The Father's HeartSample

God Desires to Transform Us for His Kingdom

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the first thing Jesus taught was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). The next thing He taught was the Beatitudes. This connection is not coincidental; the Beatitudes represent the attitudes of those who possess the kingdom of heaven. They are not commands; they represent the spiritual dimensions that one should expect to experience as heaven unfolds in their life.

Each beatitude represents a spiritual attainment and is identified by a particular grace and unique blessedness. They are not attainments reached from human initiative or perspective. Rather, they represent divine accomplishments. These are the inner works of God, established by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Christ follower. And yes, the believer must apply himself and cooperate with the working of grace, but this is the work of God, not man.

To be blessed is to be shaped inwardly by God. Just as His hands shaped Adam, He reworks the soul of each of His followers, redesigning our thoughts and imaginations and reconfiguring our attitudes until the day we are transformed into His image. We see that to be blessed is not merely to enjoy an increase in financial or material goods; it is to become a living habitation for the Most High.

When Paul writes that “God causes all things to work together for good” (Rom. 8:28), we think his address refers to the effect of God’s wisdom and power on a believer’s life, and such it is. Yet we also see another parallel truth in this verse, less sublime or quoted than the first but just as true: the creative action of God causes all things to work together.

How does God purpose to transform us? He begins our inner change by focusing us on our attitudes. Jesus could have warned that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we wouldn’t be able to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yet of Himself, He said, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). If we change our attitudes, we change our perception; our actions and, ultimately, our future all transform according to the attitudes of our hearts. Yet Christ isn’t seeking merely to give us different attitudes; He seeks to work in us heaven’s attitudes.