Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
Dr. Tim Griffin, Grand Canyon University pastor, continued the emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount at Monday Chapel, saying that sometimes as a Christian, you have to go against the grain of society to get where a child of God should get.
“Sometimes getting what you’d really like to have in life goes a different route than you sometimes think,” Griffin told the audience at Global Credit Union Arena.
“That’s the sense that Jesus was trying to give His disciples – that if you want to get to a place where a kingdom citizen, a child of God, should get, it’s not going to be the same road.”
Griffin highlighted three points from Matthew 5:5-7 that went against the grain of society:
- Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
- Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
- Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
In laying out how a kingdom citizen should live, Jesus starts with key ideas that we refer to as attitudes, Griffin said, something Jesus challenged His early followers to have.
“This idea of being poor in spirit means to have a sense of spiritual need and poverty and bankruptcy – to come to Him, as we should, to come with the repentant part and a broken heart, to know all the sinfulness, to come to Him in a way in which we realize we have a deep need of the forgiveness of God that's found in Jesus. And Jesus would say, ‘You need to live a life where you are poor inside, in need inside,'" Griffin said.
In explaining "blessed are those who mourn," he said, “It’s natural to want to laugh, cheer and smile. But to mourn involves the acknowledgement of your own sinfulness and to mourn about your separation from God."
And "blessed are the meek" can be translated to being weak. But that’s not the case, he said, according to Jesus.
“It means to be submissive, or (to have) strength under control,” Griffin said. “… Like a lion being tamed. It still has strength, but it’s under control.”
The happiness of living with Jesus, to be blessed by Him, starts with being humble. Griffin encouraged students to think about these three ideas – to be poor in spirit, to be brokenhearted over your own sin, and to be meek and yielding, entrusting yourself to Him.
To illustrate how one’s mind can change for the better, Griffin spoke about his dental problems dating to his childhood.
“I’d get a cavity just looking at a candy bar,” Griffin said.
Years of cavities, root canals and crowns continued to the point where he received a call from a dentist while at the Western Athletic Conference men’s basketball tournament in Las Vegas, informing him that he should consider dental implants.
That would require an oral surgeon putting a metal post into his gum, followed by medicine that made him feel loopy. He became the subject of comedy for his sons, who filmed their conversations after surgery.
“This is so painful,” said Griffin, whose suffering became worse when he bit down on the post during lunch.
“The pain ran threw me like a lightning bolt.”
Griffin said he nearly passed out in front of the campus Qdoba, and there was a call to the local fire department.
His apprehension grew as his dentist used a socket wrench to insert and mount a small tooth on the post. Griffin held a larger wrench to the audience and turned it to illustrate the sound to emphasize his fear.
“This doesn’t seem right. They shouldn’t have it,” Griffin thought.
Hours later, to Griffin’s surprise, “It was such a good purchase the first time around, I got a second one."
The point: Sometimes you're apprehensive about doing something that, in the end, turns out to be good for you and changes your attitude and mindset.
Griffin repeated the words of James, who wrote, “Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will exalt you.”
It might not make sense, since you may try to climb a mountain and/or over other people.
“The Word of God says no,” Griffin said. “You humble yourself before Him, and He will lift you up in His time.”
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Next Chapel speaker: Des Wadsworth, Grace Community Church, 11 a.m. Jan. 27, Global Credit Union Arena
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