The Beatitudes: Eight Marks of a Kingdom Warrior

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Guest: Rod Reasen

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/29/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, welcome to our Friday program. Today we are hoping to walk through one of the most quoted and we could say least understood passages in all of scripture, perhaps part of the most famous sermon and all of history. Matthew chapter five, going through the first 12 verses. Of course, this is The Beatitudes. Our title today is the Beatitudes Eight Marks of a Kingdom Warrior. With that, I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and my guest today is Rod Reasen, the founder of Stay On Mission, Stayonmission.com. He’s also the CEO of Daniel Defense. Rod, I’m really excited about this. Thank you so much for being on this program and I want to find out some more, but thanks for taking the time to be on with us.

Rod Reasen:

Looking forward to it, Isaac. Lot of content to cover today.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, Rod, besides being the CEO and being a lot of different business hats that you wear, you have founded stayonmission.com and you’ve built this entire devotional series around this idea. It’s an audience for what you call warriors, leaders, trailblazers, and I love how you phrase that. And with this daily devotional program, you go basically verse by verse through different passages of scripture. And right now you’re going through this current series on the Sermon on the Mount. Sam Rohr and I have been going through that same series on TV, but not as quickly as you. We’re doing week by week with breaks in between. And you’ve published a nine day study on the Beatitudes and it’s framed not just as postcards or the little things we see on social media with some of these verses and sentiments, but you’re framing it as these are eight marks of the true biblical leader, a kingdom warrior, supposed to be seeking the kingdom of God first.

So thanks for this. But before I break into these eight different rungs of the ladder of the beatitudes, I’m curious of the history of all of this. Why did you write this devotional group for warriors and leaders instead of just saying, “Oh, let me think of some nice thing that I could do that everybody would like to read.” Why have you targeted it towards this kind of content?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, thanks for asking that. Well, I work with that type of archetype all the time and frankly, it’s one that I aspire to be. If you look at men and you say, “Hey, you’re a warrior leader, trailblazer.” Those are very aspirational words that hopefully other men even listening today say, “Yes, I want to be described as those.” And when you look throughout the New Testament, the men of the New Testament wouldn’t have normally been really described that way, but yet that’s the calling that we’re called into the marketplace. And so the Beatitudes gives us that foundation. Spurgeon calls us the ladder of light and I really think that’s kind of apropos for what we’re talking about is how do we actually get into the fight versus sitting and being couched potatoes all the time?

Isaac Crockett:

So much to say about this. We won’t have time to get into all of it, but I do like this idea of seeing it, like you said, Spurgeon called it as a ladder because they all go together. You can’t just kind of pick and choose which of the beatitudes sound good today, but to really dig into them, we see each one is foundational to the following. And so these are eight rungs on the ladder hand in hand and we want to go ahead, let’s just dive into it and I hope that folks will go to stayonmission.com, stayonmission.com. We’ll say some more about that throughout the program, but let’s dive into this rod and let’s try to get a start on the first rung of the ladder with Matthew chapter five, verse three. It talks about blessed are the poor in spirit. And again, that might sound offensive to some people to be poor in spirit, but this picks up at the beginning of the New Testament.

This is the first book of the New Testament in our Bibles, Matthew. It’s in chapter five. And Rod, you make a point in your devotional studies that the last word of the Old Testament is a curse and the first major word that Jesus is quoted is written down of him speaking, comes here in the beatitudes and it’s a beatitude. It’s a blessing, but it’s a very comprehensive message beyond just, “Oh, be happy.” Can you just kind of walk us through this bridge, why this matters at the beginning of the New Testament, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ, that these beatitudes matter?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, this is one of the most exciting things about studying scripture is to look at the interconnectivity of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the foretelling and then the actual filling of prophecy and Malachi four: six ends with the word curse. And so you have this Old Testament ending 400 years later actually in Matthew 4:15 and 16, you see Jesus coming onto the scene post his birth in the miraculous birth and the first major scene he has is in actually Matthew four, verses 15 and 16 and he goes into the land of Zebulon and Naftali and then later on, as we jump into the sermon on the mouth, the first kingdom manifesto that Jesus gives is this beatitude series and he uses the word blessed. So it’s not the first words that he uses, it’s the first large public setting in the sermon on the mouth and I think it’s really, really cool for listeners to understand that the Old Testament is passed.

