My Quest into Understanding Poverty of Spirit (part 1)

Preface

                As the Lord has recently been leading me to study the concept of poverty of spirit, I have realized just how complacent I have been in my lack of understanding on this topic.  The phrase had been defined for me previously by my spiritual leadership and, unlike the Bereans in Acts 17, naively adopted their words to be my own views on the subject.  Don’t get me wrong; what my leadership proposed about poverty of spirit was valid information.  My error was not in the agreement with their opinions (they were in fact Biblical), but it was in my lack of being a proactive student.  I made sure to validate their statements with scripture, but I did not search the scriptures for myself to expound upon what had been given to me.  I displayed a lack of hunger to truly know that aspect of the Christian walk.

Later, as I reread Matthew 5, I was struck with my own depravity.  Verse 3 states that the poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.  Was I really poor in spirit?  Did I even know what it meant to be poor in spirit?  I knew what my leadership had taught me, but it wasn’t enough.  I found myself reading that same verse over and over again trying to make sense of the phrase “poor in spirit”.  I tried replacing the phrase with other words or phrases that were synonymous.  Blessed are the humble, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.  That sounded an awful like Matthew 5:5 – “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.”  Blessed are the desperate for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.  As I kept reading, I again found a beatitude that had already claimed “desperation” in Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”  No, the Lord would not have wasted words and put three synonymous characteristics right next to each other each with its own individual promise.  Poverty of spirit meant something more than humility or desperation.  These two traits were very much so a part of its definition, but they were not the extent of what the Lord was trying to communicate.

Many of the teachings that I had received about poverty of spirit defined it as complete and total dependence on the Lord.  Although “hunger and thirst” cannot fully be a replacement for the word “depend,” it still seemed to me like wasted words for Jesus to give both dependency and hunger as beatitudes with different promises.  After all, the reason that the body hungers and thirsts is solely because it is dependent on food.  Regardless, this was the most logical definition that had been posed yet, so that was where I began my journey.

A New Definition

                Later on in Matthew 5, Jesus states that God the Father causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the good and on the evil alike (v. 45).  This is frequently referred to as “common mercies” – mercy that each man receives regardless of whether or not he is righteous.  A man does not need to “earn” the sunshine or the rain that he receives; neither does he need to accept the grace that is offered to us through Christ’s atoning sacrifice in order to breathe.  The Lord gives many of humanity’s daily necessities freely to all of mankind – oxygen and lungs to breathe it, trees that produce fruit and hands to harvest it.  In the shallow, spiritually inanimate “life” that is lived here on earth, it is easy for man to think that he does not need God.  If only he could see the Conductor behind the machinery that appears to be so self-sustaining.  If only his eyes were opened to the God of Hebrews 1:3 – the God that “upholds all things by the word of His power”!

I am convinced that the Lord has set the law of “common mercies” into motion for the sole purpose of exposing man’s pride.  True humility is shown in the recognition of God’s sovereignty and the renunciation of the lie that a person is in control of his life.  Some recognize the Lord as their only life-support (wrecking their pride); the rest are left to strut around in their puffed-up conceit, ignorant of the fact that they are conceiving their own demise.

Regardless of whether or not a man recognizes that his daily needs are being met by the common mercies of the Lord, he is unable to survive even one second without them.  Thus, each man is fully dependant on the mercy of Yahweh, from the most arrogant of atheists to the meekest of martyrs.  If that is true, and it is, then poverty of spirit cannot simply be defined as dependence on the Lord because that would make all of mankind poor in spirit and thus all of mankind would inherently receive the Kingdom of Heaven.  No, there is something more than dependence that forms the definition of poverty of spirit.

I came up with a rough, working definition of this mysterious phrase that seemed to fit the criteria.  Poverty of spirit is the acknowledgment of human depravity, weakness, and utter dependence on the Lord; it is being humble enough to publicly admit one’s lack of control in his life and thus render to God all authority over his mind, body, will, and emotions.  Simply put, it is walking in the opposite spirit that the church of Laodicea was rebuked for in Revelation 3:14-19.

