India- The Poor in Spirit

I get so easily distracted and know what it means to lack the gift of being poor in spirit. I think that if someone were to say ‘give up your life for Jesus’ I would say yes instantly, but yet on a daily basis I fail at this.  Every time I feel the urge to pray, but don’t because of my phone or the TV or something similar, I am

showing God what I think is truly important. Having spiritual poverty (being poor in spirit) means I am willing to drop everything for Jesus, nothing would tie me down or make me say ‘hold on Jesus, be with you in a minute.’  This may be why the material poor are closer to Jesus’ heart, because they don’t have material things that they have made into their own gods and put them before Christ.  They run to embrace the fullness of the Lord when He calls because they can see how much greater He is than anything here on earth, while I often have to respond to a text or finish a quick task before I turn my full attention to God. While in Goa, we saw the people give way more honor and thanksgiving to God in one day than many Americans give in their whole lives.

I think a lot of this comes from all of the things we have and the technology that makes us so self efficient that we don’t think we have to rely on God daily and do things like pray for freshwater because it’s right in our homes, we don’t have to pray for good weather because we can predict it days ahead of times, and we know we will always have more than enough for our next meal.  We have turned from thanking God to thanking ourselves because we think everything is in our control with the touch of a button.  In India, many didn’t know if they would eat their next meal or have clean water, and when they did, they gave great thanks to God for providing it for them.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be glad for all the technology; it is a wonderful thing (when used in the right way).  What I am saying is that we still need to thank The One who gave us the brains to invent such technology and for the ability to have food on our table because of the jobs that we have due to the skills we were given .  God doesn’t want us to have nothing, but he is God, the Creator, the Father, we should depend fully on Him, giving Him the honor and the thanksgiving He deserves for all that He has given us. 

‘Nothing is appreciated more than appreciation’