The Poor in Spirit - Oswald Chambers

…The preaching of today is apt to emphasize strength of will, beauty of character — the things that are easily noticed. The phrase we hear so often, ‘Decide for Christ,’ is an emphasis on something Our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him, a very different thing.

At the basis of Jesus Christ’s Kingdom is the unaffected loveliness of the commonplace. The thing I am blessed in is my poverty. If I know I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, then Jesus says — Blessed are you, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom. I cannot enter His Kingdom as a good man or woman, I can only enter it as a complete pauper.

[Jesus said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Luke 5:31]

The true character of the loveliness that tells for God is always unconscious. … If I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord.

Make me a captive, Lord,
and then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword,
and I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms when
by myself I stand.
Imprison me within Thine arms,
and strong shall be my hand.

My will is not my own
till Thou hast made it Thine.
If it would gain a monarch’s throne,
it must its crown resign.
It only stands unbent,
amidst the clashing strife,
When on thy bosom it has lent,
and found in thee its life.