widener

Missions Director, Alliance for Renewal Churches

Ms. Nichols draws from both her experience and her knowledge of the Scriptures, and the result is wonderfully enriching.

Jay Shifley, M.Ed.

Director of Business as Mission, Frontiers

This is a book I want my family and friends to read. Judy Nichols mines the early teachings of Jesus in the Beatitudes in parallel with Isaiah 61 in ways that nourish and instruct the soul of the Christian. This gem promises riches to the reader.

Ray Nethery

Former Director of Asian Affairs, Campus Crusade for Christ

Co-Founder and -Director of Grace Haven Ministry Center

President Emeritus, Alliance for Renewal Churches

There is no greater need today than for Christians to grow in Christ, to become true disciples and not mere followers. In Every Blessing Is Yours, I attempt to bring clarity by looking at the word pictures from Isaiah 61 and revealing how the Beatitudes teach us how to grow in Christ and to become mature, well-formed children of God. Every Blessing Is Yours is based on the premise that it is possible not only to live a blessed life but also to increase in that blessedness throughout life. The Beatitudes tell us what the blessed life looks like; Isaiah 61 elaborates and tells us how to make them functional. Looking at each Beatitude in turn, along with its parallels in Isaiah 61, gives us a sense of what spiritual growth looks like and how to achieve it. My hope is that readers will come away with not only knowledge and insight but also real spiritual growth and emotional health.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973612216

Judy Nichols

Judy Nichols is a 70-year-old wife of a retired college math professor, mother of two married children, and grandmother of five. She attended public primary and secondary schools in Columbus, Ohio, graduating in 1964, and graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology in 1968. But her real education that enriched and today motivates her life came from two sources: studying the Word of God and raising her children. The youngest of three daughters in a loving Christian family, she attended church regularly, went to Vacation Bible School, completed confirmation classes, was active in youth group, and sang in the choir. Despite all this, she did not come to salvation until after college in 1969. She became active in Bible study groups and helped with editing a campus groups newsletter. Through a contact in Bible study, she was invited to move to Mansfield to serve as secretary in a Christian ministry. Considering the pros and cons of leaving her hometown, family and friends, and a job she enjoyed, God spoke to her that this was not just a man offering a job, but it was God calling her to serve Him full time. She moved and never regretted it. She enjoyed writing letters and had several pen pals growing up, but never seriously considered writing until she was encouraged to write for her churchs little magazine, Salt & Light. She had numerous articles published there, and later several published in the association of churches (Alliance for Renewal Churches) publication, Commonlife. One of these was subsequently reprinted in a Mennonite magazine, Christian Living. For the last fifteen years she has been writing weekly devotional pieces (over five hundred in all) which are posted on her churchs, the local Christian radio stations and Mansfield Christian Schools web sites, as well as her facebook page. She has a mailing list of about 60 people, representing seven cities in Ohio, seven other states, and one foreign country, to whom she emails them. Recently, a reader from California asked her to send him one hundred devotions so that he could forward them to a dear friend in the Czech Republic who wanted devotional materials to translate and use in her discipleship groups. Every Blessing is Yours is her first attempt at a book. It grew, over a period of several years, out of her study of Isaiah 61 (from which she wrote fifteen devotions) after a group study of Beth Moores Breaking Free, and then being involved in several Healing Care Groups, both as participant and then as co-leader. Last year she began studying the book of Matthew in her personal devotions, and the parallels between the Beatitudes and the word pictures of Isaiah 61 stood out to her in bold relief.

Book preview

Every

Blessing

is Yours

Letting Jesus Transform You Through

the Wisdom of the Beatitudes

JUDY NICHOLS

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Copyright © 2018 Judy Nichols.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB),

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1220-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1221-6 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/09/2018

Dedication

For Jesus Christ

the One who alone

transforms

from glory to glory.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1    Binding up Broken Hearts

Chapter 2    Emptiness

Chapter 3    Leftovers

Chapter 4    Perpetual Hunger

Chapter 5    What Goes Around Comes Around

Chapter 6    The Dish

Chapter 7    A Father’s Child

Chapter 8    The Cutting Edge

Chapter 9    Opposites

Chapter 10  Wake-Up Call

Afterword

About the Author

Preface

T here is no greater need today than for Christians to grow up in Christ, to become true disciples and not mere followers. The salt of the earth is losing its saltiness; the light on a hill is being obscured by changing mores and dimmed by apathy. I believe Every Blessing is Yours can foster the kind of growth that will result in greater piquancy among believers and hence greater visibility as we look less like the culture and more like the called-out ones God intends.

Perhaps the Beatitudes’ meaning was crystal clear to first century Jews, but for us, in spite of their familiarity and beauty, they seem cryptic and puzzling. In Every Blessing is Yours I attempt to bring clarity to them by looking at the word pictures from Isaiah 61 and revealing how the Beatitudes teach us how to grow up in Christ, to become mature, well-formed children of God.

No one plants a garden without an eye to a future crop. Many of Jesus’ parables contain at least some reference to planting and harvesting. The Great Commission is our call to evangelize the world. But Jesus’ call in the Great Commission is to make disciples, not merely produce converts. Spiritual growth, therefore, is essential if converts are to become disciples.

Today the language of psychology, as well as the redefinition and prevailing acceptance of sin as normal behavior, have muddied the path to spiritual growth and health. People don’t know how to or even that they need to repent of sin, forgive others, grieve their losses, accept grace and gifts from God, and put into practice the admonitions of Scripture.

