poor on Attitude

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with heart, soul, and m...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with h...

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 ...

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

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.

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.

Robert Lupton offers insight into the complexities of human impoverishment, reminding us that in spite of our best intentions sometimes our philanthropic efforts can yield unintended consequences: “Wh...

[The poor have] a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.

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...

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...

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...

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...

Lord, help us to be a people known for the ways in which we live out our faith by loving and serving all people, even those who, in the world’s eyes, have little to offer us. By treating them with dig...

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...

Leader: Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sinned against you. I have delighted my soul in other things more than I have in you. Why, then, is it any surprise to me that you feel far off from me? ...

All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him . . . He is able, He is able; He is willing; doubt no more.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

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.

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

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

Believers who are growing continue to see more sin in their lives. It is not that they are sinning more; rather they are becoming more aware of and more sensitive to the sin that has been there all al...

Contentment makes much of little; greed makes little of much. Contentment is the poor man’s riches and desire the rich man’s poverty.

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...

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...

To me, a faith in Jesus Christ that is not aligned with the poor...it's nothing.

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 . ...

Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing.

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.

The Sermon on the Mount is, spiritually speaking, actually the sermon from the valley. It starts low. It starts with those who feel very unlike mountains!

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create.