Bride-Atude One: The Joyful Poor

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus wasn’t blessing poverty here.This poverty of spirit is more accurately translated ‘destitute’. Jesus demonstrated this spiritual destitution by laying aside all the rights and privileges of His divinity in exchange for a life on earth that included a manger, homelessness, and ultimately a shameful execution.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Cor. 8:9

Today, we may speak of a destitute person as being ‘down and out’. Someone who’s destitute has completely run out of the resources that make life liveable. In spiritual terms, these are those who have laid aside all confidence in their own strengths, talents, intellect or human endeavours. They have chosen Christ as their chief resource. They are the Bride who is learning to lean only on Him. To the world this attitude looks like foolishness. In the Kingdom it looks like wisdom.

The fruit of this spiritual destitution is joy. This is a joy beyond the joy or thankfulness associated with salvation. This is Christ’s own joy, a ‘joy unspeakable’ that cannot be told (1 Peter 1:8; John 16:22, John 15:11 John 17:13). It cannot be told because it is unexplainable to a world that is unable to receive it. Jesus is the most joyful Person we are ever going to meet. This kind of joy comes only through oneness with Him, and nothing in this world can remove it, even hardship or suffering. This is what it means to possess the Kingdom.

Stay tuned for more Bride-Atudes!

©Cheryl McGrath, Bread for the Bride, 2012