Laodicea was one of the seven churches in the second and third chapters of revelation that Jesus addressed with admonishment, rebuke, exhortation, and promise.  It was one of two churches that received no admonishment.  The Lord harshly warned the Laodicean church that if they did not repent, they would be “vomited” out of His mouth.  Repent of what?  Their error was found in the arrogance that kept them from admitting their own weakness.  The Lord stated that, though they claimed to be rich and in need of nothing (including God Himself), they were actually poor, blind, wretched, and naked.  They had not humbled themselves to the point of embracing their full dependence on Him, and thus the Lord could not take pleasure in them and would expel them from his presence with vigor and violence.

Without the breath of the Lord, man would be but a pile of dust.  Without the Word of the Lord, the universe would cease to sustain life.  This is the reality that Laodicea needed to tap into.  They were deceived to think that they could do anything on their own strength.  They were blind to the fact that only under one condition can man do all things: through Christ who strengthens him (Philippians 4:13).

My Genesis Homework

THE WORD

 

The Word of God is the foundation of all created order.  The Lord spoke and light shone, earth rotated on it axis, plants produced life-giving glucose, and the dust of the earth blew about helplessly.  One phrase, “Let there be,” and everything that the eye sees was created out of nothing.  The foundation for our creation, the Word, is also the foundation for our existence. God upholds all things “by the Word of His power”[1].  Our regard for this live-giving, energy-sustaining authority has been seriously undermined.  If mankind truly understood and trusted the Word of the Lord, sin would have no place in his heart.  This was the error in the garden.

Adam and Eve had, by the very mouth of the Lord, been given a commandment and told the consequence of disobedience.  Because Satan caused them to distrust the God’s Word, they fell into sin.  Satan’s primary purpose is to corrupt the Word of God in the eyes of man, thereby leading man to misunderstand and distrust the Word.  If man doesn’t understand or trust this ultimate authority, this life-giving, life-sustaining power, then he will not respect it enough to obey it.  Here in lies the foundation of the sinful nature of man.

Man’s sinful nature has its grassroots in the garden.  When God had finished speaking created order into existence, He then spoke free will and voluntary love into existence by ordaining a law, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”[2].  Man had a choice, heed the Word, or disobey and suffer the consequence.  Satan knew that the only way he could get mankind to betray the very foundation of his existence, the Word, was to cause him to distrust it.  Because Satan was successful in tainting Eve’s perspective of the Word, sin entered the heart of mankind for this present age.  Had Eve’s paradigm of the Word and God’s intention in creating a law not been marred, she would have not disobeyed.

There was One, however, who lived free of Adam and Eve’s sinful nature.  It is evident that Jesus, when tested, used the Word to combat temptation.  When Jesus was tried in the wilderness, Satan’s primary purpose was to accuse the Word, similar to his accusation of the Word in the garden.  Just like the garden, when Satan quoted the command that God gave to Eve, Satan quoted scripture in his temptation of Jesus[3].  Because Jesus understood the Word of the Lord, because He trusted the authority of the Father, He was not swayed by this attempted deception.  Each time He was tested with another temptation, it was His wisdom and understanding of the Word that empowered Him to overcome sin.  Jesus remained sinless because He was not compromised by the nature of man to doubt the Word.

This has been the favorite deception of Satan since the garden and will be even unto the end of the age.  In the end, there will be a false religion based upon false peace.  Many religious leaders will com forward and claim that there is more than one way to get to heaven in an attempt to unify the nations.  This is deliberately in opposition to the Word of the Lord.  The Word states that there is only one way to the Father, and that way is Jesus Christ[4].  By compromising the absolute truth that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only life, these religious leaders are falling into Satan’s trap, the very same trap that he used in the garden thousands of years earlier.  Satan caused Eve to think wrongly of the Word in the beginning, and he will certainly try to cause the bride of Christ to fall in the same way.

