Beatitudes - Teachings

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:3).

Some interpret the above verse this way, "Blessed in spirit are the poor." They teach that poverty causes you to be blessed. This is why the Roman Church has a poverty vow for their priests. Some believe that if you want to be happy and blessed you must be poor.

On the other hand, some teach that if you walk in the reality of the Kingdom, you will always be prosperous, thinking that great gain is a sign of godliness. A poor Christian can be full of the riches of Christ and a rich Christian can be bankrupt of the riches of Christ. The things of the Spirit are always a matter of the heart.

To Be Poor in Spirit Is To Be Empty

To be poor in Spirit is speaking of our human spirit. What does it mean to be poor in our spirit? If you are poor you are empty. Before you can be filled in your spirit with God, you must be emptied of everything else. If you want to fill something, you can’t fill it if it’s full; it must be emptied first. We must be emptied in our spirit. Every day when we come to God, we must get fresh manna. We must empty ourselves and not hold on to yesterday’s manna and be satisfied with our past experiences. I may have enjoyed the Lord so much yesterday, but I can’t live on yesterday’s experience. I must empty myself and be filled with God every day. I may have experienced the heights of God yesterday, but that is not good enough for today. The Kingdom of God is in the ever present now. You cannot live in the experiences of the past; you must live in God now. "Behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2). If people could learn to live in the ever present now they would begin to find it very easy to walk in the spirit. What keeps you from living and walking in the spirit now is that you look back at your failures of the past or you look to the future, thinking that some day you are going to be better, and you miss the Kingdom of God, which is NOW!!

Today, this very moment, is salvation available to us. If we sinned last week or the moment before, we can experience forgiveness now. If we were on the mountaintop yesterday, we can still experience fellowship with God now. We may not always be on the mountaintop, but we can always experience the flowing of the Spirit of God within.

Do Not Hold On to the Old Ways

To be poor in spirit also means not to hold on to the old things. God is always on the move, constantly bringing you into greater understanding of His Word. You find many people today who are proud of still being in a past move of God, still holding on to the old way and the old things. To be poor in spirit, you must empty yourself of the old things, and give up the old way. You must always take the new way and the new move of the Spirit. You can read in church history how God has used various men and women and moves of His Spirit to recover His people back to His original intention of building a tabernacle for His Spirit to dwell in. God wants to live, move, and have His being fully manifested in and through humanity. We must glean from all the past moves of God and then let Him take us on into perfection. Many of God’s people are satisfied with what they have of the past. They are full, and think the revelations they have had in the past are enough. "I am full now, God. I am satisfied being in an old move. I don’t want to change. I am happy here; I am already full."

To be poor in spirit is also to have a proper attitude toward yourself. One who is poor in spirit realizes his need for more of God in his life and is not afraid to confess it. You may be into positive confession and say, "I have all things and have need of nothing," but I have to say I need more of the reality of God in my life every day. We can give a lot of lip service to God, but if we don’t realize our need, and our shortcomings, and are not seeking to become like Him in every way, we will never know the reality of His life rising within us to scatter all our enemies.

If we are truly poor in spirit, we will realize our helplessness and our hopelessness as far as being able to live the kind of life that Jesus teaches us to live in Matthew 5-7. How can we, as mere carnal men, ever live the God-kind of life? We realize we cannot do it with our carnal nature. It is hopeless! This realization makes us feel empty and poor in spirit and causes us to cry out to God for the reality of His indwelling Spirit to stand up within us and bring deliverance from our carnal nature. As we begin to seek God, a transformation starts to take place within us and we find that effortlessly, the life of God grows within us. In a small way at first, in different areas of our life, we begin to manifest the life of God. The river of life will begin to flow in us. Let us be like Abraham, who learned to trust in God, Who gives life to the dead, and calls those things that are not as though they were. You might be dead to the kind of life that Jesus talks about here. You may not be able to walk in the abundant life that Jesus offers, but God gives hope to the dead, and He will cause His life to come alive within you.

A Prideful Attitude

"Two men went up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week and give tithes of all that I possess’" (Luke 18:10-12).

We must not allow that kind of attitude to develop. We can look at others and be just like this Pharisee and thank God that we are better than they. That is a critical religious spirit, and it is one of the most damaging spirits in the Church today. This comparing ourselves with others’ weaknesses can give us a false sense of worth. Whenever you criticize or judge another person, the only thing you are saying is that you are better than that person. One who has been exposed to the light of God, and who realizes his need, could never judge or criticize another.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." This is not some place you go when you die or something you get after you die, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Living in the Kingdom is something to be experienced now. We do not experience this by natural means, ways or methods, but the Spirit of God in us will bring us into this reality. Don’t worry so much about being good, or failing; just seek fellowship with God, and day-by-day you will find yourself becoming more like Him.

The Realization of the Kingdom

The realization of the Kingdom comes when you begin to experience the Kingdom. The reality of the Kingdom is to just know that it is real. Many today know the Kingdom of God is real, but they have no experience. They may even be able to teach about it, but have little or no experience of it.

