Frankie Mazzapica - The Jewel of a Poor Spirit
Thank you for tuning in today. My name's Frankie Mazzapica. The title of today's message is "The Jewel of a Poor Spirit". The Jewel of a Poor Spirit. Let me lay the scriptural foundation straight away. Imagine the scene. Jesus is looking at thousands of people. They've all gathered around him. And they're there for different reasons. Some are there because they just enjoy listening to him speak. The Bible says that they could tell that he spoke with great authority that they've never seen before. Other people are there because they know that there is a spirit that is tormenting them.
I don't know if you've ever been there before, but sometimes it's an addiction. Sometimes you just can't get out of bed without feeling overwhelmed, and you know that it's not you trying to torment you. You know that it's a devil. You know that it's a spirit. These people would show up, and they would gather around the Lord. And he would look at the hurting, and he would look at those who needed to be physically healed. But then, all of a sudden, he sees a particular category of people.
By the way, I just feel led to kind of jump back to what I said. That in the same way that people who knew that they were being tormented by a spirit, in the same way that they pursued the Lord, you can do that as well. To come before God and say, "I know that there's something tormenting me, and I need you. I know you as my Savior. I know you as my friend. I know you as my God, but I need to know you as my Deliverer right now". And when you come to the Lord with that type of a heart, he always comes through. And so, I wanna encourage you to do that. But Jesus looked out into the multitudes. He saw all those people. But then, all of a sudden, he saw a certain category of people there was peppered through the crowd.
And the Bible says this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 1. It says this: that when the multitudes gather around, he went up on a mountain and he sat down; and when he sat down, the disciples came and gathered around him, the 12 disciples. And he opened his mouth and he taught them, and he said this: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God". "Blessed are the poor". Now, when he says, "They shall inherit the kingdom of God," he's not just saying that they have an address in heaven. He's not just saying that. He's also referring to the here and now. I don't know if you've ever thought that. "Lord, I thank you that I'm going to heaven, but right now I'm in trouble". Say "yes" if you've ever been there. Come on, let me hear you. Say "yes".
Come on. And he says in John 10:10, "The thief," the devil, "has come to kill and steal. He's coming to kill your spirit, and if he can, your flesh. And steal every good thing. Every good thing you have in your life". And then Jesus backs up, and he's talking about right now. "If the devil's coming to do that right now, I have come to give you life, and life more abundantly". So he's looking at those with a poor spirit and he's saying, "I'm gonna give you life now, and I'm gonna give you life then". But why is he looking at the poor in spirit, and who are they? The poor in spirit are the people that their heart is not okay. They're not okay.
Now, why aren't they okay? Two reasons why. Number one, they had this moment with God where their heart broke. There was a moment where they realized their desperation. When I was a teenager, I all of a sudden had this moment. My eyes filled up with water, and tears were just running down my face, and I realized that I was going to hell. And when that happened, my heart was never the same again. I realized my desperation. That's a huge difference from knowing that Jesus is there, thanking him for saving you. You're going to heaven. It's a huge difference from going, "Oh my goodness, thank you". That's the poor in heart. "I'm desperate".
But then there's another type of poor in heart. It runs in parallel to being desperate. It's not just, "Thank you". But it's, "I have to have more of your presence. I cannot live. I cannot live without more of your presence, and I'm willing to do anything because I will never ever ever be content unless I have more". And not everybody in the multitudes were like that. But there were some that were poor in spirit that were desperate. And the Lord says, "I see you. I'm gonna bless you now, and I'm gonna take care of you then for eternity".
There are three jewels that I wanna talk about. Jewels, blessings that are only given to people who are so thankful for being saved and they crave more of his presence. The first jewel is the jewel of recognition. Wow. The second jewel is this passionate chase. You passionately pursue. And then, the third jewel of having a broken spirit, a poor spirit is how it's the most valuable gift you could ever receive.
So, let's talk about, let's just jump right into it. It's this moment of recognition. I wanna refer, as an illustration, to a guy by the name of Jack Hayford. He's like a modern-day Abraham or Moses. And he told this illustration that I'll never forget. He told God, he had this realization. He says, "People throw, they won't throw a quarter on the ground, they won't throw a dollar on the ground, but they'll throw pennies. They just get rid of pennies. Pennies are worthless". And he said, "I'm like a penny. You picked me up and found me to be valuable". And he said, "Every single time I find a penny on the ground, I'm gonna pick it up, I'm gonna hold it up, and say, 'Lord, this is how you found me, and I thank you and I love you. And I'm gonna put it in my pocket and keep it.'"
And so, over a period of several weeks, he would see pennies outside of gas stations or restaurants or just walking down a sidewalk, and he would pick 'em all up. And he'd take that moment, and he'd say, "Thank you. This is where you found me". He made a vow to the Lord: "Every single time, I'm gonna do this". And one day he was at a restaurant. He was sitting down at the table. And he excused himself from the table to go use the restroom. He went to the restroom, and he walked up to the toilet and looked down, and there was a penny at the bottom of the toilet. And he looked at it, and he thought, "Oh my, I should have never made that promise".
