Becoming Poor in Spirit

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”

(Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:3)

We see from these words of Jesus that being poor in spirit is the pathway to the

kingdom of heaven. “That’s great,” I hear you say, “but how do I become poor in spirit,

and what is the kingdom of heaven anyway?”

I will cover the kingdom of heaven question in a future blog. For now, let’s investigate

the poor in spirit part. As I explained in a previous blog post, being poor in spirit is

accepting that you are not in charge—you rely on others and God. This marks a

profound shift in the way you view your relationship with other people and with God. It

forms the foundation of the internal transformation process that Jesus lays out in the

Sermon on the Mount.

Being poor in spirit is easier to do if we are beaten down by life or if we encounter an

experience that reinforces this sense of dependence on others. It’s harder to do if our

lives are relatively comfortable.

Becoming poor in spirit is an intensely personal process, for it requires you to adjust

your entire outlook—on your life, your relationship with God, and your relationship with

your fellow humans. It is also a very important step, for only when you have truly

changed your outlook can you be ready to take the next step.

Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God and to love your neighbor

just as much as you love yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). The first task in this step, then,

is to improve our relationship with God. Don’t worry if you have done some bad things.

God loves you and is waiting for you to return.

Start by telling God, our heavenly Father, that you love him. By repeating this every

day, you will reinforce it in your mind. This is for you; God knows you love him. A short

prayer in the morning before you get out of bed may help you to get in the habit of

reminding yourself daily that God loves you and that you should love God in return. use

the following prayer, but feel free to make up your own.

Good morning, heavenly Father, thank you for loving me. I love you too. Today, help me

to love my fellow humans as much as I love myself. Amen.

Reaffirming your love for God as your heavenly Father is the first step of this three-step

process of becoming poor in spirit. The second step is an evaluation of your outlook on

life with respect to who is in control. If you are a type A personality like me, you might

find this difficult at first.

Begin by thinking back in your life to a few times when something completely unexpected happened. They could be either good or bad. Next, think of a few times

when you really worked hard to make something happen and it either did not happen

or the complete opposite of what you were working for actually happened. Now

consider these examples. The common denominator in these events is a lack of control

on your part. As much as we would like to think that we are in control, the reality is that

many aspects of our lives are outside our control.

The third step of this process is to examine and to readjust our relationship with others.

Think back to a few times in your life when a friend, a neighbor, or even a complete

stranger helped you with something that you could not do yourself. These are the times

when we had to rely on others for help and represent even more examples of our lack

of total control over our lives. We rely on other human beings a whole lot more than we

are willing to admit.

Now comes the hardest part of this third step. Remembering that Jesus taught us that

even our enemies are our neighbors and should be loved, we need to examine ourselves and how we feel about our fellow humans.

Start by analyzing the aspects of your personality that hinder or help your ability to love

your neighbor. Next, come up with ways to enhance those elements of your personality

that help your ability to love and look for ways to correct those elements that detract

from your ability to love. Finally, incorporate this new self-awareness into the way you

view others and react to them on a real-time basis. This will definitely take some

practice, but the reward is worth it.