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“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matthew 5: 3-5, NIV.

In solitary silence we listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls us the beloved. To do this effectually we must first turn a deaf ear to the “accuser of the brethren”. We must regularly renounce his insidious lies. Even if we have wrongly agreed with them throughout our life; we can now invite the great inner light of Holy Spirit to illumine our heart and mind with pure truth. Pure truth reveals daily “who” and “whose” we are! We are bought with a price.

Holy Spirit continually appeals to the deepest levels of our New Covenant heart and inner man. His constant communication speaks unconditional love into our core parts—the place that yet embraces the lies of self-hatred and shame. Those places which fool us into believing everything is about us and thus distorts our identity into a twisted “narcissist”; instead of the grand spirit being of infinite worth and value that Brother Jesus and Papa say we are.

He takes us by the hand through the night (the dark night of the soul) into the resplendent light of His grand truth about our humanity. That grand truth is always embraced through the doorways of humility, poverty, brokenness and meekness. With His daily help and comfort, we arrive at the same glorious place of hiddenness in Christ. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God”. 

“Jesus, my Brother and Lord, I pray as I write these words for the grace to be truly poor before you, to recognize and accept my weakness and humanness, to forgo the indecent luxury of self-hatred, to celebrate your mercy and trust in your power when I’m at my weakest, to rely on your love no matter what I may do, to seek no escapes from my innate poverty, to accept loneliness when it comes instead of seeking substitutes, to live peacefully without clarity or assurance, to stop grand-standing and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in my life fade away, to belong no more to myself, not to desert my post when I give the appearance of staying at it, to cling to my humanity, to accept the limitations and full responsibility of being a human being—really human and really poor in Christ our Lord.

This devotional and prayer were inspired by the heart-words of a dear “rag-a-muffin” brother, Brennan Manning.

In the loving grip of big brother Jesus! Ron Ross