Poor in Spirit

Going back to the “One Year Bible” reading on Jan. 5^th… In Matt. 1:26 Jesus taught the disciples in this passage about blessings and inheritance. I truly love blessing! I could just wrap myself up in the blessings of God. His goodness is truly overwhelming and something I don’t mind being overwhelmed by! I no longer want to be overwhelmed with anxiety, fear or sickness. I want everything to do with life and the love of God. So this teaching on the “blessed” really got the attention of my noodle and my heart. I truly wanted to meditate on the Word and learn what it means to be “blessed!”

The Beatitudes  Matt. 5:1-12

    He said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 


4 Blessed are those who mourn, 
   for they will be comforted. 


5 Blessed are the meek, 
   for they will inherit the earth. 


6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
   for they will be filled. 


7 Blessed are the merciful, 
   for they will be shown mercy. 


8 Blessed are the pure in heart, 
   for they will see God. 


9 Blessed are the peacemakers, 
   for they will be called children of God. 


10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, 
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

I completely eat this up! I did get a bit “stuck” on “the poor in spirit” part and had to ask God to begin to teach me what this meant. Now, when you ask something according to His will.. it comes to pass/ it happens. It just so happens it is God’s will for us to know his Word. So he had no problem with my request I asked of him. He gladly taught me a few things on this “poor in spirit” business. He even went a little above and beyond and just amazed me. He is one extravagant, loving God!

It really all boils down to GRACE! Grace- the very thing that I’m saved by, the very thing that God uses to gift me with and the very thing I so don’t deserve. The gift of faith even comes by grace! Grace is for the broken, the lost, the found, the in-betweens, the un-grates (as my husband refers to my children when they forget to be thankful, haha) and grace is even for you and me!

So what is the opposition to grace? What is keeping me from being in grace and poor in spirit? I need to know this in order to truly understand the need to be poor in spirit, don’t I?

Asking those questions landed me in the land of conviction quickly. I learned that the “ME: Entitlement spirit” was keeping me from more blessing. So often it is easy to get settled, comfortable and familiar even with the good things of God that I forget to know God’s ways. I forget to hold onto the “child-like spirit” and see everything as I did when not just once saved, but twice saved! I believe that coming back to my first love was an even better burial of my old self. I don’t ever want to be too familiar or too tired of the beautiful gifts and miracles from God. I want each experience, each miracle and each moment to be like it was the first. God loves to send His miracles for us to see, not that we can become prideful, but that we could come to His call for us to know HIM.

Familiarity doesn’t bring me to humility or repentance. Miracles are not signs of approval but they are validation of God’s Word. I want to know what it is like to camp out before God and be blown away by His goodness and mercy that will follow me everyday! (Psalm 23)

I’ve been witnessing the beginning of revival in my church as over 300 people came to Christ this past year. I’ve known that it would take repentance to truly experience full revival. There are no clean revivals. There has to be some mess spilled out to get cleaned up!

“A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” Proverbs 27:7  This truly is the best revival Word. I don’t want to be satisfied with just a bit of the Word. I want to crave and hunger for every word in the Bible and to truly feast on it, all year. Whether I am handed a dry piece of toast or a nice piece of honeycomb, I will rejoice and be thankful. I will never lack a thing because I have grace and it overwhelms my soul!

I bring my silly ole poor spirit that is dripping in grace and thank God. I give God the credit for every good thing that happens to me and know it is all by His grace!