I loved this twist in thinking this devotional shared below. Kingdom language is always opposite. I have recently been grappling with this idea of being poor in spirit. The idea is so UNAMERICAN. We think we have to have it together, be confident, be happy, yet Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit. Those red letter words in the Bible are still challenging me big time. I still am so far from being where I need to be. In a way it encourages me and at the same time I wonder will I ever get it. Dear Jesus, I pray to be filled with your Spirit. If filled with Your Spirit, we are poor in our spirit, empty of self.... Sent from my iPad Begin forwarded message: From: "LifeWay Christian Stores" Date: October 18, 2015 at 10:32:59 PM CDT To: Subject: Nourish With Kyle Idleman: Your Weekly Devotional Reply-To: "LifeWay Christian Stores" Blessed Are the Broke Jesus’s best-known lesson is the Sermon on the Mount. He is in the midst of bringing God’s kingdom to earth, and such things make people uncomfortable. This stuff runs counter to the ways people think. It says up is down and trash is treasure. He begins to introduce us to the great kingdom paradox: at the end of me, I find real life in him. Matthew 5:1 tells us that Jesus sees the crowds, climbs a mountain, and sits down to teach. If you’re like me, you tend to skip over that scene-setting stuff to get to the red-letter words in your Bible—the actual sayings of Jesus. But let’s look a little deeper. We find that if Jesus climbed a mountain, this is probably happening just above the Sea of Galilee. There were revolutionaries in those times, and a lot of them laid low in those mountains, avoiding arrest. So this makes sense. Jesus is another revolutionary who has come up the mountainside. He is saying, “Down with the kingdom of this world and up with the kingdom of God.” And the new kingdom has new rules, many of which are just the reverse of the old ways. Jesus launches his sermon with a list of very striking paradoxes. Some of his statements sound ridiculous at first blush but start to make sense once you think a little deeper and compare your personal experience. For example, his first statement promises the ultimate reward to the least likely people: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:3) First four words: “Blessed are the poor.” You might be thinking, Yes! I win, because I am poor. Then you stop to think about it. Maybe Jesus misspoke—surely it should be “Blessed are the rich.” Because if you say to a rich person, “Hey, you have a beautiful mansion here,” what does he say? “Yes, I know. I’m so rich.” Nope. I bet he says, “Thank you. I’m so blessed.” And yes, I see the words in spirit, and I realize Jesus isn’t talking about money for the most part. But the point remains. We think of a blessed life as one that ends up with plenty of money, not plenty of poverty. Add on the fact that Jesus uses a word for "poor" here that translates to "destitute" or "bankrupt." Blessed are those who are bankrupt in spirit. Really the word we use is broke. Blessed are you when you're so broke you have nothing to offer. If you think much about it, this is a shocking statement. Jesus is saying that God's kingdom begins in you when you come to the end of yourself and realize you have nothing to offer. Flat broke. Busted. How does that guy act? Not as if he's got the world on a string, all the answers neatly compiled. His spirits are in the gutter. And Jesus praises that here. That guy down in the dumps—he wins. Yet the conventional wisdom of pretty much everywhere tells us to radiate self-confidence, self-sufficiency. In short, rich in spirit and in everything else to boot. Jesus says the kingdom begins with taking inventory and coming up with zero. We have nothing to offer, and that means we're making progress. Getting to the end of me is not an easy journey, but Jesus said in Luke 9 that whoever wants to hang on to his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. He said a lot of seemingly upside-down things like that. I've come to realize that if me gets his way, I'll miss out on the real life I'm meant to live. The life in which I love others and make a difference in the world. Isn't that the life you really want too? Excerpted from The End of Me by Kyle Idleman ©2015. David C. Cook. Used by permission. Share a morsel with your friends Blog Catalog App Gift Cards CONTACT: 1.800.448.8032 or email us. This email was sent to `sneakypie9@aol.com ` because you are subscribed to the LifeWaystores.com List. Replies to this newsletter are not monitored. Click here to modify your subscriptions. To unsubscribe from ALL LifeWay emails click here. Feel free to forward this email to a friend. LifeWay Christian Resources protects your privacy and will never make your email address available to anyone else. © 2015 LifeWay Christian Resources, 1 LifeWay Plaza, Nashville, TN 37234