Rope Making is not Blessed

““You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.” (Matthew 5:3-4 MESSAGE)

When we consider verse 3, is it not true that we are so good at manufacturing rope; at keeping up appearances; at leaving prayer to the very end of things? We all tend towards self-sufficiency. So, sometimes our merciful God cuts off our rope. Sometimes he cuts off our options. Every now and then he cuts off our legacy. That’s only because God our Father wants Jesus Christ to be our Legacy, our Option, our Hope and our Rope that is anchored in Heaven itself. Are you at the end of your rope? If you are not, you cannot realize just how strong the heavenly Anchor is.

When we consider verse 4, is it not true that we spend much of our lives fighting to gain and keep what is most precious to us? Our careers. A happy family. Possessions and surplus funds for a rainy decade. A position that is esteemed amongst our peers. But this verse suggests boldly that these things are not “Happiness”. These do not make up the state of "blessedness". This verse says that such blessedness comes through loss….for only when we lose something precious do we then see what is most precious. Only when we lose earthly comforts do we then find and feel the Comfort of God.

When asked for the secret to his great anointing, Smith Wigglesworth suggested that his interrogator should never have asked the question, as Wigglesworth had suffered almost unbearable anguish for years after the death of his wife – and it was out of this deep anguish that his deeper relationship with God was born…and it was out of this deeper fellowship that the deepest anointing of Christ flowed over in signs and miracles.

We are all good at seeing a man’s strengths and coveting them. But we are all bad at seeing what suffering and service in weakness has been involved in raising up those very strengths we covet. We are all good at aiming for the top of the hill, but we are forever seeking shortcuts to increasing elevation.

Matthew Henry described the beatitudes as “the articles of Agreement between God and man”. Do you want to be blessed, happy and to be envied? Then do not despise poverty of spirit, or the journey thereto. Do not scorn tears and times of anguish. Do not resent yourself for wrestling with your own weaknesses, and all the less as those weaknesses increase the revelation of God’s loving strength. Do not seek your first help from Egypt, or from the strong and the noblest of friends. Only make Jesus your Friend of friends and your chief counsel.

Have you lost that which is most precious to you? A spouse, a career, a spiritual office in the church, an inheritance, a reputation amongst men? Then be of good cheer within yourself, because God is making you meet to be a chief servant and cupbearer to the King of kings.

How did Abraham become the father of our faith except through decades of barrenness? How did Moses lead God’s people through the desert except for 40 years of his own solitude in the wilderness? How did David become a righteous king except through suffering under an unrighteous one? How did the prophets stay true except through the scowls and seething of their mockers? How did Jesus become the perfect sacrificial Lamb except through religious persecution and Roman torture? How did Paul flow with such power except through being delivered of his own powers? How did Martin Luther make his good confession except through a night of agony in the prison cell? How did CT Studd blaze with such zeal for God except through being delivered from the shame of his blazing sins? How did James Hudson Taylor happily suffer so much for the Chinese peoples except through his sickly years in serving the poor in England? How did Richard Baxter and his peers so willingly suffer the confiscation of life and property except through seeing how rich they were in secret fellowship with Christ?

Are you at the end of your rope? Are you at least near it? Rejoice, and again I say rejoice. And I will rejoice with you, here in Broken Britain. And that is by faith. Above the drums and cymbals of worldly joys, lies a heavenly joy incomprehensible to fallen minds. It is there. I have caught a glimpse of it now and then. Above the banks and stock exchanges, mansions and sundecks of the ‘successful’ stand tall heavenly silos of blessing and provision for the faithful who are poor in spirit. It is there, and I have drawn down from it now and then. And high above the thoughts and wisdom of this world is a Wisdom that created it; a Knowledge that is paradisical; a Truth that makes worldly wisdom foolish. It is there. I have stood at its open gate.

Here’s three cheers to the hopeless and "Gesundheit!" to the ropeless, for our Redeemer lives, and he bestows his Kingdom and his Comfort on his poor and mourning children.

This is the truth of the matter.

N