What if I am not Poor in Spirit?
Welcome to Fathoms of the Word! This is my first post after rebranding. If you have questions about anything relating to the rebrand, check the home page! Now, before I start writing this thing, I just want to make it clear that I am not overly happy about writing it because the lesson stinks. It attacks my pride and my desires and my impatience. But in the end, that makes it far more valuable.
In the last year, my life has been flipped upside down, and in the midst of the turmoil, I lost God. Not that He wasn’t there, but I couldn’t find Him, and I had no idea what He wanted from me. I was much like a zombie, just going through the motions of living the “Christian life,” while slowly falling into a depression of decay in my faith. I doubted everything. The crazy part is, I have never pursued God as doggedly as I have these past seven months, yet I felt that He was purposefully eluding me and tormenting me on the few occasions He let Himself be found.
So I changed the way I prayed, and in this change from pride, fear, and anger to longing, desperation, and the tiniest particle of hope a human has ever produced, God spoke. He directed. And around three months ago, a new battle began in my mind, heart, and soul. I honestly thought God hated me for a while, that I was an object prepared for dishonor (Romans 9:21), and this whole experience was just another method of attack on a creation He meant to destroy. I went at God the same way Job did, demanding that He face off with me and tell me what was going on—which obviously did nothing but make me angrier.
Now, however, because of His answer to my prayers, because of His provision, I find myself facing a new problem: a question of His provision. Ironic, isn’t it? But it’s the case. See, in that time when the Lord answered me, He gave me a path forward. I was at point A, and He told me what point B was. But there were caveats. The first was that He put me on the path, established my steps, and said take pleasure in the way (Psalm 37:23) but then He said, “wait,” and refused to let me take a step on the path He placed before me.
Capability is the hard way to the kingdom
Because the second caveat was obedience, trusting in Him. One of the many characteristics I’ve had to confront in myself in this time of grief and anger is my pride. I found myself drawn to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the passage Jesus leads off the Beatitudes with: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Matthew 5:3). Well, to be quite honest, I don’t consider myself poor in spirit. I’ve been studying and teaching on spiritual gifts recently, and one of the things I’ve had to confront is that I’m blessed by the Spirit. I’m skilled. I’m smart. And more than anything, I’m capable of learning and doing pretty much anything I decide to tackle. Sometimes I’m so capable that I do things without obedience and deference to God. Sometimes I simply do them without Him entirely. In my life, I’ve learned I can disobey and still be successful because God made me capable of so much.
But being capable doesn’t help us in the kingdom of God; in fact, it’s a hindrance. Once I realized this, my favorite verse popped into my head: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). And that’s when I realized this list of Beatitudes is in an important order. Notice how the end of Matthew 5:10 is the same as the end of verse 3. The poor in spirit, those who absolutely have no choice but to rely on God? In the Kingdom, they’ve got it easy, in a sense. For everyone else, it’s time to follow the path God lays out.
The first thing we must do is mourn our position and our knowledge and wisdom. Mourn our separation from God, our pride that keeps us away from obedience. Then He comforts. But our mourning must turn us to something: humility. We must lower ourselves from the pedestal our capability has put us on and place God there. He will take us on the path of life and give us all things we need on the earth (Psalm 16:11). But if we have all things on the earth, we must not build up on the earth where moth and rust destroy but make treasure for ourselves in heaven for our hearts will then be there (Matthew 6:19-21). We may, then, love God with all our heart (Matthew 22:37). This means a hunger and thirst for righteousness rather than whatever else we might chase. And He will fill us.
Another difficult thing for a prideful person is mercy; I know I struggle with giving grace and mercy to those who can’t do what I am capable of. And I also sometimes struggle with believing I even need it—there’s pride again. But just as the Lord’s prayer asks God to forgive us as we forgive others (Matthew 6:12), we receive mercy when we give it. So we must learn to be merciful toward those who don’t have the advantages we have. And once we grow in being merciful and receive the mercy of the Lord (recognizing that we do certainly need it) we allow God to purify our hearts, and we can see a glimpse of who He truly is—not just capable and skilled, love, just, good, honorable—but so much more and greater: a God who truly cares for every individual and is actively working everything to be beneficial to His servants (Romans 8:28).
And when we see God for who He truly is, we make peace with others, no longer waging war because of our differences but loving people because of their identity as creations of the one true God—and for those who are chosen and who choose Him in return, as sons and daughters of the Most High. Because it is possible to live at peace if we make it (Romans 12:18). And in that righteousness, because they also persecuted Christ for it, we will be persecuted and the Kingdom will be ours as well.
Humble yourself and give up control
I’ve written a lot to come around to ending my story with where I’m at now: I have fought God on His provision and goodness because I’m still in step three of this process: humbling myself. Eventually, God will let me step out on the path He made for me, but even now I keep insisting that God act on the promise He made me three months ago in my time. I want it now; I can’t even pretend I don’t. But as I was driving down the road recently, I started to really see the picture of what I’ve been calling detours but He’s been calling the way of my life.
The interesting thing about life is how good of a metaphor for life it is. See, in my car, I’ve got a gas pedal, which means I get to control how fast I go. But on the road, there are a lot of things slowing me down: speed limits, curves, stop lights, and other drivers. I’m impatient and prideful, and I often think I’m a better driver than others. And I definitely think I know a more appropriate speed limit than the government that set them.
I know point B, and I want to get there. And I can get mad when every stop light is red or drivers in front of me insist on going below the speed limit or someone cuts me off. I can even try to finagle my way through traffic to get ahead. But the thing I’ve found about the road, and about life, is that no matter how angry I get or how many things I attempt to speed around, I’m not getting to point B much faster, if at all. God knows where point B is, too. And even though I can’t see what’s up ahead, He can. And He has put the red lights, the slow cars, and the standstill traffic in place for a purpose.
Sometimes, I can not trust Him, act on my own, and get to point B a little quicker, and He may choose to bless it. But the thing about trust is that, if we can manage it, it’s a blessing in itself to watch His plans unfold. I still haven’t seen it; I’m still waiting on the promise. But if there’s one good thing about God (and everything about Him is good) it’s that He cannot lie. So if you can’t trust Him in your circumstances (like I struggle with) trust that He can’t lie, and that means He will take care of you because, in Him, we are sons and daughters.