Now Jesus is coming and saying blessed. And when you dig into it, both where he went to in that region and then into this particular section of scripture and the first one as we get in here is this sense of blessed are the poor and spirit. So blessed are the poor and spirit, there’s the kingdom of heaven. And Spurgeon called this bridge of grace going from Old Testament to New Testament. And when you think about it from a Christian point of view, when we come before that throne and we stand before God Almighty, you have no choice but to kneel. We see that throughout scripture and the examples that are exemplified there, but when you come, you realize that titles, that possessions, all of these accolades, awards, whatever they may be, they’re worthless, absolutely worthless and you have nothing to offer. You have this better sense of what poverty actually looks like being poor in spirit.

It’s really the first place you’ve got to begin and then we’ll walk through kind of why, but you’ve got to get to the poor and spirit first with open hands that your resume is nothing to offer and then you begin to climb.

Isaac Crockett:

That’s so helpful and I hope that those who are listening will see the help in this, how this goes one rung at a time and to see ourselves as needing these blessings from Jesus Christ, we can’t be blessed if we don’t need him and I think we live in a society that they think that being blessed means getting their way. I think that sometimes my flesh tells me that and to look at what Jesus says and he says, “You know what? Not my will but my father’s will be done.” And he puts his father’s will. He puts prophecy above his own, what we could call wellbeing. This is just such an exciting passage, but one that as we said earlier, it oftentimes is misunderstood and to think of it and to take it seriously is so helpful. I want to just mention again your devotional website.

It is stayonmission.com. That’s stayonmission.com, no spaces and you can go there to read these. These are wonderful, helpful devotionals, but you can also text the word warrior, text warrior to this number 12014779282 and you can join his devotionals that way.

12014779282 or go to stayonmission.com. Well, we have just barely started with Rod Reasen looking at the rungs of this ladder of the beatitude, looking at these eight marks of a kingdom warrior of leadership as Jesus called it out, this kind of leadership that Jesus calls out is different than what our world tells us a leader should do, but this is the only way if you have a biblical worldview, this is the only way to do it. And so we’re going to flesh this out even more when we come back. We’re going to, Lord willing, get through all eight of the rungs of these be attitudes when we come back after listening to some of our part.

Well, welcome back to the program. We are looking at the eight beatitudes. Today, the eight marks that Jesus says are the marks of a kingdom warrior and we’re talking with Rod Reasen. Rod, you pointed out this idea that it’s like a ladder building on a top of each other. You quoted Charles Spurgeon on that and we looked at the first rung, kind of the foundational rung of blessed or the poor and spirit and we come away from that realizing that we are completely reliant on the grace and sovereignty of God for all that we do. That’s what being poor in spirit is in many ways. So let’s go to the next rung. Rung number two, this is the rung about mourning. We’re talking about blessings, I thought, be attitudes, but verse four, it says, “Blessed are those who mourn.” How does that follow? How do we climb from poor and spirit to mourning?

Rod Reasen:

As we make that crossover, you think about a ladder, not very many of us try to go up the ladder with hands full of other things. So that’s the poverty and spirit is this idea that we’re broken and our hands have to be empty and when we come under that conviction that our sin has caused that poverty, that distance between us and God and for us to actually climb that ladder, it should bring us to mourning and that’s the next rung. We go from poverty of spirit to mourning because we’ve had this recognition that it isn’t all this work. Imagine just coming to that point in life. You’ve spent all your life and years earning these accolades and maybe even personal wealth and you come before the throne of God and he says, “It’s worthless. It’s not worth anything.” It’s not only are you mourning for your sin, but you’re mourning of all this life effort that’s been used for the wrong reason.

