“Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
James 1:16-17 (ESV)
Scripture tells us that the gifts of God, through His Holy Spirit, are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment, speaking of tongues, and interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-10). Scripture also tells us that the fruits of God, through His Holy Spirit, are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Soon after Jesus resisted temptation in the desert and called His first disciples (Matthew 4), He declared the blessings of The beatitudes to the crowds. He didn’t go on to perform many miracles right away. He first acknowledged that God is there for us through our deepest needs. As we journey on our walk with Him, He doesn’t want there to come a point where we feel as if He can’t fulfill our needs or sympathize with us in our moments of weaknesses. So, He declared blessings that the world wouldn’t perceive as blessings. He declared blessings over what the world rejects. Why? It’s because He never came to save the righteous, but the sinner.
The most freeing realization in my walk as a Christian was to stop trying to do it on my own, feel it on my own, experience it on my own, and to simply go to the giver of good gifts and accept the help He freely gives. The way of the world is to suppress our moments of weakness, but the way of a Christian should be to go to the cross.
In Chapter 20: The Beatitudes and Chapter 21: Mourning, I wrote about the beginning blessings of The Beatitudes. The more I study Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the more I obtain a deeper understanding of God’s character.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”Matthew 5:5-6 (ESV)
Jesus first establishes the foundation for what it means to be meek in Matthew 5:3-4. Being meek includes being poor in spirit and it’s a posture that’s aware that we lack nothing with Him and everything without Him. It’s the understanding that we must go to the cross daily and stay in step with Him to live a life filled with the gifts and fruits of the Spirit He offers us. We are blessed when we acknowledge our weaknesses to God, because His strength is made perfect in them. God renews us when we come to Him, but that requires an understanding of what He freely wants us to take from Him. To have this understanding is to take our daily bread.
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
Deuteronomy 8:3 (ESV)
When we have a spiritual understanding that we need God, we have the freedom and will to seek Him. Therefore, we’re blessed because God always honors those who seek Him and come to Him. He draws near to those who draw near to Him. (James 4:8; Zechariah 1:3).
In my personal life, when I was lukewarm in the faith, I always felt God was elusive. That’s why it was easy for me back then to declare that God was ‘agnostic’ which isn’t true. Despite the moments when He revealed Himself to me through the church, people, and circumstances, I never encountered Him in the way I have now. I think this was mostly due to me not realizing that I needed Him. My Creator who created me knows me best. It was foolish to assume that I could walk this life without His counsel, wisdom, discernment, gifts, and fruits. That’s not to say that life doesn’t have its challenges today. But, I now have a strength that the world can’t take from me. A strength that never runs out. There hasn’t been a time when I’ve sought God and hungered for His truth and I’ve been met without grace. God has faithfully blessed me in moments I’ve felt meek and hungered after Him.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
We are blessed when we hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness because we recognize that this world was never meant for us to experience it without Him. God knows every need in our hearts, our lives, and our circumstances. But, He calls on us to draw to Him first and He’ll take care of the rest.
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
John 4:17 (ESV)
When Jesus encountered the woman of Samaria who came to Jacob’s well to draw water from it, He expressed her need for what He had to offer. Without shaming her, He offered her a way to seek Him so she wouldn’t feel the need to continue in those sins. Specifically for this woman, her need for validation came from men. Jesus wanted her to recognize the innate need she actually had for Him that she was seeking from the world.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13 (ESV)
Bible scholars state that the Samaritan woman came to draw water from Jacob’s well around noon. Noon was a time of scorching heat when most people weren’t going to be there at the well. Because she was hiding from society, it’s safe to assume she felt like an outcast and was likely poor in spirit. With five failed marriages in her past, she was probably familiar with the various stages of mourning. And as a single woman in society during that time period, I believe she was also familiar with what it meant to be ‘meek’. The bravest thing this woman did was acknowledging at that moment that she needed what God had to offer instead of being too prideful to accept it.
The Beatitudes reflect what is deemed as ‘less’ in society, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). God is not trying to keep us down in those places of weaknesses, but instead, He wants to lift us up through Him. God never leaves us where He finds us. This has been my experience and the experience of many biblical figures including the Samaritan woman. It’s said in scripture that many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony (John 4:39).
It’s a prideful heart like that of Adam and Eve which causes us to believe there are needs in our lives that can truly be met outside of the presence of God. Like the Samaritan woman, when we seek for external sources outside of God to meet our needs, they will eventually cease to be met. But, the Lord, who remains our eternal rock, holds the well that never runs dry.
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:31-33 (ESV)
Sincerely,
Anne
In which ways has God strengthened you when you’ve felt weak? How has God blessed you when you’ve hungered after Him? Share your testimony below!
Here’s additional scripture to meditate on this week:
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19 (ESV)
“To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.”
1 Corinthians 12:8-10 (NIV)
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.” (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Ephesians 4:7-13 (NIV)
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Galatians 5:16-24 (ESV)
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 (NIV)
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