Every Blessing is Yours is based on the premise that it is possible not only to live a blessed life but also to increase in that blessedness throughout life. The Beatitudes tell us what the blessed life looks like; Isaiah 61 elaborates and tells us how to make it functional. Looking at each Beatitude in turn, along with its parallels in Isaiah 61, gives us a sense of what spiritual growth looks like and how to achieve it.

My hope is that readers will come away with not only knowledge and insight, but also real spiritual growth and emotional health. Questions at the end of each chapter are designed to help the reader apply the lessons to real life. In short, my prayer is that God will use Every Blessing is Yours to make disciples out of converts.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my profound gratitude to Bill Deckard who first encouraged me to write. Bill, you saw something in me that I did not see in myself. Your rejection of an early piece I wrote, saying I could do better, was an important step in my growth as a writer.

And to Beth Feia, my expert editor and cherished friend, thank you for your many hours of labor, constant encouragement, and removal of my way-too-many commas.

Introduction

I was taken aback a few years ago when I said, God bless you! to a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time and her instant reply was, Why thank you; I’ll receive that. What I said, not without sincere meaning but still somewhat casually, she embraced as having real significance in her life. And her words signaled her desire to experience what I offered. That got me to thinking about what happens when we bless someone and what it means to be blessed by God.

We use the word bless in many ways. We say, God bless you, or just, bless you, when someone sneezes, a relic from long ago when people believed a person’s spirit left them with a sneeze and needed to be returned. We end our letters with, Blessings as a complimentary close. We say, I was so blessed when we ran into an old friend or heard good news or found just what we needed at a great price when shopping. We ask God to bless our food and us to His service before we partake.

None of these (except perhaps the sneeze one) are truly invalid uses of the word. But they largely fail to have in view what it truly means for God to bless us. The meaning is shallow, sometimes to the point of just being Christian jargon.

God desires to bless His people; indeed, He does bless them. The most familiar section of the Bible that speaks of blessing is the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12. Each Beatitude is a simple statement of a character trait and how persons who have it are blessed. Together they seem more like major topics in an outline, waiting for sub-points to be added. But there aren’t any sub-points. We are left to wonder what Jesus meant by them. They all have a clear meaning on the surface, but, like His parables, there is more to be found if we really want to know. Spending some time thinking about them and asking questions can lead us to greater understanding. And putting that understanding into action will confer blessing. As Jesus said in John 13:17 (NASB), If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

God has also made promises in His word and faithfully keeps them. In today’s culture, promises are on the endangered species list. Marriage vows are routinely broken; products fail to deliver the qualities promised in their advertisements. Promises made by politicians running for office vanish like smoke once the election is over. The days of a handshake sealing a promise are long gone.

As a new believer, I learned there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of promises in the Bible. The thought that the God of the universe, the One who cannot lie and is faithful to all He has spoken, has made promises of things He will do for me sparked in me a deep and abiding hunger for the Word of God. The inside cover and the first six pages of fly leaves, title page, and the publishing information page of the first Bible I used after coming to Christ are filled with the promises of God that I found as I read the Bible with new eyes for the first time. And I used an extra-fine point pen and wrote as small as I could. I wanted to find them all!

Some of the most beautiful of God’s promises are those found in the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. Jesus quoted the first two verses of this chapter in the synagogue at Nazareth at the outset of his public ministry. But these promises are presented as word pictures, giving food for thought as to exactly what they mean and how they can be fulfilled. Like the Beatitudes, they encourage us to dig a little deeper.

What I want to share with you are the common threads I have found in both passages. I want you to see how God’s promises can be fulfilled in your life and you can experience the blessings of the Beatitudes.

I have included questions at the end of each chapter to help you apply the Scriptural principles to your own life. There are no right or wrong answers; their purpose is to help you see who you are, where you are, and what is available to you through faith in Jesus Christ. A prayer (preferably spoken aloud) to present your answers as well as your needs to God will begin the move from faith to action.

My greatest desire for this book is to be a blessing to you, to fascinate you with the Word of God, and to nourish your love for Jesus Christ, the Living Word.

1

Binding up Broken Hearts

Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. - Matt. 5:3 (NASB)

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted … - Isa. 61:1 (NASB)

H ave you ever wondered about the Beatitudes? They are so simple yet so short, almost cryptic. It might be tempting to view them as an introduction to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, but the rest of the sermon does not amplify them at all. They stand alone, like a beacon drawing us to some great mystery.

Who are the poor in spirit and why are they blessed? What’s so great about mourning and being comforted? Isn’t that self-evident? Does anyone today really know what it is to be meek, and why should they inherit the earth? And why would anyone want the earth anyway? It’s a mess. Is there some specific benefit to being hungry and thirsty for righteousness? Aren’t righteousness, mercy, and purity old fashioned virtues that nobody really cares about today? Wouldn’t it be more appealing if peacemakers were described as successful than as sons of God? We sure could use more of those! And, really, are we supposed to believe persecution, insults, and slander are indications of blessedness?

Was Jesus speaking only to people who already fit these descriptions, or are they something we can grow into or acquire? Perhaps Jesus’ listeners understood the Beatitudes because of their Jewish heritage and their cultural experiences, so no explanation was needed. But to modern Christians they are like bones without meat; they cry out for interpretation.

When I began looking at the Beatitudes, I realized they share many of the same