BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT
Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus preached on the mountainside.
“Blessed are those who don’t try to usurp Me … and those who put themselves in the background … who don’t try to draw attention to themselves by being clever or smarter than the rest … who don’t demand their own rights. Yes, blessed are those.”
A proud person acts and thinks on his/her own. When you take off the wrappings, pride is simply independence from God. Proud people make decisions based on their own reasoning, skills, and abilities.
A humble person depends wholly on the Lord for everything in every circumstance. Humble people know the Lord has to direct them, empower them, and enliven them – and that they are like a ship without a rudder on their own.
A proud person who is vaccinated says, “I’ll take care of myself. I don’t need God.” A proud person who is unvaccinated says, “No one is going to tell me what to do. If God Himself told me to get vaccinated, I still might not do it because it would go against the beliefs of the people I associate with.”
Humble people read Scripture daily and pray for guidance, keeping an open mind to the leading of the Holy Spirit. They would not say, “I’ll figure it out on my own.” Instead, they would say, “There’s too much confusion out there for me to make an informed decision. I will go to God’s Word and be in communion with Him. I will not make one decision or the other and then claim He supports that decision. I will be so dependent on Him and so close to Him that He’ll make the decision for me.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Spirit means breath in Greek (pneuma), Hebrew (ruah), and Latin (spiritus).
In Genesis 2:7, God breathed into Adam and gave him life, so spirit means life.
Now the verse makes sense. Blessed are those who are poor in their own lives and rich in God’s life.
He must become greater; I must become less.
Do You Love Jesus?
If you really love Him, you won’t ask Him to follow you around like a little puppy dog. You won’t treat Him like a vending machine to supply everything you want.
Do not ask Jesus to follow you. You follow Him.
It’s not, “Where I am Jesus is,” but rather, “Where Jesus is I am.”
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
“You need the Holy Spirit’s witness every day – on your job, at home, out and about, in recreation and social events, at rest. This is what Jesus was trying to tell us about the foolish virgins who ran out of oil in their lamps (Matthew 25). They had a supply of the Holy Spirit – but they did not have His witness at the final moment.
“Do not end up like a foolish virgin! If you are running out of oil – trusting your church or your pastor to keep your soul – then repent. Cry out to God to get rid of all your anger and bitterness. Confess your sins and forsake them – and depend on God once again for everything.”
David Wilkerson
You need the Holy Spirit’s witness every day-on your job, at home, at school. You need to rightly judge politicians and leaders so you will not suddenly be sucked into the antichrist system.
This is that Jesus was trying to tell us about the foolish virgins who ran out of oil in their lamps (see Matthew 25). They had a supply of the Holy Spirit – but they did not have His witness at the final moment.
David Wilkerson
What is the antichrist system? I believe it’s anything that takes our eyes off Jesus, any cause that calls us to action apart from Jesus, any person that says “Follow me” rather than follow Jesus. You don’t have to look far to see politicians and leaders who say, “I have the market cornered on truth.” or those on-line who say, “This is the truth or that is the truth.” Where are those who say, “What does God say about this in the Bible?” Not what I think God says or means but what the Bible actually says. Where are those people? I don’t see many of them around, even in churches.
I crave this time of stillness and quiet as the world wakes up with me. I want these first moments to be perfect, peaceful, and perspective-shaping, but they are often characterized by internal battles and external interruptions of my mind.
The battle in my heart can only be won through Christ’s work within me, remaking my desires, rewiring my mind, and renewing me heart. It’s hard to put Jesus first. I desire to hide God’s truth in my soul, but the world and my interaction with it want to be first instead.
But take heart—He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4)! Christ who loved me first will also help me put Him first thing in my day, my thinking, and my life.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Rev 22:20
You can understand the basics of the Bible in just three hours in this 147-page book that starts with the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and ends with the second coming of Jesus Christ in Revelation.
Pastor Bill Hicks is the lead author, and I worked with him on this book. If you want to understand the 730,000 words of the Bible, this book of 33,000 words would be a good place to start.
This LINK will take you to the book on Amazon. Available both as a paperback and as an eBook.
The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
Joel 2:31
The days roll by in this dimension, one after another, but not forever.
There will be an end to this life, only God knows when, and we’ll stand before the Creator of the universe, the Maker of our souls.
I think He might say to us something like, “What did you do on earth to advance My kingdom?”
I asked Ricco at the Wright County Jail yesterday how he could be such a strong Christian and get into the trouble he did that landed him in jail for possibly a very long time. If you’ll remember, Ricco is a person I lean on for spiritual perspective.
His answer was this. “Pat, before that crime I had two identities and kept switching back and forth between one and the other. The first was my life hidden in Christ. The second was my life hidden with Ricco. I was what you’d call a sketchy Christian or a wish washy Christian. When I committed that crime it was because I was not living out my identity with Christ. I hung around in the wrong places with the wrong people doing the wrong things. My identity was with drugs and gangs. That crime was my wake-up call. The identity of the Old Ricco is dead. I am now alive in Christ and solid with him, and that’s my identity now – all the time.”
Ricco is a spiritual mentor and Christian teacher in the Wright County Jail. He conducts weekly Bible studies and serves as a listener and advisor to believers and non-believers alike. He is God’s instrument to his fellow inmates … and to me as well.
How about you? What is your identity? Do you switch back and forth between a person hidden in Christ and a person who goes his or her own way?