Barriers To True Mourning That Prevent True Comfort

One of the great problems with our fallen human nature, however, is that we will do almost anything to avoid facing the reality of our situation so that we can mourn over it and move forward. In our contemporary culture we have grown to hate the thought of taking any kind of responsibility for the circumstances of our lives. We have cultivated a culture of blame-shifting, and would rather find fault with something outside ourselves than to reckon ourselves responsible. We would rather blame the food industry for filling their products with fat and chemicals than face the fact that we are gluttons, unwilling to discipline our appetites. As this is being written in the fall of 2005, the courts have just ruled that people who are obese can no longer bring lawsuits against fast-food restaurants! We would rather blame the government for taking prayer out of schools than acknowledge the fact that we are prayerless people. We want to put an interpretive “spin” on our situations so that we appear in the best possible light. Therefore we construct elaborate and devious schemes so that someone else – anyone else – will be forced to take the blame for our condition instead of us.

Another way that we avoid true mourning is by keeping our grief at a superficial level, feeling sorry for ourselves in the face of troublesome circumstances rather than allowing the situation to expose our deeper issues. An example of this is seen in a Biblical story found in Genesis 19 that speaks to this avoidance tendency in a powerful way. A man name Lot was the nephew of Abraham, and had taken up residence in the wicked city of Sodom. Over time, God became fed up with the evil practices of the citizens there, and He determined to bring judgment to the city by raining down fire from heaven to destroy it. Three angels came to Lot to warn him of the impending disaster, and urge him to take his family and leave town immediately. They were specifically warned not to look back upon the destruction of the city lest they be caught themselves in that judgment. Lot’s wife ignored the advice, looked back as they were leaving, and was turned into a pillar of salt!

You might say that the reason she looked back was that she was mourning the loss of her home and friends, but the mourning called for in the Beatitudes requires a deeper process. Lot’s wife had a more basic issue. Deep in her heart this woman had a love for the ethos of the city, an attraction to the lusty lifestyle that surrounded her. She had allowed her heart to become attached to a situation that was totally compromised. Instead of truly mourning the duplicity in her own heart and rejoicing in the true comfort of God’s deliverance, she felt sorry for herself, and gave herself to yearning after the lost pleasures of Sodom. She thus received judgment instead of real comfort and freedom.

What God desires is that when we are confronted with the reality of our own condition, we allow the Holy Spirit to impact our hearts with what our compromise costs us in our relationship with Jesus. To the degree that we see this and truly grieve over the cost of compromise, Jesus declares that we will be comforted by His presence as a result. 

Powerful People Are Those Who Mourn

Real mourning is a lost art in our medicated Western culture. Our extreme distaste for any experience of painful emotion drives us to all sorts of solutions trying to bring comfort to the situation in which real comfort stubbornly eludes you. We would rather do almost anything rather than endure a place of darkness. We drink alcohol, swallow pills, inject drugs, consume food, have affairs, spend money, leave town – anything to avoid an experience of real mourning. We desire comfort but seem unwilling to do the very thing that Jesus says is the root system of true comfort – experience deep mourning.

What is in view in this second Beatitude? The entry for “mourning” in Vincent’s Word Studies speaks of grieving that is too deep for concealment. To underscore this interpretation, the word for “mourning” in the New Testament is often used with the idea of weeping audibly. The implication is that something comes into focus, some issue or pain that is so dominating, so overwhelming that we can’t hide it any longer. All we can do in those times is mourn, crying out in agony over the situation in which we find ourselves.

Mourning Our Own Brokenness

This is especially necessary when the thing in focus is our own broken condition. When the reality of the effect of sin hits us in the face, the only right response is to face it fully, and allow its weight to have its maximum impact. The sinful condition of our lives involves the destructive things that have been done to us, as well as our destructive responses to those situations. Our sinfulness also directly involves owning our own damaging choices rooted in selfishness and rebellion against God and His ways. Real healing and restoration can only begin in my life is when I am willing to squarely face the responsibility that I have for my own situation – sinful responses to the acts of others, and the sinfulness that arises out of my own dark heart. I must allow the Holy Spirit to convict my heart of my own sin, feel the weight of it, and begin to mourn over the whole thing.

A powerful example of this mourning occurs in the New Testament example of Peter in the aftermath of his denial of Jesus during His trial and crucifixion. Luke’s gospel tells us that when Peter claimed for the third time that he did not know Jesus, a rooster crowed (just as Jesus had predicted) and Jesus’ eyes locked with Peter’s. He was immediately filled with agonizing conviction of his own failure, and his response was to mourn over his own sin. He went out and wept bitterly.

There is a point in our lives when we must come face to face with the fact that we have chosen again and again to follow our own agenda rather than the will of God. Peter denied relationship with Jesus because he was operating in fear and self-protection at the expense of his commitments to his Lord. When he realized what he had done, it grieved his spirit beyond measure, beyond his capacity to contain it. Each of us must come to that place as well. There must come a time when the reality of our failure and the gaze of Jesus are focused on us, when we feel the depth of our sin and can no longer excuse it or explain it away. At that point our only alternative is to mourn.

