Muddy Boots 1: Poor in Spirit

My church is doing a short series this week on the beatitudes. They are calling it Muddy Boots and the reasons behind the picture are good. It's denoting a journey that we take, we are trying to follow Jesus as best we can. We usually describe it as a marathon for how long it is, but what about a long trek up a muddy slope? Well that's the point of the picture, we are always gunning for how long and constantly we must battle that we fail really to recognize how hard we must battle as well, and the fact is a good pair of muddy boots has always seen us through those long, hard treks and will there for the next. The same with our souls that Jesus resides in, He will always be there through our hard situations and prepared to stand in for us during the next one. In many ways it reminds me of the story of the footprints in the sand.

So yes we are all on a journey, any journey s not easy but the destination is great when we get there, whether we run the whole time, jog or walk it's a destination we seek. Jesus undertook His own journey here on earth during which He was misunderstood, persecuted and suffered, but because of all this He received life, power and authority over the world. What about us? Aren't we heading towards something similar? Well it's likely since we are co-heirs with Christ but I'll get into that another time.

So this first bit is all about the beatitudes, Jesus major sermon really in His lie and one which really does teach people what it is to follow Christ. The beatitudes themselves all start with the phrase "Blessed are.." which can be translated to "Happy are..", "Contented are..." or "Great are..." So really the beatitudes are all about how these people are great in God's eyes. 

Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven -Matthew 5:3

So great are those who are poor in Spirit in God's eyes. Well that sounds easy, reject the Spirit. No wait before you leave thinking that's the message keep reading. It's not wanting to not have a small amount of Spirit that makes us great in God's eyes, it's recognizing we don't have enough Spirit and constantly wanting more that does. Now this clashes with the idea that we are constantly filled, so why would we need more and thereby want more? Well here is how I see it, like a glass full of water you are filled up but there's a waterfall over that cup keeping it topped up, now you can be happy with your cup or you can constantly seek larger containers so that you can hold more Spirit. We have to realize that the cup of the Spirit isn't enough and constantly seek a  larger container. That's what is so great about the poor of the Spirit, it's not the fact they are poor of it since we all are compared to God but it is that they know they are and because of that fact they desperately want more. The aren't all together with their life, they aren't satisfied with their spiritual growth and they know they are in spiritual poverty and so want to grow more and receive the Spirit more.
See it doesn't make sense for Jesus to open the beatitudes with this line if it weren't for the fact it's where we have to start. We can't grow without the Spirit, so we need to realize we need the Spirit so we can search more. Jesus certainly isn't sitting there going "Follow me and be depressed" because He wouldn't reach anyone with a message like that, what He is proclaiming to the people of Isreal, and throughout time, is "Desire more of God!" That is the message He is giving us and in fact apart from "Repent of your sins" is the first thing we find out Jesus tells people in Matthew's gospel. Isn't that kind of representative of our calling as Christians, first we repent of our sins and ask God's forgiveness and thank Him for it through Jesus Christ and then we want to know God more! I'm writing this and I know in my mind I believe I've failed at this and I don't want to read the Bible as much as I used to nor do I try and learn about God, Jesus, having them in my life and sharing them with others as much as I could or should and after today I want to.
So the challenge really is to our lives of content, that we should be happy with our identity in Christ but not be happy with where we are in getting to know Christ and God. We should have a "holy discontent" for how  contented we are with our lives and crave to know God more that we do. In the words of David in psalm 63:

¹ You, God, are my God, 

   earnestly I seek you; 

I thirst for you, 

   my whole being longs for you, 

in a dry and parched land 

   where there is no water. 

That's where are attitude to God should lie, that's where my attitude to God should lie. We should be feeling desperate for God. God went so far as to set the example Himself in Jesus Christ during the time leading up to His death, Jesus was desperately seeking for God to get close to Him once more, to be closer than He was already. He was distraught at the idea of being even slightly separated from Him that He was shouting for God asking Him why He had let Him go, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" He cried trying to find God once more. So why does my heart not always do the same, possibly because I've never sat at the Father's right hand but that's probably not the main reason why because I've experience God's glory on the day I chose to follow Him and whenever I truly connect with it all. It's mostly likely because of the content life we live in the western world. I've never gone hungry for more than an hour, worried about what's in the water, had to support my family from a young age. My life is blessed and so I currently don't understand what it means to desperately seek something, and I doubt many of us do understand it properly as well. Yet there are people who do, in fact in places where they really do depend on God for their day to day lives revival is being seen. Heidi Baker, an author, works with the poor in Mozambique and she is quoted as saying this:

Why is God pouring the Spirit of revival in to Mozambique? Because they are poor in Spirit, dependent on God for everything due to their situation.

We need to remember how impoverished we are spiritually and really search to become rich in the Spirit in the west. Nicky Gumbel says "Precisely when we feel this desperate, we come under the reign of God." I would like to challenge the people reading this to not want revival in your cities but to crave it. I think because we only want to see God in this city is exactly why we haven't. We need to start craving revival, desperately seeking God and desperately introducing Him to people. I hear a lot of people say they can't wait for the second coming, and, yeah, neither can I but I also don't want it to happen because at the moment there are a lot of people I want to see saved who aren't. So I should be searching to introduce God to these people more often and just crave to see God work in places. God will meet us in our most desperate places so why not be constantly desperate to know about God more and be filled  with the Spirit more?

Being poor in Spirit is the beginning of the road to greatness.

God Bless.

P.S: sorry for the length, it's my own thoughts mixed in with a talk.