poor in spirit (Matt 5:3)

Matthew 5:3

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Poverty of spirit is the personal acknowledgement of spiritual bankruptcy. It is the conscious confession of unworth before God. Carson

To be poor in spirit is to recognise our own sinfulness before God, to have no confidence in our own ability to make ourselves acceptable to God, to recognise that we need help, we can not sort it out ourselves. This is the starting point for understanding and recieveing the gospel, entering into the kingdom heaven where true life is found, finding true happiness.

To be proud or hold out some hope in our own goodness is to miss this entirely. To have confidence in ourselves is not liberating, it is enslaving. The advice of the world would be that you can change yourself, you can try harder, just believe in yourself. This places a crushing load on your back and leads to misguided self-righteousness if you think you're doing better than someone else, or despair as you repeatedly fail to meet the standards you have set for yourself, let alone those God has declared. Or maybe the world would say that you should cast off those moral expectations, true happiness is found in doing what you want to do, but this can not deal with the nagging guilt and shame. The church tends not to do much better, holding up religious performance, external efforts as the way to enter the kingdom of heaven, and happiness doesn't really have much to do with it.

Confessing our own failure and relying on Jesus performance, not ours, brings freedom, life and a happiness that is not dependent on whether we have had a good day or a bad day.