Poor in Spirit

Poor in Spirit

The Beatitudes… The first one

Matthew 5:3

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (NIV)

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. (NLT)

I pray the Beatitudes every morning, if I remember and I’m trying to dig deep on how they apply to life in general…

The poor isn’t because of monetary purposes… It’s about the spirit, the Holy Spirit… That my heart certainly needs to have more Spirit involvement…

The opposite way up being *rich* on earth is pride…

Pride… It’s a pretty big reason why I had my mental breakdown… I thought I could get by on life without really involving God… After all I grew up in church!

I WAS WRONG…

Was it the only reason? No… Could I have avoided my breakdown? I’ll never know for sure, but likely is still would have happened but maybe not all at once. Mental Health issues are combination of:

• genetics
• environment
• spiritual

To say it’s all spiritual is a lie. There are physical changes in the brain that preclude recognized mental health issues…

There are signs before someone is diagnosed being a diabetic. Often, they too are not diagnosed until it must be and we arrive at the doctors or at the hospital…

Before I lost weight I was classified is a diabetic type 2… Now that I have lost weight I’m still considered a diabetic type 2, but it’s under control and no longer require medications. But should I choose to eat and gain the weight back I would again require medications. And likely down the road, because I already have already needed medications, I likely will again…

Gluttony is a sin and sins have consequences absolutely! But not everybody has the same consequences… I have friends that are overweight and do not have diabetes, I also have friends that are not overweight but also have diabetes and not from childhood. Why, this side of Heaven we will not know.

The same can be applied to mental health. Logically, there is no way to ascertain why some people have mental health issues and why some people do not.

If I look back over my entire life from where I am now, I know that there were warning signs all along, in between ignorance, stigma and shame it wasn’t noted.

My pride most certainly did not help the situation.

James 4:6 “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6)

I believe, in a utopian world, my signs of mental health would have been noticed and through spiritual guidance as well as mental health specific lessons, my big mental breakdown might have been avoided…

Result In Death In A Moment

Noticed I said big mental health break down,

not gone

or completely avoided…

All of this though, avoiding the big, could only have happened had I declared that I was POOR IN SPIRIT and chose relied on God and His Spirit totally for my strength…

Just like if I had not given into gluttony, I could have avoided doing damage to my physical body because of Diabetes Type 2 not being in control. It doesn’t mean that I would not have become diabetic, but it means I had recognized it and with God’s help.

Our bodies all have medical surprises… Cancer, arthritis, diabetes, blindness, kidney stones, gallstones, asthma, hearing and mental health… to name a few…

Why is it that one has such big stigma and shame attached to it while other issues are embraced, comforted and prayed for?

To me the real ironic thing is, of the medical issues I just listed, the only one that is absolutely critical and can result in death you in a moment, is mental health…

I wonder if the stigma would be the same if Jesus was in attendance… Jesus came for the sick… He came for the poor in Spirit…