For some people it is money, for others it is power that motivates them. They seem to go together, so that if you get one, you will have the other.

The bad news for many believers is that we have neither. The first Beatitude deals with riches: You don’t own anything, so don’t act like you do. Be poor in spirit. The third Beatitude addressed the power side of the issue. “Blessed are the meek.”

We have been told since childhood that meekness is not weakness, but we have not been told what meekness is. Whatever it is, Christ exemplified it, because He said, “I am meek and lowly in heart.”

As we consider the life of Christ, we quickly notice that He displayed a strong personality in dealing with everyone—His disciples, the Pharisees, Pilate, even those who came to arrest Him in the garden. Therefore, apparently meekness is not weakness in the sense that it does not exclude strength of personality.

However, it is weakness in the sense of not exercising power to advance our own agenda. Christ could have called on twelve legions of angels to extricate Him from the hands of His captors. He chose not to do so because this was not His Father’s agenda.

We find that this was Jesus’ modus operandi throughout His earthly ministry. He could have established His kingdom at any point, yet He refrained from the exercise of His power to this end. This is the essence of meekness. Jesus symbolized this by entering Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a horse. The horse would have presented Him as conqueror. The mule presented Him as a servant.

James and John did not catch the vision regarding meekness, as evidenced by their recommendation that Jesus call down fire on the Samaritan village that refused them hospitality. Likewise with the disciples, who desired to be awarded the preeminent position within the group so that they might exercise power over the others.

We must understand that there is nothing wrong with the exercise of power per se. Meekness restricts us from using it for our own ends. For example, it is legitimate for a person in authority in government or business to exercise power to fulfill his responsibilities. Some day Jesus will exercise that power. Some day He will enter Jerusalem on a horse.

The line between exercising power for our own agenda and the legitimate exercise to fulfill our responsibilities can easily become blurred. In fact, the capacity of our hearts to be deceptive makes it difficult for us to determine our own intent, even when we are seeking to be honest. Sometimes we think we are riding a mule when in fact we are on our high horse.

Though it is difficult to know our own hearts at times, meekness should at least be our objective. The problem is that we tend not to make this our objective. For example, how many parents teach their children meekness? The trend, rather, is to teach assertiveness, which goes beyond being a strong personality to pushing my agenda.

We have many evangelical psychologists and pastors encouraging this trend—teaching horsemanship rather than mule riding. And we have learned well. We have a lot of horse riding in our homes and churches. Trading in our horses for mules might start an evangelical reformation.