Poor in Spirit

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3 NIV

In the world we live in we are taught to be proud of our actions, our character and our possessions. The idea of not needing anyone is a constant theme that parents teach children throughout their childhood, to promote independence. As with everything in life, I believe that moderation is better than absolution.

When we are trying to lose weight, we tend to fail because we go to an extreme of absolution – absolutely no sugar or no carbs or we are exercising 5 days a week for an hour at a time. However, when we change our thinking to exclude or include some of it all, take some sugar or carbs out of our diet or add some exercise into our daily habits, we are more likely to succeed.

So what about our pride in our actions, our character, our possessions and our independence. This is where, I believe, we need some moderation as well. As followers of Christ, the actions that we are asked to take are actions that most people would be proud of, such as caring for others, loving others. The character traits are traits such as selflessness, patience. When we move into possessions we need to begin to be very mindful of what we focus on as our focus can become on the accumulation of worldly items instead of heavenly treasures.

As we talk about independence, I want us to look at our verse for the day. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. As I said before, the way that God views how we should live is the exact opposite of the way the world views how we should live. Poor in spirit is the idea of acknowledging that we are dependent on another being, God. We cannot be righteous without God, we cannot be born again with God, we cannot produce the fruits of the spirit without God.

As you can see, the idea of independence or dependence that I am referring to is not about being able to pick up heavy boxes by yourself, it is about your attitude, the attitude of your heart. When the attitude of our heart is that we don’t need anyone to help us be righteous, help us gain eternal life or help us walk in the spirit, then we are not able to accept the gift of salvation from God. Being poor in spirit is being willing to acknowledge that we cannot earn our salvation and the only way we are able to be saved is by accepting Christ.

When we are able to find joy in simply being a child of God, knowing we are not the reason we are able to spend eternity with Jesus and knowing that He paid a debt for each one of us, we are living the way God wants us to live and not the world. Once we are able to do that, the second half of the verse makes more sense. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” is recognition that they will be in heaven for eternity. I believe that heaven is going to be filled with humble people who know that they are not responsible for being there, they did not earn the right to be there and it is a gift from God to spend eternity in paradise.

Being poor in spirit is NOT being weak, it is actually being the strongest you can be because you are willing to admit that you are in total need of Christ and with Christ you are the righteousness in God’s sight. We all need to examine our hearts at times to determine if we have a spiritually correct attitude. So, what is the attitude in your heart?