The Word is the very foundation of the existence of everything man can see.  Yet, when it is called into question, he is deceived into thinking lies about the goodness of its nature.  This produces rebellion in his heart.  Where rebellion is, there also is sin.  The sinful nature of man is found in this root problem.  The enemy is lurking at the door of the heart of man just waiting for the opportune moment to deceive him with a marred image of the Word of God.  Sin began this way in the garden, and has been working tirelessly in the same way ever since.  The church is not exempt from being tempted in this way.  It is imperative that the bride of Christ recognize where Adam and Eve failed and watch that she doesn’t, in the same way, fall.  By hiding the Word in her heart, she will overcome just as Jesus overcame in the wilderness.  By asking for a Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation[5], she will be filled with the same Spirit that empowered Jesus to remain sinless.  This is the hope of a new nature, of a life after sin – the Word.

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[1] Hebrews 1:3

[2] Genesis 2:17

[3] Matthew 4:6

[4] John 14:6

[5] Ephesians 1:17-19

Dear discouraged beloved of Christ,

*this is a(n UNEDITED) letter that I wrote to a friend about some personal revelation that I had concerning the discouragement of seemingly “unanswered” prayer. *

The Lord is longing to heal you, and He has a plan and a perfect time to do it. He ALWAYS heals His children, whether it be in our timing (immediately) or in His timing (immediately, in the near future, or in the long-term future). We just aren’t aware that when we receive our new bodies at the resurrection of His bride (us) that that is healing in its fullest form.

He will heal you one way or another. That may be today; it may be tomorrow; it may be 30 years from now, but if it’s none of the above, it will definitely be when He returns for a second time and we all go to heaven.

I learned all of this when a little boy that I was praying for (and had FULL faith would live) died. I struggled with the Lord with prayers like … “Lord, YOU told me that he would live! What the heck are You doing? You’re not proving to me that You are real and that I actually hear Your voice.” When I was praying for this little boy, my heart was so broken and I had full faith that he would pull out. I told the Lord that this was going to be my test of His existence (dumbest thing EVER lol … I had like a little Gideon moment there … the Lord must have been like, “oh my little Olivia! What am I going to do with you? I love you so freakin much!”).

Anyway, the boy died, and when I asked the Lord why, He taught me that the boy actually died a looooooong time ago when he gave himself to Jesus and ever since then he had been living his eternal life. He was still living it on the day that he died, and he is still living it now.

Good god I’m long winded! Haha. Sorry! But, in all honesty, I think I might be writing all this out for my own sake, so you can stop reading if you want. : )

Long story short, the Lord actually did prove His existence to me in all of that. He answered a huge question that I’ve had for a long time: if the Bible guarantees healing for prayers offered in faith in Jas 5:15, then why do some of my prayers (in faith) for healing not “result” in anything? Am I just not faithful enough? But what about the mustard seed verse? Doesn’t a little faith go a long way? The truth is this: He will always heal when we pray in faith. Sometimes that’s in the here and now, and sometimes it’s when we get our resurrected bodies. The Kingdom is already but not yet.

I think it’s bad for us to think “well I just must not have enough faith to heal this person” cause two things result: (1) you stop praying because you’re sick of seemingly unanswered prayers, and (2) your self-image is way wacked up – and that’s exactly what satan wants.

We CANNOT think that we have too little faith to have affective prayers. How jacked up would a parent/child relationship be if the kid asked their dad for things all the time fully knowing that the dad would never actually give them anything. Then when he actually does give them something, the kid’s like, “well this can’t be from my dad, cause he NEVER actually does anything for me”. The kid has to start making excuses for why he got a gift. “Well I must have gotten this from my good ol’ uncle Joe!” even though both the kid’s parents are only children. The child has to fabricate something that is unreal to explain something that is real.

I think that this is a major reason why the church stopped believing in supernatural healing, and only believes that the Lord heals through natural means. HELLO!!! The Lord can (and does) both cause He created both! We start to think that aunty “mother nature” is the only good gift giver, but truth be told, God is the only true good gift giver. And because that is true, supernatural healing is just as much a reality as natural healing. In fact, it is intended to be just as much a normality as natural healing also!

