poor in spirit on Respectability

Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.

Other major world religions are still centered in the same general geographic area from which they originated except for Christianity. Even more intriguing, the center of Christian growth continues to...

Catch {a person} at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove, I'm being humble," and almost immediately pride - pride at ...

Poverty of spirit is the personal acknowledgement of spiritual bankruptcy. It is a conscious confession of unworth before God. As such, it is the deepest form of repentance.

[The Poor in Spirit have] a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance.

Only the poor in spirit can be humble. How often the experience, growth, and progress of a Christian become such precious matters to him that he loses his lowliness.

There is a helplessness in poverty that precedes the move of God in our lives because we understand an aspect of grace that so many miss: we do nothing to earn it. When we understand this, all becomes...

Gracious God, too often we believe that our hard work should earn us comfort, conveniences, and control. Too often, we rely on our own abilities to craft and maintain a life independent from You. Forg...

The greatest of all comfort is the absolution pronounced upon every contrite mourning sinner.

The way to rise in the kingdom is to sink in ourselves.

The socioeconomic rootedness of the word ‘poor’ does not permit exclusively the spiritual poverty interpretation, and the ‘in spirit’ demands that this be more than simple economic oppression…[neverth...

I am mended by my sickness, enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weakness…. What fools are we, then, to frown upon our afflictions! These, how crabbed soever, are our best friends. They are n...

With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one bu...

Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith .  Hopefully you are alre...

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

He only who is reduced to nothing in himself, and relies on the mercy of God, is poor in spirit.

Surrender your poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers y...

It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face-to-face with God.

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

Self-made and self-sufficient people live in a fantasy world, empty of the reality of God. In contrast, the poor in spirit are deeply aware of being God-made and God-sufficient:

Some kind of loss is usually necessary to turn the mind toward faith. If you’re satisfied with want you’ve got, you’re hardly going to look for anything better.

We don’t believe our ability to bless others might result from our poverty. Our need might be the thing that most blesses the body of Christ.

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

But you take pleasure in the faces Of those who know they thirst.

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim su...

Preaching Commentary Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith . ...

Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of penitence, fasting, and prayer, in preparation for the great feast of resurrection. The season of Len...

The good news that Jesus brings to the poor in spirit is that the kingdom of heaven is making its appearance, and when it arrives there will be a reversal of fortunes whereby many who are first will b...

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it ...