Being poor in spirit is being someone who knows that you have nothing, spiritually, to offer and therefore you stand completely dependent upon God—upon his grace, his mercy, his provision, and effort. Being poor in spirit is accepting that you are spiritually needy.

There’s a bright thread of connection between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the way the sermon on the mount begins. The tree stood as a perpetual sign for Adam and Eve to rely upon and walk submitted under God’s word. God declared all that was good or not good and they, as His creatures and image bearers were to trust Him. Of course, that didn’t pan out and we’ve all, since Adam, placed more weight on our own perspectives and words than we have in God and His word. Utterly foolish. William Henley’s Invictus declares that we’ve become the “captain of our own fate”, when in reality we’ve become conquered (victa) by own fallen self-reliance. Utterly foolish because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God and a true fear of God is essentially a radical reliance upon Him.
Our world today, like Cain and Lamech before us, is intoxicated in self-reliance and self-sufficiency. We pronounce blessings upon the rich and able, the well-to-do and confident, for theirs is the power of influence and the world’s applause. But Jesus, picking up a rather well-defined Biblical theme, starts off his famous sermon with a still more ancient promise – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). The idea of being poor, that is, materially destitute, is not a foreign concept. We understand poverty. And poor people are, more often than not, quite dependent upon others for any well-being. A beggar begs because he needs help from someone who has more than him. John Stott recognizes that within the Scriptures “gradually, because the needy had no refuge but God, poverty came to have spiritual overtones and to be identified with humble dependence on God.”[1]  Hence Psalm 34:5-6, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.”[2]
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To my pastors, and pastors everywhere: Thank you. Thank you for continually encouraging us to keep running this race, pressing us to run better and faster. Thank you for reminding us that we’re almost there- that we can end well. What you do really does make a difference.

It was desperation that made me do it.
My ears perked up when your weekly message ended with the familiar reminder that the pastors are available to meet with people experiencing various issues in their spiritual walk.
A troubled relationship with one person had created ripples of conflict in other areas of my life and I had found myself in what I thought was an inescapable and intolerable situation. I was certain I was right, but that provided no resolution to the conflict in which I was engulfed.
The multiple facets to my situation were like hundreds of strands in a knot with which I wrestled inwardly day and night. I could not see another way and I was emotionally distraught. I don’t like to ask for help, but I had come to the end of my own resources. I emailed you for a recommendation to meet with someone in our church counseling ministry, but you and your wife offered to meet with me instead.
I’m not sure what I was expecting but I know I did not expect that what I learned in our meetings would eventually alter the curve of my Christian walk forever. I know I did not expect the level of compassion that you both showed me. So often we avoid asking for help because we don’t want to dispel the church myth that we have it all worked out, and appear weekly with shiny, happy smiles. I’m utterly grateful for that compassion. When you began to slowly unravel my knot in the light of scripture, and I saw that my problem was deeper than the other person, your compassion made the hard admission of my failings so much easier.
When it would have been possible to get involved in the details of my conflict, you kept the focus on God’s Word, the Bible. It was with skill that you applied those ancient Words to my wound. I remember you telling me that no matter how wrong I thought someone else was or how badly I felt I had been treated, I was still answerable to God for my own behavior. Well of course I knew it at some superficial level, but that day it got my attention and I realized that my failure to live by that very concept was probably keeping me from growing spiritually. Although I hadn’t realized it before, I think I (and many others) believed that some poor behavior is justifiable. Some wrong reactions are admissible. But Jesus didn’t add an “except when” to the charge to love one’s enemies. It became clear that if I was going to go on saying that I believe in God, I was going to have to humble myself and do what He said. Even the hard things. The cost of which, of course, was my own pride and comfort.
As a result of our meetings, the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps Jesus’ most famous words, took on new life. And I have to tell you, I felt a fair amount of dismay when I measured my behavior against those hard words. “Love your enemy.” “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” “Pray for those who persecute you.” “Forgive us… as we have forgiven others.” “Lay up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” “Judge not, that you be not judged.” “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
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Vulnerable, disturbed individuals of all ages [are] hastily ushered into procedures that are nothing short of medical malpractice. Justice demands a reckoning in the form of penalties and strictures, for their sakes and for the sakes of others like them who may yet be saved from this Hippocratic Oath-breaking. 

There are many memorable moments in Matt Walsh’s provocative new documentary What is a Woman? But perhaps the most chilling is when Walsh sits down with Scott (Kellie) Newgent, a biological woman who underwent sex-change surgery at age forty-two. Today, Newgent is fiercely outspoken about her transition regret. Her voice trembles with rage as she tells Walsh about her tireless uphill battle against a propaganda campaign that is sweeping away a generation of troubled youth. “We have five children’s hospitals in the United States,” she says, and then she pauses to pull up her sleeve, “promoting that.” “That” is a hideously long scar where her left arm was flayed to create a phalloplasty. Newgent suffers from regular vaginal infections, which she predicts will lead to a premature death.
One such hospital provided a double mastectomy to Chloe Cole, a young woman who was fast-tracked through a sex transition from ages thirteen to fifteen. By age sixteen, less than a year after the surgery, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. Today, she joins a courageous band of other “detransitioners” who hope to save other young people from the same fate. The New York Post recently profiled her together with Helena Kerschner, who first began her own transition as an adult. To obtain testosterone, all Kerschner had to do was book an appointment at Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, in Scotland, Sinéad Watson tells a similar story of adult transition, after a string of mental health crises that her gender clinic showed no curiosity in exploring before hormone treatment.
Detransitioning men’s stories have received less attention, but they are no less harrowing. One of them recently went viral on Twitter. Ritchie Herron began his transition as an adult, but like Newgent, Kerschner, and Watson, he was vulnerable and criminally under-informed. “No one told me any of what I’m going to tell you now,” he begins his Twitter thread. He then details the excruciating, irreversible damage caused by his own “bottom surgery.” Today, he is suing the NHS for damages.
Understandably, the discourse around gender transition tends to focus on cases like Chloe Cole—minor boys and girls who are socially brainwashed into making catastrophic, self-harming decisions. A new bill co-sponsored by congressmen Tom Cotton and Jim Banks specifically targets surgeons who offer sex-change operations to underage teens. It promises to attract wide bipartisan support not just from conservatives, but from liberals and libertarians who draw a line at trans “medical” experimentation on children.
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