Isaac Crockett:

How do we tell the difference then between am I really mourning my sin or am I maybe recognizing it but kind of brushing it off in part?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, that’s one I put this sentence in one of the devotions I wrote, but it’s the difference really is about the posture. One posture says I’ve got to have all this damage control because I’ve been caught. What’s this do to my reputation, my wealth, my family, whatever it may be. The other is a full understanding of all of that is really worthless anyway. What matters is my relationship with the Lord and coming into that posture of repentance versus damaged control and you see it. It happens in the workplace. It happens. I’ve got four kids and you catch them doing something and it’s the, I’m sorry I got caught versus I’m repentant and sorry that for the action.

Isaac Crockett:

Yeah. I like to see it in other people and not myself and then that’s convicting. I’m like, “Oh Lord, please forgive me that I’m thinking in others and I know it’s in myself in the mirror.” Well, let’s set up the next run because these really are going right together. This is the meekness part. This is one where a lot of times you’re writing this to these guys who are leaders and trailblazers and you yourself as CEO of Daniel Defense and other companies that you’ve started and things you’re used to leading and sometimes when we hear this idea of meekness, leaders just say, “Ugh, I don’t want to look weak.” Walk us through that, how a true leader shows meekness in Christ.

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, meekness unfortunately carries a negative connotation in leadership and certainly during this Roman empire, meekness would have been absolutely looked at as a weakness, but hear this, meek is not weak and the Greek word that’s actually used, preyos is the word in the ancient world described a war horse trained for battle. This wasn’t a weak horse or passive horse. It was this incredibly powerful animal that had been brought under the will of the writer so that it could be useful and that’s really the key is when we approach the throne of God with look at who I am, look at all I’ve done, look at what I’ve accumulated, we got to go back to run number one, pour in spirit yields a mourning and then that yields this meekness of everything that I really have is because God gave it to me and when I bring it under his control, a meek leader actually becomes a very good leader because they understand that control is not theirs.

It’s actually given to them by God.

Isaac Crockett:

This is again so opposite of every political textbook, every corporate textbook really, but what you’re saying then is that a leader … I guess walk us through this. How does this show up in a leader that he is in charge and yet he has himself under control and he’s showing meekness?

Rod Reasen:

I have a story that I tell that it’s just a good one to understand. We went to Zambia years ago near Livingston Zambia where David Livingston founded that city. You can do this experience where you walk with the lions and we took our kids and you walk with these two year old lions and you can literally hold their tail and like a microphone, you’ve got this big fluffy end and you’re walking with this lion. There’s a picture up online when I posted this and we got done walking these lions and I asked the guy who’s got to stick there to make sure they’re under control and I said, “What happens after two?” And he goes, “Oh, at two and a half they’ll eat you. ” So they’re right, right? At two they’re very meat, but at two and a half, you become food. So it’s a very good way to understand a meek leader is under control.

A leader that’s not in control starts to put that power back in their own hands and it’s just ineffective.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that image. I mean the literal image of the lines that you posted, but that story and it can speak in so many ways. I hope folks will go stay on mission.com, sign up for this. I know people who have signed up, people who normally read their devotionals out of a book, they’re doing that and they’re also getting this sent to them via text or reading it on their iPad or on a computer. They are loving it, especially people who realize their leadership potential and, “Hey, this is really helping me with that. ” And these applications and illustrations are so helpful. So Ro, now that takes us to the fourth rung. The first three are so fitting and going together. The fourth one now is talking about poverty. Well, we’ve talked about the poverty of spirit all the way through mourning and meekness, but now it kind of pivots in verse six.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” How is this actually kind of a pivot going on here between these two rungs, three and four?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah. I had mentioned this in the pre-met. One way to think about this passage and its framework is three, one, three, one. You have three things that are happening internally to you in your spiritual walk with Christ. Then you come to this one that becomes the first hinge. So you’ve emptied yourself of everything that you can do on the interior and now you start to become hungry. The first one is what’s in it now that I’ve emptied myself and the Bible says, “Well, are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be satisfied.” And the Greek words here underneath aren’t the simple, “I missed a meal,” or, “I haven’t had something to drink in the last couple of hours.” Coming off of the literal context here is Jesus has already been tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. So when he is using these terms, it’s like literal starvation, literal being out in the desert for many days without water.

