Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
Dear Champions,
The short excerpt is by Tim Keller and Susan Neder, and the Scripture is Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Tim Keller says the following: "For many, it is not your sins or your badness that keep you from God; it's your damnable good works. It's the things that you think make you good enough. There are two ways to try and kick God out of your own life and take control and be your own God and your own Lord and Master. One way is to be absolutely bad. You say, "I'm going to cheat when I want to, I am going to lie when I want to, and I'm going to commit adultery when I want to. The other way to completely kick God of your life and totally control Him and be your own Lord and Master is by being good. By being good you can tell God, "You owe me." By being good you can tell other people that you owe me. And by being good you completely zap your life of joy because you look at your goodness and you say that you can do better. You deserve better. But if you look at your badness and you see your unfitness, then you can see what Jesus Christ has done for you." (end of Keller excerpt)
We cannot be filled until we are first empty. Poverty of spirit is basically an attitude toward ourselves as we come face to face with our loving and holy God. It is a consciousness of our need and inadequacy. Yet, it is a moving from that recognition not into depression, or an attempt to fix ourselves up, but to cry out to our merciful God for His mercy and forgiveness. It means to trust not in ourselves or anything we must do or possess to make ourselves acceptable to God. So, poverty of spirit is the foundation and center from which all the other Beatitudes radiate, for unless we know how poor we are, we'll never reach out for Him. The whole of life is this: Total dependence upon the Spirit of God no matter what you do. How blessed are the poor in spirit.
The recognition of our need is not just bad news. Acknowledging our need before God, who longs to address that need is the very beginning of life in the Kingdom of God. Recognizing my inability to make myself good enough for God, to save myself, makes me open to receive the Kingdom of God through the gift of the finished work of Jesus. This is both the entrance into the Kingdom and the continuous way of life in the Kingdom. Jesus exemplified this way of dependence on His Father. "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He sees the Father doing." May it be our Be-Attitude as well, and open to us the riches of the Kingdom of God.
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining
Posts