Anyway, enough with my little (or big, actually!) word vomit … I might end up putting parts of this up on my blog. Haha, thanks for making me write again! It feels really good.

Burn Internship Recap and Debrief

This is a journal entry from the last day of my internship:

So much has changed in me these last four months. I asked the LORD to take snapshots of the before and after of every major countenance change that has take place during the internship and put them in the keepsake box in the attic of my mansion in heaven haha! I am a new creation. I was baptized last night, and when I came out of the water, the first thing that went through my head was, “wow, I actually feel different”. I thought that the authors of the Bible were exaggerating when they talked about baptism as a literal death of the flesh, but they weren’t! I felt lighter. I think last night was the climax of my time here.

We graduate in two days and I can’t make sense of the lack of remaining time. I can’t even make sense of how fast this season has come and gone. Nine months ago, I didn’t even think I would be here … heck, five months ago, I didn’t even think I would be here! Now I can’t even imagine not being here.

This internship has felt so surreal, and in a sense, it is surreal. This last four months has been an escape from reality. Don’t get me wrong, everything that has happened in my heart has been nothing but real, but my mind, body, and emotions have been in a perpetual state of rest in the LORD for four months straight. I have had the means and the motive to rid myself of the things of this world and just sit in the house of the LORD with my spiritual family. I have never felt this level of refreshing before.

I don’t want to live in a surreality (word?) for the rest of my life, and I know in my heart of hearts that I am ready for the next season, but I’m still afraid. Accelerated growth is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever experienced. This was a season of accelerated growth for me. I am not saying that the LORD only accelerates growth in a HOP internship. I’ve experienced His grace for quickened maturity outside of my internships as well. I think that I am just afraid that I will fall back into my old routine, my “business as usual” state. It is good for me to be wary of this and guard myself from slipping back into it, but this irrational fear has no place in me.

I think my fear comes from not knowing how much the LORD truly has done in my heart. I know, to a certain extent, that I have changed. What I don’t know is to what degree I have changed. I think that, because I am still in the midst of this season of change, I cannot see the change that is taking place. I think that once I get out of the whirlwind, and find my barring, my fear will subside. That is my hope. I still have no idea how much hunger that the LORD has instilled in my heart, hunger for His word and hunger for His presence. Before this internship, I would long for His presence, but not on a daily basis. Now I get grumpy on days that we have less than two hours of devo. I think that being deprived of my strict PR schedule will make me hunger for long hours of intimacy with Him much more than I did five months ago.

These are the three things that scare me the most about the next season of my life and college:
1 – Not desiring to spend time with Him on a daily basis.
2 – Losing friendships and community.
3 – Not being self disciplined enough to stay on a schedule.

And now you have come to the part of my journal entry which contains the clever and extremely lame sequence of alliterations that summarize the sate of my heart post-Burn Internship:
I have been romance out of unrighteous religion, carried out of the captivity of compromise, and provoked out of the place of pride.

And now you have come to the part of my journal entry that explains, in intricate detail, the above statement:

Romanced Out of Unrighteous Religion
I remember, in one of Randy’s classes, we spent the whole session praying and singing in tongues. I was so offended that we were “wasting” precious time that we could have spent learning about Jesus (this was in Christology class – the study of Jesus). I think I learned more about the heart of Jesus in that class than I did in any of our other Christology classes. I came here with a religious spirit like a parasite in my soul, but I am leaving now with a desire to seek the Lord in my secret place and establish true intimacy with Him.

Carried Out of the Captivity of Compromise
I came here so oblivious to the fact that I had let Jezebel have a foothold in my life. About half way through the internship, the Lord started to show me the ways that I had let her have a hold on my heart, and I was not okay with it. I set my heart to fix the problem, and almost right away, Jezebel started to rage. She longs to get me down to her level again, but I have set my gaze on heavenly things. Praise God! I still struggle, but I know her sneak attack strategies now, and I gird myself up with my own strategies … strategies from heaven that she can never know!