It is a sincere deep hunger and intensity goes behind these words. It’s not just this lightness. When you think about that, one of the things I think is if you want to look at what your intensity is in your own life, this is talking about the intensity of unrighteousness. One tell all in our own lives is open up your calendar, open up your bank account and

It’s terrifying. You look at the bank accounts and you will see what do people hunger and thirst for. Your spending is going to tell you, where do you spend your time? Your time is going to tell you. Those two things, the time and treasures are where we give most of our live and if it doesn’t say I’m hunger and thirsting for righteousness, then it’s saying something else.

Isaac Crockett:

That’s very interesting. And I think in my own life as different times have matured, my taste have changed. There was a time and I haven’t touched it in years, but I was basically addicted to like Mountain Dew. I worked for a guy who owned stores that were kind of like 7-Eleven so I could drink as much soda as I wanted all day and I was working a hard outside job and I would drink that and I don’t desire it anymore, but it became like addicting. Maybe fast food has been that way for some people. As you get older, sometimes your taste mature. As we grow spiritually, I hope we see our taste changing. Before we go to the break though, I’m wondering this idea of what you’re hungering for reveals what you’re seeking for. Seek you first, the kingdom of God, but the promise that goes with this, the idea of being filled, can you talk to us a little bit about that broad before we go to our break?

Rod Reasen:

Everyone is hungry for something and we’ll get into this one in a minute here, but at the end of the day, Jesus isn’t talking about our physical flesh, what we’re hungering and thirsting for. He’s using that as an analogy. Several weeks ago I was studying out fasting and I had never fasted in the way that I did because I’d studied it and I started studying the work fasting and the appropriate nature of why you do it. And then every time my stomach started to growl, it brought me back to why I’m doing that, that I really do have. My physical body has a necessity to eat and drink and I can’t even go days without doing those basic things. Why don’t I approach my spiritual life in the same way? That is what he’s trying to connect here with this analogy of the physical world with the spiritual world is the intensity should be the same driving after for our desire to know God’s word.

Isaac Crockett:

And as we look at this fourth one and we’re going to come back and get into Beatitudes five, six and seven, what a convicting thing to think about. What am I hungry for? What am I seeking for? Jesus has also told us later in this same sermon to seek first then the kingdom of God and to seek after his righteousness. And so this idea that we’re to be hungry and thirsting for righteousness spiritually, this is coming to people in a time that they saw everything from outward, outward conformity to the Torah, to the law and he’s talking about inward relationship to God through Jesus Christ and this is so new for them. Hopefully it’s not new for you and me. Hopefully we know Jesus Christ and he is changing us and he is giving us a hunger and a thirst for his righteousness, for his word, for his will, for his way.

We have a lot more to go and this is so applicable to today. What we’re seeing in the news, what we’re seeing in our lives to be true warriors of God. We need these true blessings. We need these beatitudes. We’re going to discuss more of them when we come back from hearing from some of our partners on this break. Please don’t go away. We’ll be right back after this. Well, welcome back to our Friday program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I get so many cool opportunities on this program to work with guys like Sam Rohr, my co-host and the regular host of this program and even some of the behind the scenes people. But I also get really neat opportunities to interview people that God is using in special ways. I’m so excited for all of you to get to hear from my friend Rod Reasen, who has been somebody who has shown leadership.

