The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: If you know you're poor in spirit—I'm not even going to ask anybody to raise your hand—but if you have a sense of being helpless before God in the situation you're in right now, that might be you're a sinner, that might be a trial that you're in, or a difficulty or a problem. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, if you're feeling helpless and powerless, friend, there is hope for you!

Guest (Male): In Matthew chapter five, Jesus begins to teach his disciples about being blessed in a passage of scripture commonly known as the Beatitudes. On today's Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris is going to specifically take a look at those who are poor in spirit and those who mourn, and how that sensitivity to our human condition can bring about God's blessing.

Pastor Jack Morris: I've been thinking about spiritual life and spiritual character and how to develop it and move on from where I am right now. I don't want to plateau in my Christian experience, but I know it's so easily done. We reach a certain place, we're somewhat comfortable in that place, and we go to church—and we need to do that—and read our Bibles.

But I believe that there's so much in the Lord, so much in God—such depth, such height, such breadth—and life is going so quickly. How are we going to move into that place in the Lord that he has called us to move into? So I'm going to try to talk about the blessed person as we go through these nine Beatitudes that I hope to get them all finished, because I'll no doubt use two at a time each Sunday morning beginning this morning and also through November.

Everything that Jesus taught in the whole New Testament is the essence and core and summary of these Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. If you want a quick summary, read the Sermon on the Mount and you will know everything that Jesus elaborated on and expounded upon. This is it! So we're coming right back to the foundation, to the very basics, the essence, the core, the summary. These nine Beatitudes are changeless. They are as relevant this morning as they were then when Jesus spoke them.

Things change all the time. We live in change. The only thing that is predictable in life is change, and change is the basic source of all stress. Everything is changing. If you want something that is changeless—and I can assure you this is the only thing I can think of today that is changeless—it is the word of God. Our clothes change, our worship services change, everything is in a flux, so to speak, but not this.

These nine Beatitudes tell us that Christianity begins within. That's where it is: inside us. It's life inside us. True religion begins inside. I want to contrast a Christmas tree with an apple tree. A Christmas tree does not have roots—the one you bring in the house doesn't have roots. You go out in the woods and you cut it down, or you go somewhere and you buy a Christmas tree and bring it in. Then you put all those beautiful ornaments on it.

I love the Christmas tree. I really enjoy it, even trimming it. I remember as a little boy, I was out and when I got home, my mother and sister had already trimmed the tree and I wanted to be part of trimming that tree, putting those ornaments on. But notice, in a Christmas tree, everything is tacked on from the outside: the lights, the tinsel, the balls—it's external.

But now take an apple tree. It has roots down in the soil. The sun comes out and warms it. God sends the rain and gives it moisture, and then something beautiful, miraculous happens: apples appear. But the apple tree has its decoration, apples, from the inside out. The Christmas tree has its decorations from the outside. I want to be a Christian with the very life of Jesus in me—and I'm sure this is the kind of Christian you want to be—so that the fruits of the Spirit and the character of Jesus will come out.

I don't want to tack it on. I believe, and I think you're aware also, that many people tack on religion. They go to church a couple times a year, they were christened, they get all the ornaments, and it's all coming in from the outside. But that born-again experience, where the very life of heaven enters into you, hasn't come to them. Then on the other hand, there are those who accept Jesus as their Savior. By accepting him, he comes in, then they are baptized as a witness of something that has already taken place, and now it's beginning to work itself out.

Let the Holy Spirit come upon us and breathe the very breath of heaven into us so that the character of Jesus will flow out from us. There are people that want to love and they try to love—they want to love everybody—but they don't have the energy, the power within them, and so they're tacking it on with a smile and a handshake, but the real goods just aren't there. They have to put their own energy in it to make it work.

I have a tree in my front yard. I have three trees just like that, and I planted them years ago about 30 feet apart. They just grew up and then the limbs grew into each other, so every so many years I have to have them pruned back. The man came—about four or five fellows—and they cut it back and they ground it all up and cleaned up the yard. Then the man came up to the door for the check. He wanted to be paid; of course, he worked hard.