And he started to negotiate with God on, "Hey, you've seen all the pennies I've picked up. At some point, this needs to be over". And he looked at it, and he goes, he had this thought, this realization. This realization only comes from somebody who is so thankful. And he looked down, and he said, "That's really where you found me". And he rolled up his sleeve and he reached down into the toilet and he grabbed the penny, and he said, "Thank you". You see, someone who is that aware (not everyone is), they have a poor spirit. They're so thankful. They're so thankful, they can hardly express it.
And you can tell they're thankful, not because they say it. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can say anything. I can tell you that I'm an NBA champion. I can tell you that, you know, I can swim so fast I look like a dolphin. I can say whatever I wanna say, but you judge a tree by its fruit. You don't have to tell me. Come on. You don't have to tell me you're thankful, I can tell you're thankful. And a lot of times, the people who say "I'm thankful" the most, they're actually the most whole, and it's just lip service. But the poor in spirit, you can tell by the way they live. The way they live, they just stick out.
This knowing, this jewel, it has to be revealed by the Holy Spirit. You can't just go, "I'm thankful". No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Paul said it like this in Galatians chapter 1, verse 12. He's saying, "What I'm teaching you, no man taught it to me. It was revealed by God". In Matthew chapter, I think it's 16 chapter, verse 17. I think that's what it's 13-17, I'm sorry. Where Jesus is standing in front of the disciples, and he goes, "I know a lot of people are talking about me". You know, any time I hear that somebody said something bad about me, I always think the same thing: if you knew me better, you'd say a lot more things. You just don't know me that good.
If you knew me really good, the things that you're saying right now are compliments. But you'd have a lot worse things to say. And so Jesus comes up, and he goes, "I know people are talking bad about me. They're calling me, they're saying I'm like this person, I'm like that person". And he goes, "What exactly are they saying"? And one disciple said this: "Well, some people are saying that Elijah came back from the dead, and it's you". She's Really? "Some people are saying you're John the Baptist who came back from the dead, and they're saying it's you". And so, all of a sudden, Jesus looks back, and he says, "Is that it"? And they go, "No, no, no. They think you're Jeremiah too". He goes, "Well, who do you say that I am"? And all the disciples just got quiet, except for one. And Peter said, "You're the Messiah, the Son of God". And the Lord said, "No man told you that. The Lord told you that".
Peter was craving him because he recognized it. Now his heart will never be the same. He is poor in spirit. He's got to have him. Now, the value. Let me talk about the jewel of value. No, I'll get to that in a minute. The jewel of pursuit. I was doing the math right before I came up here. Twenty-two years ago, I brought a guy in to come speak for me. I was a youth pastor. And I flew him in from another state to come talk to the youth group. And I really like the guy a lot. We had a good friendship. I knew him years before I brought him in. And so he was coming to speak on a Wednesday night, 'cause that's when we had youth service.
So I flew him in Wednesday morning, and then I was planning on flying him out Friday morning so that we could spend Thursday together. And something crazy happened. To this day, I don't know, but I spent the whole day knowing that he didn't wanna be with me, he wanted to be back home. And how did I know that? Because he wasn't talking to me. And if you've ever been talking to somebody and you're like, "You don't wanna be here. I'm boring you. Throw me a bone. Say something". That was from morning to night. And then he flew home. Now, I have never in my life, previous or since, ran into a situation like that. Never. But it is in my head as if it happened yesterday.
And now I have this, for lack of a better term, this fear or phobia to talk to people without a friend around because I feel like they're going to get bored with me and we're gonna run out of things to say. It's there. And here I am, 22 years later, and it's still going on. Now, you may say, "That's the devil. Tell him to shut up". I believe it's the devil. I've told him to shut up. But that little, it's like a boomerang. I said, "Get away from me, devil"! And he leaves. And I'm like, "Phew, that feels so much better". Pow! He's back. Comes back, and he's like, "You don't wanna go with, you don't wanna do that".
You know, "Get your wife around because they're not gonna wanna talk to you". And even small groups like four, five, six. "No, no, no, no, no, they're gonna get bored with me. I'm not gonna know what to say. And I just, I don't wanna, I'm gonna disappoint them, and I'm gonna disappoint me. It's gonna be horrible".
Now, looking back, even though it still happens today, the Lord took that moment and used it for good to break my heart up to where I back up, and I say, "I may not be interesting to people". Now some of you may go, "Come on. Give yourself a break". Look, I would probably say that to you if you told me your insecurity, okay? Leave my insecurity alone, and don't judge me. That moment broke my heart in such a way where I've said to God, "If I can't connect with anybody, that's okay. But I am not okay not feeling your presence". Now, a lot of people talk about feeling as a presence. A lot of people have heard about feeling as a presence, and a lot of people recognize it and admire others for pursuing it. But when you have a poor spirit, it's not on the table to not pursue him. It's a jewel of having a poor heart. When you have a poor heart, you cannot live without him. You can't.