As long as I’ve known him, I’ve looked up to him and he’s shown leadership working in business realms, working in church settings and inspiring others to be biblical leaders, whether in his home or in his church or at his company as CEO at Daniel Defense right now. There’s been a lot of ways he’s done that. And he’s talking with us today about these eight marks of a kingdom warrior that come right from Jesus’s lips through the beatitude for the beginning of the sermon on the mountain. It’s neat as this all came together, Sam Rohr was working out very similar type of thing for our Stand in the Gap TV. If you’ve never watched our TV program, you might be highly disappointed when you see what Sam and I look like because you’ve created an image of what we sound like on the radio. But I would really encourage you to go to our Stand in the Gap app.

We have our TV programs on there to go to our YouTube channel or you can watch it on anywhere where it’s syndicated all over the country, but Lighthouse TV, it’s their studios that we do our recordings of them for. It’s their studios to air it and syndicate it. They have a Roku app and Amazon Fire app. They have YouTube channels, everything. It’s all archived out there, you could watch it. But we started several months ago going through the Beatitudes and the rest of the sermon on the Mount were not very far along with that. But Rod has been doing that with his devotional online devotional site, stayonmission.com. And it’s been very beneficial to me, not just because I’m getting ready for TV programs on it, but just for me, my personal life and I know that it will help to you personally as well. Rod, I have a whole bunch of questions I want to fit in, but before I do, could you maybe just talk to people about how they can find your devotional?

I know you talked in past episodes about how the Lord led you to start this just via text message, but how they could find it online or how they could even get it texted right to their phone.

Rod Reasen:

Yeah. Thanks Isaac for asking. I’m not a theologian. I’ll just start right out of the gate and say that. But I think Isaac and I have even talked about with modern tools and techniques, I think the responsibility even going back to the hungering and thirsting for righteousness sake, what it gives us the opportunity, technology gives us the opportunity for us to study God’s word. So this is just me. I study God’s word in the mornings and then I write about it and try to put it into a devotional that hopefully is inspiring and so you can visit the website stayonmission.com or if you want a link sent to you in your inbox each morning, it’s just text warrior to 201479282.

Isaac Crockett:

I’ve been thrilled with it and I was just talking with some folks from my church and we were talking about an illustration I’d given and a couple days later it showed up in a devotional, if I say a lot of you would know the pastor who does that devotional and then somebody from my church was saying, “Well, yeah.” And there was that other devotional that I saw that in and we were guessing all these names of people. He’s like, “Isaac, it’s the guy that was on your radio program with you. ” And I said, “Rod Reasens, stay on mission.” He’s like, “That’s the one. I love that. I look forward to every day to getting that in my … ” I think it gets texted to his phone or something. And I said, “I didn’t even know you listened or knew how to do that.

” He’s like, “Oh, I love that. I love that one.” So I would encourage you if you’ve never looked at stayonmission.com, check it out today and we’ll try to have it on our social media as well as Stand in the Gap. Wow, we’ve gotten through half of the latter as we were calling it, Rod. We’re now looking at rung five. This is verse seven and this is the part about mercy. Let’s go from there. How does this fit into where we’ve been coming from and the beatitudes?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah. So we talked about the three one, three, one. So the first three were emptying ourselves. The number one then would be the hunger and thirst for righteousness sake. Now we get into the next three. These are the three things that start to happen to you that you then can in turn return and mercy is an example and you have to set yourself in the context. When Jesus is standing before this crowd underneath Roman impression, the Roman empire was not at all merciful. In fact, like in other terms, meekness, mercy would have been looked at as an absolute weakness. In fact, they would torture on purpose just to not show mercy. The warriors were even celebrated for the amount of damage that could be done and then they would take the spoils from those wars. And so to that end, Jesus then says, “Blessed are those that are merciful.” And when you start to combine the transformation that you’re watching happening at rung one all the way to four, mercy is this first spot where you start to understand, I have been given so great of mercy upon the sinful being of who I am and now what do I do in return?

