How can we stand strong through turbulent times? Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount shows us how we can become resilient people.
Resilience has become a big topic in recent years, with researchers investigating what helps people stand strong through turbulent times. Psychologists like Martin Seligman suggest the most significant factors include positive emotions, accomplishment, relationships, and meaning.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presents guidelines that surprisingly align with modern psychology studies on how to weather the storms of life. He addresses everything from prayer to relationships to possessions. Yet an underlying theme runs through it all:
Resilience—toughness, or the ability to withstand difficulties.
Jesus reveals this theme at the end by telling a now-famous tale of two builders: unlike the house that the foolish man built on sand, the house that the wise man who built on the rock stood firm in the storm (Matthew 7:24–25).
Perhaps you’ve been tossed about by the torrents of divorce, unemployment, tragedy, or injustice. Or perhaps right now your skies are blue and your future looks bright. Whatever your situation, now is a good time to strengthen your life’s foundations—with lessons from the Sermon of the Mount.
A first step in developing resilience is learning to cultivate positive feelings like gratitude, peace, and hope, while navigating negative ones like bitterness, sadness, and anger. In His sermon, Jesus gives us tools to do this. The most significant is how to combat despair and worry.
Hope to Counter Despair
Jesus begins His sermon on an astonishing note: His kingdom is open to all, whatever their status—the impoverished (Matthew 5:3), the lowly (vv. 4–5), those denied justice (v. 6), those who’ve shown mercy (vv. 7–8), peacemakers (v. 9), and those persecuted for following Jesus (vv. 10–11). Jesus saw the people rejected by society and offered them His kingdom. Inside that kingdom is comfort, fulfilment, justice, and provision, plus a future share of all He owns. And this becomes the basis for our hope.
Regardless of our circumstances, true well-being and happiness can be found in hearts that reflect the values of His kingdom.
Such teaching would have been unexpected in a religious world that saw material success as a sign of God’s favour. In those times, you were considered “blessed” for the same reasons you’d be considered blessed today: a good reputation, a model family, pretty, influence, and success. Those are the kinds of people who get invited to parties, but not those Jesus blesses.
Peace to Counter Worry
If the Sermon on the Mount counters despair by offering hope, its next most practical help with emotions is in managing worry.
In His sermon Jesus gives two reasons to unlearn the pervasive habit of worry:
One is practical: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27). No. So, “Do not worry about tomorrow . . . Each day has enough trouble of its own” (v. 34). Give up on a strategy that just doesn’t work.
His second reason is theological: to worry is to forget God’s activity in our lives. To make His point, Jesus leads us through a guided meditation on the natural world (Matthew 6:26, 28–30).
It can be helpful to follow Jesus’s advice literally here. How about setting aside time this week for an unhurried walk in nature? You could set out slowly, feeling each footstep on the path, relaxing your body by breathing slowly and deeply. Watch creation flourish without you doing a thing. Then bring whatever it is that’s vexing you to God, confident that “your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:32–33).
Jesus helps us manage the hopes, cries, and worries of the heart. And a healthy heart is our first step toward finding strength.
A second factor in building resilience is having a sense of achievement, whether through pursuing a goal, mastering a skill, or doing work that is personally significant. And Jesus gives the crowd a resilience-building mission—be salt and light in the power of His Spirit (Matthew 5:13-16).
Towards the end of His sermon, Jesus talks about prayer, assuring us that we can trust God to give us what we need (Matthew 7:9–11). On another occasion Jesus said something similar, but with an intriguing twist: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13, emphasis added).
The Holy Spirit is key to living out all this sermon calls us to. He comes to live inside us when we believe, reminding us of Jesus’ words and empowering us to live them out (John 14:15–18, 23–26). Through the Spirit, Jesus works from within to make us more loving, joyful, faithful, and kind (Galatians 5:16–26), and to touch and serve others (John 7:38–39; Acts 1:8).
This means the Christian life isn’t about trying harder, but asking God’s Spirit to fill us and work through us. It means salt-and-light accomplishment requires little more than our humility, availability, and willingness.
Strong relationships are key to developing resilience. Jesus devotes considerable time in His sermon to relationships, highlighting four main forces that destroy them—anger, unfaithfulness, false promises, and retaliation (Matthew 5:21–42).
Because relationships are at the heart of life with God (22:37–40), they take centre place in His teaching.
From Anger to Reconciliation
Trace the start of a quarrel, and you will find the seed of festered anger. This, Jesus says, reveals a spirit of murder (Matthew 5:22). And the first sign of its presence is when we start belittling others with our words (5:22b).
Jesus knows we’ll have disagreements. But when they happen, He says, don’t let loose with the insults. Instead, try to reconcile (Matthew 5:23–25).
From Unfaithfulness to Faithfulness
Jesus reveals the pattern behind illicit sexual acts. Adultery starts with a fantasy, making the fantasy itself sin (Matthew 5:28). Since the heart is central in everything for Jesus, He uses hyperbole to ram His corrective message home: be faithful.
If your eye or hand starts leading you astray, go blind and lame before your heart and body follow. Close your eyes, shut down the computer, walk away, taking every measure to make the sin impossible (Matthew 5:29–30). Marriage is a serious commitment (5:32), so stay faithful to your current or future spouse.
From False Promises to Trust
Jesus would have none of the oaths that are unscrupulously worded so that they can be broken. Since nothing is independent of God, any oaths made are made to God anyway. Jesus then denounces oaths altogether because they make a regular Yes or No redundant (5:33–36). Instead, He says, be truthful: “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).
From Retaliation to Grace
Finally, Jesus tackles the desire to retaliate. Jesus uses three humiliating experiences—being slapped on the cheek, sued for your shirt, forced to go a mile—to describe a response to injustice that empowers a victim to respond without retaliating (Matthew 5:39–41). In short, neither submit to the abuse nor hit back, but respond in a way that sets a higher example by showing them grace and love as children of God (Matthew 5:44-45). Sometimes, this can even lead the enemy to change.
Resilience researchers affirm that we are strongest when we find meaning by serving a cause greater than ourselves. The Sermon on the Mount presents us with a cause that is bigger than self-centred spirituality and money-making (6:1–24), one full of peril and reward (7:13–23) and requiring total commitment (6:24, 33).
We find meaning by serving the cause of the kingdom of God—a life lived under God’s care and for His purposes.
In His sermon, Jesus encapsulates this cause in a prayer we now know as the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13). It is also a prayer of resilience that teaches us how to pray and the values that should guide our lives, and grants us a vision of how life with God brings meaning.
The prayer begins with God (“Our Father in heaven”)—recognising His ownership of the world and worthiness to direct our lives. Ultimately, life and its meaning is all about Him.
Staying Strong
Jesus never said we’d be spared the storms of life, but He is present with us when they come (8:23–27). And as the findings of contemporary psychology confirm, the teaching in His sermon can give us the foundation we need to withstand their gusts and grow through them.
A healthy heart, significant achievement, strong relationships, a sense of meaning. In Jesus’s reign, such things are given to seemingly weak and insignificant people with hands ready to receive them.
Christ’s sermon provides the tools, and His Spirit provides the power for little people like us to grow strong.
This article is extracted and adapted with permission from Discovery Series A Resilient Life © Our Daily Bread Ministries. Click here to request a copy today. Available at no charge.
Sheridan Voysey is an author, speaker, and broadcaster based in Oxford, United Kingdom. He is the author of eight books, including The Making of Us, Resurrection Year, Reflect with Sheridan, and the Our Daily Bread Publishing titles Resilient and Unseen Footprints.
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