So I paid him, and then he looks at me and he said, "This was the wrong time of the year to prune these trees." I looked at him like I'd lost my mind. I said, "Why are you telling me that now? It's done, it's over! Why didn't you tell me that ahead of time? I don't know." He said, "It's the wrong time." I thought, "Oh, all these years, those pretty trees, they're dead. They're dead."

I had a neighbor down the street I was talking to. I was really put out, and he said, "I think they're going to come back. I think they'll come back." He and I both were looking toward the spring, but then God performed a miracle just for me. It was very hot weather when they pruned that tree, too hot to cut off the limbs. But then when the weather started getting a little cool, the green came out. I don't have to wait until spring! It all came from the inside. When I got up one morning and I looked out, I thought, "Oh, praise the Lord, it's alive!"

And so it is with Jesus in our hearts. We're alive in Christ. The energy of the Holy Spirit is within us. Now I can love everybody, even my enemies if I have any. Isn't the Lord good to us? Praise be to God forevermore for his great love and mercy to us. Get ready for some heavenly energy—not Ensure or Boost, but the work of the Holy Ghost imparting Jesus.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit." Soul poverty simply means—certainly not meaning poor in material things, there's nothing blessed about being poor materially—nothing at all. But look at how we're really blessed. If you want to connect with those upraised hands over you as he ascends back to heaven, if you want to really make that connection, here it is: blessed are the poor in spirit.

Soul poverty is me realizing I'm a sinner. I don't know how to get to God. I don't have the power to get to God. All I can do is say, "God, have mercy on me, pity me." I'm poor in spirit. I have problems, I have trials, there's difficulties in my life. I wish I could resolve them. I wish I had no enemies—and again, I don't think I have enemies; I may have, but somebody's keeping them a real secret. But I'm poor. I can't do Christianity. I only have Jack Morris's spirit.

But there's another spirit: the Holy Spirit. There's the blessing of the upraised hands over me, and all of a sudden, like the tree in my front yard, my life was absolutely barren, helpless. Then something happened from the inside, and then something began to happen on the outside. What is happening? I have become, and am becoming, a new creature in Christ Jesus, and it's all happening from within, without.

I'm not a decorated Christmas tree trying to tack on and make people believe, and even make myself believe. There's too many people that have deceived themselves. They think they're okay, they're on their way. Like my dad said to me when I wanted to be baptized after becoming a Christian: I had been baptized by immersion before I became a Christian because the pastor told me, "You've got to be baptized." Every Sunday in that church, we heard sermons on baptism and we all took Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper, every Sunday.

So I followed along; I just let the church start tacking things onto me. But then there was a great change in my life. I accepted Jesus as my Savior and I felt that new life come in. Every once in a while, I feel it again; it comes in, it energizes me, and I'm thankful. I want to walk out of here a new creature in Christ Jesus, and the Lord is here to give that blessing.

After I had been born again—I was about 14 years old—I wanted to be baptized. My dad said, "You have already been baptized." I tried to explain to him, but I was baptized because the church that we went to told me I needed to be baptized, but they didn't tell me why. No one ever told me I was a sinner.

Then I went to my grandmother's church and the pastor preached a sermon. He later became a missionary to Africa—maybe that's what stirred me up about overseas missions so much, that impression upon a young boy. He invited me to come to the altar. I went up and knelt down, and Reverend McCawley knelt down beside me—not to get anything out of me, but to give to me new life in Christ.

I was one of the speakers at his funeral several years ago and I couldn't help but remember, and the tears just flowed. When we were over in that little building over there, that dear old man came and preached one Sunday and I told the congregation, "This is the man that preached the sermon, told me I was a sinner." People don't want to hear they're sinners. Friend, chances are every one of us in thought, word, or deed sinned this past week.