I can’t help but not return mercy back because now I see this other person that’s sitting across from me, even when I’ve been harmed, I see them as someone that was just like I was poor in spirit. And so mercy is not a word we hear often in the world except for when we want to receive it, but we should be the ones that are the givers of mercy.

Isaac Crockett:

We don’t hear except for when we want to receive it. That is very true. This sets us up now for verse eight, the blessing to the pure heart. This is another one of those heavy ones, Rod, very convicting. Can you take us into this one?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah. So let’s start with pure in heart. This is one frankly that I think every leader needs to stop and really pause on. I’m in the manufacturing world and the Toyota manufacturing system often referred to as Lean and ultimately Lean Six Sigma. They have this term called five whys and you’re trying to go past the symptom and actually get to the real problem and that’s in essence what Jesus is saying here is blessed those that are pure in heart. What is your real intention? What’s your real why? What’s the real reason underneath the reason you’re doing this thing? And you know, it’s been often said that the easiest person to lie to is yourself.

Oftentimes people see your motivation before you even do, but what Jesus is really trying to point out here is when we are pure and hard, we can sit in a meeting and not have our own aspirations at hand. We cannot try to put our own desires or our own results in front, but we’re going to the truth of the matter and this is going to yield directly into the next one, but this pure in heart is probably the heaviest of all of these because it either sends you back down the ladder or it allows you to continue to climb upwards.

Isaac Crockett:

And I have more things I love to go into on that one, but let’s go to verse nine because this is something I think even in church leadership, a lot of times we don’t feel equipped for this because there’s so many times where there’s contention and confrontation might be necessary and this one says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God.” Rod, we’re talking about warriors here. We’re talking about trailblazers and leaders. How does this mind frame fit into being a peacemaker?

Rod Reasen:

Well, again, a lot of these words in modern era are just shunned in leadership and peace is not one that typically you’re going to look at the word peace and say that that’s fully what you want. Jesus is actually calling us to be peace makers and you can’t be a real peacemaker unless you have built good relationship and you’re up here in heart. So you can see the latering moving forward. If you’re not pure in heart and you go into a situation where two parties are arguing or you have to break a tie and you bring in your own ambition into that situation, it’s very difficult for you to truly be a peacemaker. I think that the first thing that we’re trying to see here in this is it’s two separate words, it’s a compound. It’s not pacifism and there’s this idea of a full vigor of action that is taking place.

In the devotional, I actually wrote the … I rewrote Teddy Roosevelt’s statement about the man in the arena. I won’t talk about it today because there’s not time, but he is referring to the guy that gets into the ring and properly seeks to be able to find the truth and that’s the desire here is as a believer, you take us out of this society and the morality is gone. When we enter society, there will always be issues that are in the world and we should be fighting for the widows, fighting for those that are caught up in sex trafficking and yet we sit on the sides and don’t do anything. It’s very frustrating and that’s exactly what this is intended to mean is to get in the action, stop just sitting on the sidelines.

Isaac Crockett:

What do you see as somebody who is a leader in so many different places? When you look at our society as a whole, and I’m not talking about every individual listener here, but what we’re seeing in our society when it comes to leadership or the lack thereof, what are you seeing as far as godly Christian leaders to show an example? Are you seeing much of it? Are you seeing a mentoring and passing down of this kind of leadership?

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, I just alluded to this one. We had a group into our building. I won’t mention their name. They try to stay pretty private, but the sex trade in the United States is one of the largest growing and most profitable industries and yet we are the most technically the most godly country. How can those two things exist where we say that we’re the most knowledgeable around scripture? 99% of people say they pray and have some religious affiliation and yet sex trafficking is one of the top growing needs. It just makes me emotional because that should not be happening here in the United States the way it is.

