“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God." - Luke 6:20

Jesus looked at His disciples as people gathered from all over to hear Him and be healed by Him, and He said, “Blessed are you who are poor ..." Some of the Word can be puzzling to us, especially when we try to take it literally. When He uses “poor" in this context, He doesn't mean it in the way we think of it. We picture homeless people without money, food, or other material belongings. He is referring to “spiritual poverty." Without a strong faith and relationship with God, our spirit is poor. A weak spirit will cause us to hit rock bottom emotionally, and we then realize that we are not capable of begging ourselves on our own. We cannot possibly journey through life alone. We need someone stronger and wiser than us to depend on: God.

We are born with sin, and we will encounter challenging times in our lives; it's extremely hard to handle sin and challenges alone. There will be times when if we don't put all of our faith in Him, we will feel so weak and helpless, and that's because we are. Our spirit is empty without Him. Thankfully, we don't have to feel weak and helpless because we have the opportunity to give all of our troubles over to Him. He will handle it all for us if we let Him, and He encourages us to let Him. He wants to help us and love us. The stronger we build our personal relationship with Him, the stronger our spirits will be.

Our spirits are no longer suffering from spiritual poverty when they are filled with love for the Holy Spirit. That's why He says we are blessed - because we have suffered through spiritual poverty and broken out of it by acknowledging our weakness without Him and how essential He is to our lives. We depend on God which allows us to humbly enter the Kingdom that He has promised us and graciously blessed us with.

Prayer: Dear Lord, thank You for blessing me in every way imaginable and providing a home for me in Your Kingdom. I know that others need You, so please help me bring others to depend on You and have a rich spirit filled with Your love. Help me to always put all my trust in You and continue to strengthen our relationship each and every day. I love you, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.