Provoked Out of the Place of Pride
About halfway through, the Lord pretty bluntly revealed the pride of my heart to me. He basically told me that He was “ready” to humble me … haha! The pride in my heart was ruining relationships with my housemates and hindering wholehearted devotion to the Lord. I set my heart not to be discouraged or offended by His method of humbling me. I truly desire for the cry of my heart to be that of John the Baptists, “I must decrease that He may increase”

FPF will always be my home base, even in the age to come ! This has been the hardest, most restful, most fulfilling, best season of my life thus far. This is just the beginning, and I already know the end. He is altogether wise! Now to him who is able to keep me, be dominion over my life forever and ever. Amen.

Philippines Trip

This is the account of my exciting/rewarding travels to Japan and the Philippines in the summer of 2009:

This Agust, I went with a team of 17 people from WEAG to Japan and the Philippine Islands. Our goal was to run performing arts workshops at Faith Academy from two weeks.

We first stopped in Tokyo for two days.  Our time there was crazy fun. The first day we explored around our hotel a bit which was exciting and exhausting all at the same time, considering the fact that we were all still extreemly jet-lagged.  The rest of our time in Tokyo consisted of visiting a Japanise (or as I would say, “Japanian”) garden, eating at an authentic Japanise “hole-in-the-wall” reasturaunt (with a huge language barier I migh add), and sight seeing at Tokyo tower and the Buddhist temples. We had a ton of fun, but I’m not going to lie, my faovrite time on this trip definately happened in the Philippines.

So on to the Filippino part of our trip:
After a night of blissful sleep, we got up bright and early to conduct s few workshops.  The one that I was co teaching, however, had a grand total of 0 students.  That’s right, apperently modern has developed a bad name for itself over in Asia.  This happened again the next day, but by then we had a plan. We ended up kidnapping dancers from the hip hop workshop to do a modern workshop for the last half hour of the time that they had.  The style grew on a few of them (mostly the older ones), so by then we already had dancers .  The students loved it so much that they asked their principle if there was any way to start a dance dept. there, and He found a way to do that!
The first week and a half there was mostly a time of conducting workshops, running rehearsals, alone time with Jesus when off duty, and a couple performances.  We had a lot of fun, and I was really able to get some alone time with God in too, something I wasn’t expecting of this trip. It was pretty chill; we got to know kids, and we got to wander around the campus.
We went on their high school retreat at this old coconut plantation which was gorgeous (minus the 3 or 4 machine gun armed gaurds that were walking arround the whole time – creepy!!).  That was probly my favorite time because it was even more alone time with Jesus and a lot of getting to know the students.  We played with them, prayed for them, and worshiped with them, it was phenominal! There was one day when the Lord just gave me a huge burden for those kids. He really likes every single one of them, and He has a huge desire for every single one of them. I prayed for a couple of hours that day, and the Lord gave me tears for them.  I don’t know what He sis that night, but He did something.
After retreat, we had our own retreat at the beach. Snorkling, geting insanely burned, swimming in the clearest water ever, and getting burned by banka boat exhaust were just a few of the exciting things I was able to do. The food was amazing too; we had Filipino Italian food every night and the most amazing bananna pancakes that ever graced planet earth in the mornings.
This experience, of course, wouldn’t have been anything without our many “fails”.  1) Cariga-fail: on the day that we were supposed to go to historic Carrigador, our ferry got caught up in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakat and had to turn arround after a half hour of vomitting passengers. 2) jeepney-fail: the most popular form of public transpertaion in the Philippines is called a Jeepney. We decided, on numerous occations, that this was also the best way for us to travel. Tight spaces, flat tires, and pteridactal noises were just a few of the perks of our long rides.  Needless to say, in the midst of all of our fails, our sucesses tended to take over.  We went to this awesome basketball game, in which the team we were rooting for won in over time. And we went to this waterfall/hiking place called Darenak (sp?) that was beyond breath taking.

Amazing trip, and what’s mentioned above isn’t even the half of it!