Very few days go by that we don't sin. That's why we need this ongoing confession, and that's why we have to have ongoing communion. It doesn't happen and then you're super-duper Christian forever and ever. No, we need Jesus. We need the infilling of the Holy Spirit. We need confession and repentance as an ongoing thing. How many times do you wash your dishes? How many times do you get your clothes cleaned? How many times do you take a bath? We need a spiritual bath, and the Lord comes to bless and to help us.

Notice what he has to say here: a sense of powerlessness, a sense of helplessness before God. It's not just hearing it and saying, "I believe it," but now I'm beginning to feel it. If you don't feel it, you don't have it. But when I sense I'm a sinner, when Reverend McCawley preached that sermon and gave that altar call, I felt it. I felt unclean, I felt lost, I felt sin, I felt God wasn't in my life, and everything I felt was true.

He said, "Would you like to come up here and receive Jesus as your Savior?" and I went up. Even to this very hour, I have those feelings that will come and I go to the Lord and say, "Lord, I have a problem, I have a difficulty, I have an attitude, I have a disposition," and I spell it out to him. "Help me, forgive me, give me power to overcome." Then comes that energy from the inside. I'm an apple-bearing apple tree by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Friend, when you sense you're powerless in that trial, in that need, you wonder how you're going to get out of it, get beyond it. The same way you got out of your sin and got beyond it: you go to Jesus with it and talk to him about it. When you feel that sense of helplessness, it's then there's hope for you. If you don't feel the sense, then you're stuck and you don't have the energy to move beyond.

It has to be a divine energy. Then it says, "For theirs is the kingdom of God." Then I really know heaven has come down and entered me. Now I'm in the kingdom of God because I've confessed out all my problems in that trial, that difficulty, that sin—whatever it is. I remember that he is a God of blessing, of upraised hands. He went back to heaven blessing me and he never pulled his hands off of my head, or your head.

How he forgives my sin, heals my diseases and hurts and griefs, and comforts me and helps me in my discouragement. Friend, if you know you're poor in spirit, but if you have a sense of being helpless before God in the situation you're in right now, wherever you are in your spiritual journey, if you're feeling helpless and powerless, friend, there is hope for you! But if you're not feeling that way, well, you're going to stay right where you are and nothing's going to happen.

But Jesus has come, impressed upon me: I want to bless the Largo Community Church. Give me the word, Lord. He gave it to me, I've given it to you. Thank God for the truth of his word. He said, "Blessed are those who mourn." I'm mourning over my sin. I'm mourning because I have an attitude that I know in all honesty is not a good attitude, it's not a Christian attitude, a disposition. I'm avoiding certain people. There's something wrong with me, Lord. You talk to that Savior that way, there's hope for you. There's healing, there's wholeness, and you will feel like you're being saved all over again.

Blessed are those who mourn—you're mourning, you're sorry, you're telling God. It says, "For they will be comforted." God will fix it for you. All you need to do is turn to him. So this is the day the Lord has made. He's ready to do something beautiful and wonderful for you and to you, in you. Don't be a decorated Christmas tree. Don't just tack on Christianity. Let the life of Jesus well up, come up, fill you, come out through you. You'll become a new character, your characteristics will change, everything will change because Jesus makes all things new.

Guest (Male): Are you feeling the blessing of God in your life today? If so, praise and thank him for his loving kindness. And if not, reach out in prayer and tell Jesus your heartfelt needs. He will take those needs and replace them with blessings and comfort.

If today's message from The Healing Word spoke to your heart, we'd love to hear from you. Visit us online at thehealingword.com, a place where you can connect, share your prayer requests, and know that others are praying with and for you. While you're there, you can also listen to more messages from Pastor Jack Morris and learn more about how his ministry is reaching lives around the world with the hope of Jesus Christ. That's thehealingword.com, where faith is strengthened, prayers are lifted, and hearts are healed through the power of God's word. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message.