Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit

“And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt. 5:2-3)  I don’t know about you, but I remember reading the Beatitudes over the years without really giving serious thought to what these phrases such as “poor in spirit” really mean. A few years ago I finally realized that, if I want blessing that is promised in a verse such as this, I need to fully understand the principle that God is teaching here. The verses in Matthew 5 contain important principles for every believer; one might say that the Beatitudes are actually a series of “attitudes” that should “be” in every Christian’s life. I could stand in my pulpit next Sunday morning and tell the congregation to go out and be “poor in spirit” during the following week. Most of them would leave wanting to do just that because of the blessing of God that is promised in this verse. But if I asked each person in that congregation exactly what it means to be poor in spirit, I imagine I would get a lot of blank looks and shrugged shoulders. The majority of us would probably have a hard time defining it. But if God wants us to practice it, doesn’t He want us also to know what it means? After all, He promised a fantastic blessing along with it. Let’s look at what it means to be poor in spirit, starting with what it is not.  The particulars First of all, being poor in spirit does not mean one is poor financially. There is a lot of confusion today regarding Christianity and wealth or poverty. Both of the extreme views are wrong; just as there are those who incorrectly believe in a prosperity gospel, there are others who incorrectly believe that a Christian should own almost nothing. In fact, God has ordained varying levels of material success in people’s lives. I know some great Christians who have very little and some great Christians who have a great deal by the measure of this world. So if you think to yourself, “I don’t have a dime in the bank. I must be poor in spirit,” that’s not necessarily the case. Being poor in spirit does not mean one is poor-spirited. If you watch almost anything on television or in movies these days, you will see a Christian portrayed usually as either a wild-eyed fanatic or a weak, milquetoast personality. The same goes for many people’s perceptions of television evangelists and preachers. A lot of unsaved people view the typical pastor as a stiff guy who resembles a funeral home director. These extreme personalities are not what God intended to represent His people as a whole. Being poor in spirit does not mean one is poor spiritually. Some people try to justify their lack of spirituality by telling people that they know they are not what they should be and that’s just the way they are. They never try to improve their spiritual lives. Confessing what you don’t do does not make it OK with God to keep on avoiding what you know you are supposed to do. The Lord doesn’t want you to make excuses for being a weak Christian; He wants you to become a strong Christian through Him. So what does it mean to be poor in spirit? Simply put, a person who is poor in spirit is someone who is completely emptied of self and ready to be filled with Christ. This is a person who can truthfully say, “Not my will, but thine be done.” I know very few people who are bankrupt of self and filled with the Spirit of Christ. The blessing contained in this verse is rarely received because the requirement is one that very few people attain. The Bible says in Rom. 13:13-14, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” To put on Christ, we must take off self. To have the Spirit’s fullness, we must be empty of vain and selfish desires to fulfill our own flesh.  The proof Most of us, if we are honest, already know where we stand in this regard, and what areas should be marked “pass” or “fail.” We can all probably think of categories in our lives that we should surrender fully to the Lord and have not. But for those of you who say, “I think I’m poor in spirit,” here are some questions to ask yourself. Do you have a daily walk with God, where you spend time with Him in prayer and He spends time with you through His Word? You cannot know the mind of God until you invest yourself in the Word of God. If you neglect that regular time spent with God through Bible reading and prayer, there is no way you can know His will for your daily life because you have not gotten your instructions from Heaven. Do you easily become frustrated and angry when things do not go your way? Notice that I did not say “ever” because it happens to all of us at one time or another. I’m talking about those who routinely have the two-year-old temper tantrum at the age of 32 or 42. I know people who cannot function outside of their controlled environment. As long as they know what is coming and their expectations are met, everything is fine, but when one curve ball is thrown into the mix they come unglued. That’s a sign of childish immaturity, which is really just the flesh taking control. A toddler is supposed to act in the flesh because there is no knowledge of how to walk in the Spirit, but when a supposedly mature Christian throws a fit it’s a different story. Do you become hostile when criticized? That is a tough one. No one in their flesh wants to be criticized. How many times have each of us when someone dared to tell us what we should do or not do? I believe that we see an example of this with Peter, who repeatedly grew agitated at certain things said to him by Christ and others. It wasn’t until he completely surrendered and dead to self, which came after the Resurrection, that he got over that. No one likes unconstructive criticism, but even that can be helpful. Of course, many people do not even like constructive criticism. I am amazed at how often people will come to me for counseling only to get mad at my counsel – when they sought me out in the first place. All I did was give them something from the Word of God. Husbands and wives often have trouble talking to each other because one gets so offended when the other suggests that they need to talk about a problem area. When I perform a marriage ceremony, I think neither the bride nor groom has any idea what they are saying when they repeat the “for better or worse, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer” vows. They don’t understand the hard times that are coming just as they have for every married couple since the dawn of time. But a few months after they meet at the altar they have issues that bring them nearly to blows. A married person, man or woman, should help his or her spouse become more like what God intended, and that is not always easy. As a pastor, I don’t tell people things to make them feel good. I try to help them. Sometimes I will get onto a person who has been out of church for a month because I know that person needs to be there, even if he doesn’t realize it. But there are some members of my own church that I approach with fear and trembling because I know how they will react to me before I even open my mouth. So many people have left a church over something so small because they were hostile to any type of criticism. If I can’t call one of my best friends and expect that person to be honest with me, there’s not much use to having friends. I don’t need a cheering section all the time. I need people who will tell me the truth and help me. The final proof of a “poor in