Living Poor in Spirit – Nathan Slonaker // Matthew 5
May 17, 2026 | Nathan Slonaker
MATTHEW 5:1-3
Step One: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable."
Step Two: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
Matthew 5:1-3 (ESV)
What Jesus covers in the Sermon on the Mount:
The law, anger, sexual sin, divorce, making oaths, loving our enemies, giving to the needy, prayer, fasting, money and possessions, anxiety, judging others, asking and seeking, the golden rule.
Culture says:
Self-sufficiency is the goal. Dependence is the thing to grow out of.
Jesus says:
Dependence on God is the goal. Self-sufficiency is the thing to grow out of.
"The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace — those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to them is like breath."
Am I depending on God because life has backed me into a corner, or because I have chosen to?
Don't let your circumstances dictate your dependence on God.
“Proud people are concerned with being respectable, with what others think; they work to protect their own image and reputation.
Broken people are concerned with being real; what matters to them is not what others think but what God knows; they are willing to die to their own reputation.”
“Proud people don't think they need revival, but they are sure that everyone else does.
Broken people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God.”
Matthew 18:1-3 (ESV)
Jesus is not calling us to be immature. He is calling us to be dependent.
Satan may not convince us to disregard our faith entirely. He just needs us to believe, functionally, that we are sufficient without God.
Insecurity is about us. Poverty of spirit is about Him.
Isaiah 57:15 (ESV)
Poverty of spirit is not something we manufacture. It is something we stop resisting.
Prayer is how we stay out of the self-sufficiency trap by asking God for help in all things.
Don't let your circumstances dictate your dependance on God.
"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again to the sun; and every evening, Do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."