You can know the reality of good food by reading a cookbook. You can even study it, and learn all the recipes, and then teach others all about it, without any experience of the actual mixing of the ingredients and the eating of it. Most of Christianity today is like this. We know all the doctrines; we know Jesus lives in us; we know so much, yet so many are not filled with Jesus, but with resentment, bitterness, backbiting, hurts, and anger, and they do not know how to live the Christian life. Our Christian bookstores are filled with self-help books and psychology on how to be a Christian and how to live the Christian life. We even have books on how to love our wife and children! There is nothing wrong with these books or the reading of them, but I must ask this question: "If Jesus truly lives in us, why do we need them?" We can learn to be a better person, but what we need is Jesus living in us! If Jesus lives his life in us, we won’t need all the "how to" books. Please don’t be offended with these words, but examine your own life and see if Jesus is realized in you or whether you are manifesting self. The Word says, "They will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears . . . always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 4:3, 3:7).

To have the realization of the Kingdom, you must begin to experience the life of God coming alive in you, filling your consciousness with the awareness of the ability of God to live His life within you. As Jesus said, "You must be born again." Everyone who is born by the Spirit of God has the realization of the Kingdom of God. To be born again means just what it says—you must have another life (the life of God himself) born into you. You cannot be born again without something happening to you on the inside. There are thousands of Christians, especially in America, who have an intellectual gospel, and have never experienced the touch of the Spirit of God on their lives. Oh, they know and believe that Jesus is their Savior, but, they have no experience. To be persuaded that Jesus died for you and to accept him as your Savior without an experience is not enough. YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN! There must be an inner experience that takes place in your life. We must receive life from above. To enter into the realization of the Kingdom is to have the King himself born within your heart. The life of the King, the zoe life of God, the nature and character of God, must come alive within your consciousness.

The Manifestation of the Kingdom

Not many of God’s people manifest and reveal to the world the reality of God being lived in their lives. That’s what the Kingdom of God is all about—having the character and nature of God revealed in humanity.

The principles that Jesus laid down in Matthew 5-7 are not a new set of rules and regulations. Jesus did not say "To be a Christian you must try to live this way." He did not say, "You must do this and not do that." What He is saying in the Sermon on the Mount is, "If you are a Christian, truly born of my Spirit, something happens on the inside of you and you will begin to live this kind of life. This is a growing and a transforming process, not a natural learning process. My life will begin to operate and manifest within you as you put to death the old man (for this corruptible must put on incorruption). As you do this, the New Man will come forth."

We Begin With Baptism

We begin the Kingdom life with baptism. "Teach and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of (not the names of) the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (Matt 28:19).

Until you are willing to be baptized, until you’re willing to go down into the death waters of self-life, you will never be a disciple, or be able to manifest the Kingdom life. You may know all about it, and even experience it to a degree, but you will never manifest it until you’re willing to die out to self. If you are not willing, just seek God and He will make you willing. Baptism and discipleship always go together. Paul said, in Romans 6:3, "So many of us as have been baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death." If you think that going down into the water changes you, without an inward reality, you are sadly mistaken. To baptize someone is not to just simply put them into the water. As you baptize, you must believe that as you are baptizing them in water, you are literally placing them into God. They must be willing, and clearly understand, that as they go down into the death waters they are placing themselves into God and they are not to come up the same. They are leaving in the death waters that old man, the old self-life.

In Whose Name Are We To Be Baptized?

Paul said, "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27). There are so many different doctrines about baptism, but not much teaching on the experience of it. Some teach that you must be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Others teach that you are not baptized unless you are baptized in the name of Jesus. To be baptized into the name of Jesus is to be baptized into the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Word says that Jesus was the embodiment, the fullness of the Godhead. The Father dwelt within him in this fullness; the Spirit was given to Him without measure. So if you want to be baptized in the name of Jesus, that’s wonderful, because the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is complete in the name of Jesus who is the fullness of that name. If you want to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that’s wonderful too, but if you start to fight over which way to baptize according to your concepts and opinions, you might go down into the water and not even experience baptism. You may argue over which way to baptize, by pouring water over the head or going under the water. You would be much better off to understand and experience the spiritual aspect of baptism. When you are willing to fall into the ground and die, when you are willing to put yourself aside, you go down into the water and leave the old life buried, and come up with the resurrected, transcendent life of God Himself. This happens simply by believing what the Word says. By faith we are resurrected to a new life, even the uncreated, indestructible life of God Himself. As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. If you have not put on Christ, you have not been baptized, no matter how many times you go down into the water. To be baptized is to be immersed into the Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The water is an outward sign of an inward reality. There is a change of heart that must take place. This is the miracle of baptism, a work of grace, done by God simply through believing.

Baptism is really termination, and germination. It terminates everything of the old creation and it germinates everything of the new creation. If you have not yet given the Holy Spirit permission to terminate you, you have not yet entered experientially into the Kingdom. You must be terminated before you enter the Kingdom of God. The Church today is not a shining burning testimony to the Kingdom of God, because of the mixture, the impurity that is allowed to remain.

Is It Possible To Live God’s Life?

Early in my Christian life, I was hungry to be like Jesus, and I asked the question many times: "Is it possible to live the sermon on the Mount?" I never found one person tell me it was possible. They told me it was a goal to reach for, but it wasn’t possible until you die! Jesus never said, "Try hard, do the best you can, and after you die you will be like Me," yet this is what most people believe. What He did say was, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like this . . ." If you truly experience the Kingdom life, then Matthew 5-7 will be your experience. Jesus said, "Blessed and happy are you if you’re like this—poor in spirit, mournful, meek, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker and persecuted." This is the character of God being reproduced within humanity. Again I must stress, this is not the natural human life. You could never be this way through natural ways or methods. This is the life of God that you have inherited through the new birth.