Next time: Barriers to Authentic Mourning

The Reward of Poverty of Spirit

The promise that Jesus makes to those who will come before the Father in poverty of spirit is fairly astonishing. He says “the Kingdom of Heaven will be yours.” In other words, those who embrace these character qualities will become participants in the life God intended for them here on earth now, and in the fullness of the Kingdom of God in the age to come. This is the life Jesus lived, a life fully established in a relationship of intimate friendship with God. It’s a life filled with His attitudes and expressed in His character. It’s a life characterized by the power and authority that Jesus had.

Let me share a story that illustrates the point. I have a friend who is a businessman in Madison, Wisconsin. Dave owns and operates two fitness centers in that city, and has been enormously successful over the past couple of decades. The key is that he began to cultivate with God a relationship of intimate submission and therefore intimate authority years ago before the business became what it is now.

Dave was a fledgling businessman in his middle twenties when the opportunity came to purchase the fitness center that became the Princeton Club. He put together an investment group, raised the necessary capital (somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million), and felt as though the Lord was going to bless this venture. On the morning that the deal was set to close escrow, the Holy Spirit spoke to Dave in the quietness of his heart and asked him to lay the deal down, to not do it. 

Dave was devastated. He knew it was the voice of the Lord, yet he had business partners to think of, and his own reputation as a credible businessman was on the line. He could have pressed past these very subjective feelings in his heart, and rationalized the purchase of the club. He had the backing of reputable partners, and the confidence of the men from whom he was buying the business. However, deep in his heart, Dave realized that to move forward with the purchase would be to trust his own judgment and value his own reputation more than the voice of God. He would move out of the place of intimacy and confidence in the Lord’s leading. He would save face in the short term, but lose that wonderful sense of partnership with God in his business ventures.

Dave went to the closing that day, and shut the deal down. It was painful and humiliating, and he bore the price of that decision over the next couple of years. No one really understood why he had done what he did, and as you can imagine, his mind was bombarded with thoughts of being ridiculous and hyper-spiritual.

A couple of years later, however, the Lord vindicated Dave’s willingness to live as one who is poor in spirit, who knows how much they need God. The men from whom Dave was going to buy the center called and asked to see him. When he walked into their offices, they declared their inability to find a suitable buyer, and their unwillingness to have anyone but him own the club. They then proceeded to give the fitness center to Dave – property, membership, machinery – everything! In one moment God vindicated the trust of His friend Dave, and since that time has given favor to Dave in the marketplace of Madison. In 2004 he opened the second center, a $15 million structure that is a wonder to behold. Within a year of opening, the membership at the clubs doubled, and a strong profit margin was realized. 

When God’s people dare to live a life of total dependence upon Him, the reward they get is God Himself, and the full authority of His Kingdom. It’s worth the risk!

Gary Wiens

Living Like Jesus in Poverty of Spirit

Jesus realized that He had come to fulfill God’s mysterious plan of bringing all heavenly things and all earthly things together in Himself. He was a man, but one who was full of the Spirit of God. In His merely fleshly existence, He could do nothing of power on His own initiative. Outside the intimate partnership with His Father He could not fulfill His destiny as the one who would bring together all things in heaven and earth. This realization that in our mere flesh we can do nothing is the essence of poverty of spirit. If Jesus could do nothing on His own initiative, how much can we do on our own?

But God designed us to participate in His life. So, Jesus models true humanity by cultivating His relationship with the Father, listening to Him, watching Him with the eyes of the Spirit, and doing whatever the Father is doing. The wonderful news here is that the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He Himself does! Therefore, because the Father shows the Son what He is doing, Jesus is empowered to do those same things, and you have the reward that comes to those with poverty of spirit – the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them!

Every time Jesus did what the Father was doing, the earthly and the heavenly came together. The man operated in poverty of spirit, and the Father released signs and wonders. The one who was poor in spirit received the Kingdom, and modeled the life of true humanity for the rest of us.

It is important that we not confuse God’s motives here. He is not a controller, limiting our activity so that He can pull the strings of our lives like some sort of cosmic puppeteer. That image of God is a horrible caricature, and is true of Satan, not God. The God that Jesus knew as Father desires His children to live in the full reality of His power and liberty. Jesus walked in the freedom of that power because every moment, as a man, He recognized His need for God’s life to be lived through Him.

See, Beloved, we are created to live every day in the power of God. However, we don’t see that reality lived out much in our day. I believe the reason for this is that the vast majority of God’s children don’t even know that He desires for us to live like Jesus did, much less that He has made the power available for that kind of living. It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit is raising up the message of intimacy and affection between God and His people at this time in history, so that we might come to believe what He has in store for us if we will come in poverty of spirit.

Jesus and Poverty of Spirit

It is necessary for us to see that Jesus Himself lived in the constant awareness of how much He needed the help and strength of God, His own Father. This is shown to us clearly in His encounter with the Jewish religious leaders recorded in chapter five of the Gospel of John. Here’s the scenario: Jesus has just healed a crippled man in a wonderful way, and the Jews are upset because He did it on the Sabbath day. Jewish tradition and religious legalism had turned the day of rest into a spiritual and social prison by restricting activity instead of calling the people to a day of intimate communion with God designed to bring rest to their bodies, souls, and spirits. So, when Jesus revealed the tender mercy of God by healing this man on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders missed the whole point, and were furious.

