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But as for me, I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; LORD, do not delay. Psalm 70:5  

I was talking with Bob H. this morning to see how he was enjoying his stay at the “Hilton Gardens.” He said it was closer to a stay at the Motel 6 (he’s in the local hospital being treated for pneumonia and COVID).  

We were discussing how adversity invites a sense of urgency in our spiritual lives. When we’re really sick, we become urgent in our need for God. We’re urgent for reassurance of God’s presence and relief from our current infirmities. We’re urgent for help from heaven above.  

In our prayers we cry out to Christ. We plead with Him to take away our pain. This is the nature of the needy. We need God. So out of our pain, our prayers shout for something from our Savior. We need to know He’s near—we need to know now. We pray, “Lord, do not delay. Please move. Please heal us!”  

This is what being poor in Spirit is all about. It’s about being spiritually desperate for the Lord to move. It’s good to be poor in spirit because in our poverty of spirit, we see our greatest need for God. In our weakness we’re most teachable toward God’s divine wisdom. Our spiritual eyes are clearly focused on our utter dependence on Christ. Paradoxically, in God’s economy, our poverty becomes our wealth (Revelation 2:9) and our weakness becomes our strength (Hebrews 11:34).  

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).  

Church, let us maintain a sense of urgency for the Lord at all times. In reality, we are always in desperate need of Him. Dependence on God is not conditioned on a crisis. We depend on Him for the very breath we take every morning when we awake, and for every breath of every moment of every day. In actuality, we are always dependent on Him. Our maturity of faith comes when we realize this and when we begin to live our lives in light of this dependence. And the more dependent upon Him we get, the more desperate for Him we should be.  

Let’s remember how much we need Him, and let’s live like the desperate children of God we really are!  

Pastor Myke