Meekness is not Weakness

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."- Matthew 5:5

What does this mean? Let's take a deeper dive into this teaching by Jesus. Meekness- a natural outcome of poverty of spirit and mourning. Meekness is not weakness, but it means strength under control. Meekness is not the absence of power but the absence of independent self assertion. It is the refusal to grasp but to entrust oneself entirely to God.

This is so countercultural but it’s where deep freedom comes from. Culture teaches the strong take what they want. Only the loudest voices get heard. The ones who push, fight and dominate seem to inherit the earth. Might makes right. Force is the key to securing one’s place in the world. But Jesus says the opposite. His is a very different reality. The meek will inherit the earth because they’re the ones who trust God to give it rather than trying to seize it by force. Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey. His Kingdom was clearly from another world. But Jesus’s meekness was not weakness, it was the ultimate show of strength. To surrender when you can conquer takes more courage than to fight for your own way. To trust yourself to God rather than force your own future is a great act of faith. That is why meekness it is not weakness, but it is a deep inner strength that comes from knowing who you are in God and trusting him enough to let go of control.

Meekness is power under control. When Jesus says the meek will inherit the earth, we must really understand what inheritance looks like. Inheritance in scripture is never about human striving. It is always about divine gift. Inheritance is about trust. It means waiting on God to give what he has promised instead of seizing what we think we deserve. Our job is to receive what he has already prepared for us. This sounds easy, but in reality it is incredibly challenging, because we must tune out all the noise of the world and all our fleshly impulses that tell us we must strive to achieve what we want. In Psalm 37:4 we see that “delighting in the Lord leads to giving us the desires of our heart.” The meek who wait patiently for the Lord are the ones who receive what will truly endure. This is a radically different vision of what it means to flourish. The world rewards ambition, Jesus blesses restraint. The world celebrates dominance; Jesus honors those who yield. The world defines success by what you can claim; Jesus defines it by what you can receive. Revelation 21 promises that the meek will not inherit a broken earth, but rather they will inherit the Earth renewed. The kingdom is not the reward of the ambitious; it is the gift to those who’ve been shaped by trust. This is why meekness must follow mourning in poverty of spirit . Only those who know their need and grieve their sinful disposition in the world‘s brokenness are ready to live with open hands.

Meekness is not passive. It is not weakness. It is the ability to act but the restraint to do so wisely. Meekness is not merely the absence of aggression. It is the presence of a deep strength that does not need to control, does not need to dominate and does not need to be recognized. The meek person is free to trust, free to serve, free to let go. The meek person does not need to force outcomes. They do not panic when things do not go their way. They do not manipulate circumstances to gain advantage. They walk with open hands, knowing that they are already held by a greater hand. “Powerful is the person who does not need power, secure is the one who does not seek security, blessed is the one who lets go for they will be held.” Henri Nouwen- The Way of the Heart. This is why meekness is liberating. When we no longer need to fight for our place in the world, we are free to love, free to serve and free to give. We are free from the exhausting task of managing our own reputations. We no longer need to grasp for control because we trust that God is good and just and that he is in ultimate control . Meekness leads to peace but anxiety is what happens when we believe that our well-being depends entirely on our own effort. Meekness is what happens when we trust our well-being depends on God. “the Meek rest in knowledge that they are already loved, already secure, already held. And because they know this, they do not need to fight for what has already freely been given to them.” - John Wesley this is why meekness is so closely tied to peace. Those who are constantly fighting to secure their place in the world will never know rest. But those who surrender, who play down the exhausting need to prove, to control, to defend, will find that they inherit the Earth, not because they took it, but because they were free enough to receive it . Jesus’s promise in this beatitude is two fold: it is both already, and not yet. And in a spiritual sense the meek will inherit the Earth because there are content in God.

#doughallmedia #thewell #meeknessnotweakness