When they questioned Him about the event, Jesus’ reason for healing him was a surprising one:

Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; 

for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. (John 5:19)

Here’s the startling truth of this confession: Jesus, the Son of God, is declaring that He can do nothing on His own initiative! The most powerful man in the universe is admitting that He has no strength unless the Father gives it to Him! Then Jesus goes on in the next verse to reveal the delightful dimension of intimacy with His Father that releases this strength and authority in His life:

For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; 

and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. (John 5:20)

It is so important that we grasp what is being shown us here! Jesus, the ultimate man, is declaring that He has no ability to do anything on His own.  Jesus can’t do anything for God! All He can do is what God gives Him the strength to do in the context of their intimate friendship. He is completely dependent upon His love relationship with His Father to know what to do, and to have the ability to do it. This is poverty of spirit at its best, and the example is given to us that we might embrace the same reality in our lives.

A Deeper Look at Power through Poverty of Spirit

As we begin the process of reflecting on the Beatitudes as the measuring stick for those who are being qualified to have authority on earth as it is in heaven, the first thing to notice is the order in which they are given. There is a purpose to that order, a progressive encounter with God’s character requirements that must be embraced that we might fulfill that which is His desire for us.

Therefore it is significant that the first requirement for heaven’s authority to be released is poverty of spirit. There is no great mystery to what the words mean. Poverty is a condition of having no resources, of being totally dependent upon the resources of another. One who is poverty-stricken is one who is at the end of their means, who has no hope of changing their circumstance by their own strength. For most of us, living as we do in our affluent culture, poverty is something we see at a distance, something that rarely touches us except in a second-hand way.

However, once in awhile some circumstance emerges that allows us to touch poverty more personally. In the late summer of 2005, a massive hurricane named Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast of the United States, bringing great destruction to a huge region of the nation. We sympathized with those who were forced to leave everything and escape the storm’s fury. We watched with horror as people who had made the decision to stay in their homes rather than evacuate experienced the terrifying reality of nature’s strength. It was a gripping scenario, and for days the nation’s news agencies were riveted on this story.

In the midst of that event, one vignette that captured my attention involved a group of people who had been vacationing in New Orleans. They were people of means, but suddenly their wealth meant nothing as they were completely unable to make arrangements to get out of town. They had paid $25,000 to charter a bus to come into the city to take them away, only to find that the armed forces in the city commandeered the bus before it could get to these folks. In that circumstance, these people had no recourse, and though they eventually found a way out, the anger and frustration that is rooted in fear was obvious in their faces as they told their story.

Poverty of spirit is like that. It is the sometimes shocking awareness that when it comes to living up to the values and expectations of God’s heavenly kingdom, all of us are weighed in the scales and found to be too light. The statement of Paul the Apostle in Romans 3:23 is pointed and powerful: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Poverty of spirit is the realization that nothing I can do will set me straight with God, or produce the kind of powerful life I was created to live in and enjoy. (to be continued!)

Excerpt taken from "Reaching Your Power Potential: Authority on Earth as it is in Heaven"

By Gary & Marie Wiens, available in the Kindle Store, Amazon.com

The Blessing of Being Persecuted for Righteousness’ Sake

The final stage of being qualified to stand in the authority of heaven on earth is that of being persecuted for the sake of righteousness. The first thing to say here is that we must see the persecution come for the sake of righteousness, and not for any other reason. Persecution for the sake of any other issue is not what Jesus is speaking about here. This is not about being political activists, or doctrinal watchdogs, or adopting extreme positions on controversial issues. This is about being people who are consumed with God, passionate that all people and things become what they ought to be according to the design of God, and who have given their lives to that pursuit in the character of humility, meekness, and love.

The fact is that people like this will not be received well by the general population. At the same time that there is a longing and desire to be like Him, there is also a deep ambivalence rooted in our determination to be the god of our own little world. It’s a pathetic posture, really, a position polluted by megalomania. The assumption that we have what it takes to rule our world is so unrealistic and patently untrue. No matter how much we control, there are so many factors beyond our control that any human authority apart from God dangles by the most fragile of threads. History has proven this again and again, and we ignore the truth to our own detriment.

Having said this, it is an immensely unpopular stance to challenge the sovereignty of the individual and ask them to give up the right of self-direction for the sake of submitting to God. Though some people – prepared by the Holy Spirit and wooed by the heart of God – will hear that invitation and respond gladly, many will resist it to the point of persecuting those who stand with Jesus in the purposes of God.

Persecution has been the real experience of Godly people through the ages, and Jesus’ promise is that we will experience it as well. However, it is His desire that we see the real blessing behind the experience, and rejoice that we are numbered with the faithful through the centuries. We will be faced with trouble as we preach, teach, and live these principles. It is the way of the Kingdom of God, and it will be our way as well.

Gary Wiens