“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God,” reads Matthew 5:3. This week, a conversation in my men’s life group stirred deep thought and conviction from the Holy Spirit about the life I live and how much or little it shows I need Him. The first question is, “how aware am I of my need for Jesus?” The second one is, “how does my spiritual poverty lead me to see God, and how easy is it for us to miss Him?”

It is easy for me to live my life as if I have enough of everything on my own. Jesus died and rose for my sins, and I’ve trusted in Him for my salvation, I have a family He has blessed me with, and I know that if I fall short of His ways, He is faithful and just to forgive.” However, you can have all of this, yet still live in a way that lacks urgency and desperation of Him. This lack of desperation and awareness of how much I need Him can and has bled into the ways I think, treat, and respond to others. The honest and frank question that came to mind when thinking of myself, as well as others in a general sense is:

“Who do you think you are?”

Do you see yourself as someone who would not be here if it wasn’t for God’s mercy and patience towards you and your sin? Is the way you talk about or to others a way that shows you’re living a life of humility, knowing that without God choosing to sustain your life, you’d drop dead on sight? How do you see people groups that are different from you, or those whose ideology you dislike or disagree with; immigrants, atheists, Muslims, conservatives, liberals, anything you can think of? Has the current way of discourse on social media and in your real life harsh, cruel, mean, dismissive, and otherwise self-centered? Who do you think you are to talk to people the way you do?

These are very important questions, as over the years I’ve witnessed the complete degradation in our discourse, to the point that we go out of our way to be insulting and perverse towards one another. To the point we are no longer able to blush at our sin (Jeremiah 6:15). It would be easy for me in the age of Trump’s presidency and the MAGA movement to make it about our leaders, and it does play a huge part that we can’t dismiss. At the same time, I can’t claim to be off the hook for this, just because the immorality of it all rightly upsets me and needs to be called out.

All of those questions I asked above apply to me in specific ways that I firmly believe has impacted my capacity to be used on this platform and others outside of this. I don’t need to go into detail as I’ve done in other pieces within the past few years, which in itself is something that is frustrating to think about. I will say however, that those past struggles that have persisted to the present is part of what brought the conviction I felt. More often than not, I realized I live as if I’m nothing without Jesus. I’m even experiencing the struggle of desiring to spend time reading the Scriptures, which is one of the best ways for me to remind myself of my need for Him and to hear from Him.

David in one of the Psalms asks YHWH to not take His Spirit away from Him (Psalm 51:10-12), and while I have the precious gift of having Him within me (theologians call this the “Indwelling of the Spirit), my actions have shown that I need to take more seriously how much I need Him. That, even though He is merciful and His grace abounds, I won’t actually see Him as I need to, if I don’t see myself as I need to. In desperate need of Him. In need of His presence, His goodness, His guidance, and so much more.

How have you seen the Lord in your life? When you read His word, is it merely an exercise of spiritual discipline, or is it the fruit of a humbled life who sees how much they need Him? When you think of your relationship with Him, how have you seen Him lead you in your life? When you talk to people, or about people, how is your disposition? What prejudices or biases are keeping you bound in your lack of seeing Him through the ways you see others?

As Jesus said, it is the poor in spirit who will see God. The poor in spirit is a mindset and heart posture of humility and dependence on God, who is the only one who makes you rich spiritually, and reflects in the transformed life you live rooted in the love of Christ. By your fruit you will know where you are, and in Christ there is no condemnation when you see the truth of your spiritual condition. Let us all pursue God and live in the blessing of being poor in spirit. Let us see God.