spirit” attitude is this: Do I thank God for what I have or complain to God about what I don’t have? Someone who is poor in spirit will say, “Well, I don’t have much but, thank God, I have all I need.” A person who is not poor in spirit can drive a Mercedes, live in a $500,000 home and wish for something else. Someone who is poor in spirit will look at the old car in the driveway and the next week’s menu of beans and rice (which is the same as last week) but just praise God for everything in life and not want to trade places with anyone. A person who is not poor in spirit will – after acknowledging that the family eats out too often, spent too much money for Christmas gifts and just has it better than their parents in every material category – pray for enough money to have that one more thing on the wish list. Being poor in spirit means being satisfied. It means that you are thankful for what you have and what you don’t have. We all complain about things from time to time, but there are those who complain constantly about what is not being done for them or what they don’t have. A person who is poor in spirit says, “Lord, I have all I need. Thank you for what you do for me.” If more of us were poor in spirit, we would be less in debt to Visa and Mastercard.  The process James 4:5-8 says, “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw night to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.” The first step in the process is to relinquish control of one’s life to God. Since I finally gave everything to Him, there have been so many miraculous things done in my life, but while I still tried to control things I just drove them farther and farther into the ground. I didn’t listen to wisdom and instruction from my father, my pastor or other people who loved me, but I paid too much attention to the world’s influences and went deeper into the pit. If I were not a preacher today, I would be a bus driver. That is a noble profession and one I have enjoyed in the past, but it is not what God had for my life. For me, it’s much better to be a preacher than a bus driver. So how did I become a preacher? I just said, “Lord, here is my life. It’s not much, but take it and do what you want with it.” From there, He directed me to go back to school, and I wound up at a school I never thought I’d attend – up north in the cold, a run-down campus – after God arranged a trip for me to visit and spoke to my heart about it. But at tiny Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan, I was able to rub shoulders with Dr. Tom Malone, a giant of the faith, in his last years on this earth. I had the privilege of working for him on his staff for a year, and from there the timing was right for me to answer the call at my current church in Texas, where I’ve been for more than a decade. When you surrender your will to God, He does things you can’t imagine. Before I became a preacher, all I did was drive buses and dig holes. Now that I am a pastor, I can still drive a bus if I want to (I have no desire to dig any more holes). The second step in the process is to resist the devil. Resisting means that you are not inviting but you are pushing away. Some of us have a lot of trouble spiritually because we are letting in too much worldly influence and it weakens the spiritual influence in our lives. Not everything we do for amusement or entertainment is wrong, but we must limit what comes in so there is not a constant feeding of the flesh. We have to concentrate on feeding the spirit; the flesh is always there. Anyone who looks, talks and acts like the world is probably controlled by the world. So if something is obviously of the world, we should desire to get as far away from it as we can. That is how you resist. The third step is to have a relationship, as illustrated in the phrase “draw nigh to God.” When you find yourself a long way from God, you purpose in your heart to do what He wants you to do and take a small step toward Him. In return, He takes a giant step toward you. That passage in James promises that, when we make an effort to get close to God, He will do the same. The journey from our flesh to His holiness is an unattainable goal. But it is one we are to strive for. Many people say, “I can never be as good a Christian as so-and-so.” That is not the goal. We are to be as much like Christ as we can, and every time we take a step of faith in that direction, God takes a much bigger step to meet us where we are. When I gave my life to God, I was a million miles from Him. But He was just a couple of steps from me. All He wanted me to do was turn toward Him and then He closed most of the distance between us so that I could walk with Him. But He did most of the walking. The fourth step is repentance of sin. You cannot expect to walk with God and keep a close relationship with Him while you’re also keeping unconfessed sin. The closer you draw to God, the finer the examination becomes. After the “big” sins are put away, and you grow deeper with Him, the “little” sins bother you even more. The problem in America is that we have dumbed down Christianity to the point that sin is not pointed out in churches anymore and we feel comfortable in our condition. Years ago people who were living in sin were convicted of it whenever they went to church. Today they can go to church every Sunday and feel good about what they are doing. The fifth step is to have some reality in your Christianity. I would rather you be openly hostile to the things of God all the time than to be that way during the week and then try to come to church on Sunday pretending as though everything is all right. When I was in high school, I was part of a group at my church that wasn’t considered the best-behaved teenagers, to put it mildly. There were several of us who were on the “do not date” list of many parents with teenage daughters. This was fairly well-known. But at the same time, there were some who sang in the choir and did all the right things at church on Sunday while hanging out with us on Friday night. Many of us who did not pretend to be anything but what we were back then have become hard-core fundamental Christian adults because we were so far gone that we knew we had to get right. But some of those who put on a show at church have drifted into liberalism because they kept pretending – they just carried it to an extreme level. Don’t try to do it halfway. Either get in all the way or get out. Lose the double-minded attitude and get real.  The promise For this we go back to the text verse, which ends with, “for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” This does not mean that being poor in spirit will get you to Heaven. The only way you go to Heaven is by trusting Christ and being born-again of the Spirit of God. This verse is not talking about what you get when you die. Instead, it refers to the reality of living on this earth in a place where Christ rules and reigns in all of your activities. No matter what your physical address is, you are living in a place where you always know that God is on the throne and in control, regardless of what happens to you. You recognize His divine hand in every aspect of your life, and you have a peace that passes all understanding. When are fully surrendered to God and completely empty of self, He will make certain that nothing happens in your life that is not for your good and His glory. That is what being poor in spirit is all about.