Now, when I say, "You can't live without him," it's this sense of, "I know that you're all around me". There's the omnipresence of God. "You're everywhere". But then there's the manifest presence of God, where God says, "I'm gonna allow you to experience my presence". You won't be able to see it, but you will feel it like you feel the wind. And you live your life saying, "I'll never be whole until I get close to you in that way. I thank the person. I thank the person for introducing me to the reality that nobody will ever be able to make me secure".
A few years ago, I really got before God, and I said, "What do I want? What are you calling me for"? Some of you are like, "Pastor". No, no, no, no, no. Me. My personal walk with God. "Why am I here? What can that look like"? Because I really am poor in spirit. I can't live, I cannot do it. Other people can do it, not me. And so, I decided to write, like, a personal mission statement, which is so hard to do. So hard to do. "I am here. I live for". And it started off, I just started writing a whole bunch of things. It was like a half a page long, but I wanted to be able to memorize it so I could tell myself and remind the Lord.
And so, I had to make it shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter until I got it down to one sentence. And finally, I got it down to one sentence, and if you don't have a personal mission statement and mine resonates with you, embrace mine. But I finally came up with it. Finally, the words that's like, "But I'm broken here, but if I know what I'm born to do, I will get comfortable longing for you". All of you know a Christian who acknowledges God, but they don't long, long for him. They're actually quite whole. But the poor in spirit, that's where I find the people in this room.
And so, I pushed it down. Pushed the mission statement down lower and lower and lower, and then I finally came up with it. And I went to one of those places where you paint on boards. I don't know if you've ever been there before. And I found my favorite picture of Jesus, and I put it right next to it, and now it's in my office, and it says this: "I live to walk with God and to share his love and his power". This is why I live. If we share that poor spirit, and I know that we do, we are not whole people. We are thankfully desperate. And we are so passionate. This is why I live. I have a poor spirit. To say, "This is why I live," is to look at everything else. I've got several friends of mine that are in different careers, and I just go, "Look, I don't care what career you're in. We can share the same poor spirit of desperately needing him".
Now, here's the catch with a poor spirit: it feels like you will never experience what you're hoping to experience. You feel like you're in that state. Even to this day, when I pray, I say to the Lord, "What do you want me to say? How can I persuade you? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? I have a poor spirit. I will never be whole. What do you want me to say"? And then I realized this: that the more you experience the Lord, the more desperate you will be to experience more of the Lord. You will never, there will never be this moment where you go, "Oh, this is what I've been waiting for. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm good now".
That will never happen. It's a jewel. It's a gift to long. It's a gift to desire. If you have a poor spirit and you desire the Lord, just know this: not everybody has that jewel. I was driving down the road one time, and I was just praying. Nothing, probably just my typical prayer, "I love you. I love you, I love you. I thank you, I thank you, I love you". But I'm saying every sentence like it's the last sentence I'll ever say in my life. "I love you. I thank you. I love you". And I felt the Spirit of the Lord tell me, "Don't think everyone has the same relationship with me as you do".
Let me tell you, if you're in this room and you have to have more of him. Your heart will never be whole without it. You have to. Don't think that everybody you know has the same passion you do. Not everybody has been given the jewel of a poor spirit. Not everyone has been given the gift of desperation, of always wanting more. You see, it's a dangerous thing to have a poor spirit because the enemy will tell you that what you are wanting from the Lord, you will never experience from the Lord because you have sinned too much. You are too inconsistent.
Sometimes you pay attention to him, and sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's fruit coming out of your mouth, and sometimes it's curses. You can forget about it. Learn to live without. But we back up, and we tell the enemy, "No, no, no, no, no. If I didn't have a poor spirit, then there would be no invitation". A poor spirit, a longing for God, a recognition of who he is is an invitation. God did not give you that hunger to punish you. He didn't give you that hunger and desire so he could back up and laugh. "Oh, look, you want more of me? It's never gonna happen. Isn't this", he is not a cruel God. Not everyone has that hunger. Not everyone has that passion. Not everyone has a poor spirit. They live their life being whole.
So we've talked about the recognition, how thankful we are. We've talked about the passionate pursuit. Those are two jewels, gifts, that only the poor in spirit have. You see, the crown of this kingdom does not fit every head. It only sets perfectly on the brow of those who have a poor spirit. And you and I will never know the Lord until we recognize what he has saved us from. We will never honor the Lord, he will never be precious to us until we recognize what the possibilities are. We'll never know. That is a gift for the poor in spirit.