Isaac Crockett:

And

Sorry, Isaac. Yeah, no, no. And I’ve dealt with people who were … So many times people say, “Oh, pornography, it’s harmless. It doesn’t hurt. It’s so harmful.” And I’m thinking of a young lady right now who was held against her will into situations like that and many other situations. We work with women at risk international and their growing country that they’re dealing with the most right now is right here in America with women and children at risk. Just so much going on here. We need to be the leaders. We need the godly leaders to stand up and to be showing others the way. We’re going to talk more about that as we wrap things up. We have one final rung on the ladder to get to and we’ll be right back with that after hearing from some of our partners during this time out. Please again, don’t go away.

Welcome back to the program. This week I was showing my kids some milk that we had. It was unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk. And at the top of the glass of milk, you could see a big chunk of cream at the top and down below was the rest of the milk. The kids, the temptation is just take a spoon and just take the cream right off the top because that tastes the best. And that’s kind of what we’re doing today. Rod Reasen is with me today. He’s the founder of Stayonmission.com. And we’re just kind of going through the AP attitudes really fast, Rod. But this so far it’s been great because we’re getting just some of the cream off the top. But I hope that you’ll go back through and pray about these and study these. And I hope that you’ll go to stayonmission.com and look at these devotionals that Rod gives you really good application points and things that you can work from there.

And even go to our app, Stand in the Gap app or go to our website, go to YouTube and just look up Stand in the Gap TV or Sam Rohr or Isaac Crockett, Stand in the Gap TV. And you can watch that or you could go to lighthousetv.com or look up Lighthouse TV from Allentown, Pennsylvania. That’s the studio where we record. If you’re not watching their programs, you can get it on Roku or on YouTube. And Sam and I have also been going through the same beatitudes and other parts of the sermon on the mount in the midst of other interviews on Stand of the Gap TV. But Rod, we’re talking with you about how this applies to leaders, warriors and trailblazers and that’s what your devotional is geared towards and we’re needing that today. Even in our country with all of the advantages we seem to have, we have so many things you were talking about, human trafficking, toll and other things that are going on.

We need leaders and to be true leaders, to be biblical leaders, we turn to Jesus Christ and he gives us this eight rung ladder of what are these blessings? What is less person who’s doing things the leadership the right way? And so we’re really coming to the end. So if you could maybe kind of give us here to the end, Rod, and then catch us up with this last rung and the ladder of persecution where we have a couple of verses on that, but kind of walk us through how we end up here with blessed are those who are persecuted.

Rod Reasen:

Yeah. John MacArthur in his commentary on this section said, “The more you live for Christ, the more likely you are to create a response on the world around you. ” And going back to being this peacemaker, that’s a decision point. Pretty much everything else through here is relatively easy, but when we step into the world and start to create action, it’s going to elicit a response. I think about where every single person is put. We’re never going to be the majority. The Bible is clear on this, the salt and light will never be the majority, but our influence has massive opportunity and each person listening here, you’ve been put into a position right now where you have influence with people around you and you get to make a choice. You can stand and do nothing and be passive or you can jump in and be a peacemaker, but be warned.

The top of the ladder is pain. The result ultimately in the Bible tells us is you’re going to be persecuted and there’s a story around Corey Ten Boom people know that name, but the story that often doesn’t get told is about her dad, Casper Timboon. And when the Nazi Germany Nazi officers came to Holland to investigate the home, they took him. He was 84 years old and they said, “Mr. Casper, we’ll let you back. Just stop doing this. Stop harboring these Jews. Stop doing it. ” And he said, “If I go home today, tomorrow I will open my door again to any man in me who knocks.” He went to prison and died nine days later, but that decision didn’t happen in that moment. That decision came many, many, many years ago when he said he was going to go do what was right. And so one of the Reasens you’ve got to study this out is understand that the persecution is at the end of this.

It’s not an easy road. Jesus uses the word blessed and we’re going to talk about that in a second as how he talks about rejoicing. But the result here ultimately is persecution.

