eyes opened

i was meditating on Matthew 5:3 yesterday and the way i have found of getting the greatest amount of revelation from the scriptures is by “worship with the word” which is just literally singing the scripture. i learned this down at ihop-ac during my internship there. i view the Bible as my prayer manual and my worship hymnal- in that i pray the prayers of the apostles and prophets in scripture and i sing the very words of God.

so im studying and meditating yesterday on Matthew 5:3 which says “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” so what is poor in spirit? spiritual poverty is when you are at the place where you realize the song of songs 1:5 reality that you are “dark but lovely”- you have nothing and are nothing without Jesus, but He still thinks youre wonderful. its an understanding of our spiritual bankruptcy, to borrow a david gordonism, and its a place of complete humility and lowliness. which seems not so great but we know that in our weakness, He is strong.

so the Lord keeps pulling things out of this and speaking to me concerning this spiritual humility and He begins to show me that when we are walking in humility, our eyes are opened to see in the supernatural. when we go low and allow God to lead the way instead of us, we begin to SEE things more clearly.

you know those times where you feel stuck in a rut and have no motivation to seek the Lord or pray or fast or anything? it is in those times that our pride is welling up and basically saying “eh, i dont really need to pray or anything, i am good enough to surive, i am God enough to make it through the day without having to surrender my time or energy to God” and so we end up making choices that arent you know SIN outright or anything.. but they dont produce life. but since we arent walking in intimacy with the Lord, they are easy, comfortable choices.(my friend amanda slade hit this in one of her recent blog posts. check it out!) you know easy choices like sitting in front of the tv for a couple hours or playing around on the internet or just anything else that is just, you know like ehh.. well im bored so this is ok, whatever… and instead of seeking God and engaging our spirits with His truth and Spirit, we space out or something.

so in humility our eyes are OPENED to see that these lazy choices we make are not just ok or something, but when we dont choose Jesus, we choose death and darkness. my eyes were opened to see that there isnt an ok middle ground, but i saw the darkness and depression and death that comes from not choosing Jesus!

some biblical scholars believe that the beatitudes in Matthew 5 all build on each other… so you cant understand matthew 5:4 until you understand 5:3 and the Lord is showing me this is true..

what He was revealing about humility and SEEing in 5:3, relates right to mourning in 5:4.

when we walk in humility and SEE our choices, and that we have walked away from Jesus again, it brings us to a place of mourning over our sin. Jesus we have pursued other lovers time and time again! forgive us!

the old testament context of mourning was usually over sin, the sins of the nation of Israel and such. new testament mourning is described by Jesus in Matthew 9- that it was mourning and longing for His presence in the context of fasting. i believe both of these come out in matthew 5:4.

we see our choices and we mourn for our sin, and when we realize who we are in light of our sin, we begin to declare our need for Jesus and long for his presence to come and fill us again, to write His word on our heart again so that we might not sin against Him!

so as we enter the doorway of spiritual humility(5:3), it brings us into mourning(5:4), which Jesus says(matthew 9:15) is connected to fasting, and then He says(9:17) fasting is somehow connected to renewing our minds(new wineskins) which Paul says(Romans 12:2) is connected to a WHOLE lot of things(v4-18) and one thing continues to be a doorway to another in the spiritual life but i believe the first doorway we must walk through is the one of humility. God says he gives GRACE to the humble, but He is directly opposed the the proud.

so i pray for the Bride of Christ that a spirit of humility would descend upon us, that the humility Jesus walked in would be manifested in us so that doors in the spiritual realms would be opened to us and that God would continue to pour out His grace on us! Do it Lord, in Jesus name!