Isaac Crockett:

Yeah. Rod, so many times, and I’ve been guilty of this too. When we talk about blessing, we don’t mean it the right way. We say, “Oh, the Lord has really blessed me. ” It means things have gone my way this week. I’ve gotten more money or I’ve gotten over a health issue or something and these blessings are much deeper than that superficial health, wellness, prosperity type of gospel. These blessings are at the heart of the ministry of Jesus Christ and so it’s saying, “Blessed are the persecute.” That’s the end of the latter, but it goes to verse 12. It’s kind of like this extra part here. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. Can you wrap this up with that, Rod? This is so amazing.

Rod Reasen:

Yeah, this is Jesus speaking. And when Jesus is saying, “Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for you’re being persecuted before you even the prophets.” And the story that just in my own study came up with Charles Spurgeon and Spurgeon was not a known theologian, obviously became a theologian through his years in preaching, setting God’s word, but he struggled with depression and his wife Susanna at one point printed out all eight of these beatitudes and hung them on the ceiling above their bed, hung all these beatitudes on the ceiling of other bed so that he would be reminded that the righteous will be persecuted. So if Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor Spurgeon dealt with persecution and depression, well, we got to be prepared for that. We can’t just walk into this battle not expecting to be persecuted and not expecting this, but the reward for us is in heaven.

It’s not here on earth.

Isaac Crockett:

Yeah. The great prince of preachers, what an amazing reminder. Rod, again, this is such a powerful part of scripture. It really is a well known but maybe misunderstood as we said. Any final comments, any final encouragements on this because I know how it is as a preacher on any of these passages, the deeper you dig into them, the greater you learn about it, but the greater the conviction as well. And so you’ve been going through this with your stayonmission.com with the devotionals. Any final words or encouragement you have from this?

Rod Reasen:

I would guess that there’s not a single person listening here that wouldn’t say they would like to have more wisdom. They would like to have more blessing from God. They wouldn’t like to have a better relationship with God. Well, get in the fight. You have access to God’s word. You have access to tools today that we’ve never had in history and so the only excuse lies on you. So get in the fight and stay on mission.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that. Well, you can be encouraged. You could take and print out the beatitudes and put them above your bed. I like that idea. Put them around your house. But one thing you could do is to sign up for these daily devotionals for warriors, leaders and trailblazers going to stay on mission.com. You could text warrior to 201479282, that’s 201-477-9282. And that could be a helpful reminder and help keep you pointed in that direction. Also, share our program, Stand in the Gap. You could share our Stand in the Gap app. You could go and take an archive maybe today’s program. Maybe you want to share it with somebody, one of the pastors at your church, or maybe somebody in your small group class, or maybe a neighbor or a friend or a relative that you would want to share it with. The Lord has given us so many resources and we’re trying to share those with you.

Let’s use these resources to focus on him to stay on mission, as Rod said. Well, Rod Reasen, thank you so much for sharing this with us today. Thank you for opening your heart. Let’s go to the Lord. Our gracious Father, we thank you for the word of God, the written word that points us to the living word, Jesus Christ. We thank you for the union we have in you and to you through Jesus Christ, through the fulfillment of the prophecy that the comforter would come for the Holy Spirit, that those who have accepted Christ, who have turned to him and repented their sins and put their faith in him, that we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. We thank you for the Holy Spirit inspiring and empowering the writing of the word of God. And I pray that we would take that and use it, that we would take the resources, take the calling that we have from you and we would use it for your kingdom, for your glory and for our good.

We pray all of this in the name of Jesus. We thank you, Father. We love you. Amen. Well, Rod Reasen, thanks again for all that you’re doing with stayonmission.com and thank you for being on our program today. For those of you listening, thank you for listening. We wouldn’t have a program without listeners. Thank you for listening. I pray that you will pray for us and share this with others. And until next time, I pray that you will stand in the gap for truth wherever you are today.