ALTHOUGH MR. AND MRS. ROBINSON were blessed and used of God in their ministry in Detroit and Toledo, they were not satisfied. They were very busy for the Master, to be sure; they engaged in many works, but they did not see fruit commensurate with their efforts or such as is promised. Realizing that she shared the responsibility of the ministry with her husband, Mrs. Robinson began to search her own heart for the reason, to see what might be in her that was hindering the fullness of blessing.
Asking God to show her herself, she endeavored to look at herself “squarely” as He saw her. As she did this, in December, 1905, she was led to be “definite” by “taking a paper and writing down in plain black and white, ugly, horrid-looking sins, failures, and weaknesses of my life —just every one out in plain, disagreeable English.” By this means she was “much helped.”
“Of course, everyone might not be so led,” she added when writing to her sister Nettie of this experience, “but it made me clear-cut and honest with myself.” “A little introspection . . . is excellent, for if one is to seek God, one must feel one’s need of God. And perhaps the only way to do that is to get a good view of one’s self. If we get that, we will see our tremendous need of God to make us fit to live. . . God’s looking-glass never makes us conceited.”
“Then I put [the list of my sins, failures and weaknesses] before God and just told Him there was my mean, wretched, useless, good-for-nothing life. Here it was, a perfect fizzle, and yet I gave it to Him. . . . I . . . finally wrote my consecration down. I just made a contract with the Lord, that I gave myself wholly, unconditionally, to Him. . .In my contract I listed what I gave — weak body, poor education, weak spiritual life, bad nerves, loose tongue, etc.
“You may laugh, but I was honest with myself for once,” she wrote Nettie. “It wasn’t very flattering.” But then, she continued, “When we really size up what we are giving to God, we will find it mighty little.”
Having begun to see herself as God saw her and having given herself anew to God, she prayed an earnest prayer of confession and consecration (December 18, 1905). “I told Him I was so weak, and cold, and helpless; I was just a babe crying in the night. I wasn’t able to come to Him, nor really to give myself; He must take me, He must undertake for me.”
“I had so little of the spirit of prayer at the time, I felt as if my words didn’t reach Him. They did, you know, but I felt as if they didn’t. ... But I meant business and wanted Him in all His fullness; and He took me right then and there. Of course He did, [but] I did not have a particle of feeling about it.
“And do you know what happened? I did all the worst things I was equal to, all piled up together, for a long time; by spells, you know. But I really wasn’t any worse in God’s sight, inside, you know. Only God let things come into my life that roiled up the dirt inside and made me see what a poor, useless piece of humanity I was. God knew my bump of self-esteem needed carving off first of anything, so that is how the work began in me.
“Yet most of us need a look at ourselves, not a general knowledge that we are sinners, but a good look at our sins and unrighteousness. If we put ourselves into His hands absolutely, He is going to give us what we need; and He lets just the trials come upon us that will reveal our weaknesses to ourselves; or He will let us be rubbed and hurt most where there is an unsightly excrescence that needs to come off.
“All this alternately discouraged me and set me to seeking harder. I had hot spells and cold spells: ups and downs. I couldn’t see that God had really undertaken my case. There was no one to give me light how to yield myself, and the Holy Ghost had to teach me as best He could from the outside.”
“Seeking harder.” Those two words adequately describe Mrs. Robinson’s life throughout the months which followed, a period of earnest supplication in which the Holy Spirit faithfully instructed His apt pupil in the ways of God. In turn she put her lessons into immediate practice.
It was during this time that her attention was especially directed to the very first recorded instruction of the Great Teacher, The Sermon on the Mount. There she found the Beatitudes, a passage well known to her. However, as she meditated upon these “Blesseds,” she realized that they were something to be experienced in one’s life. And the question which logically followed was, “Am I poor in spirit?”
Immediately she resolved to pray through each of the Beatitudes, as she had done on the subject of love, beginning with the first one:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Now when anyone begins to pray in earnest over this subject and really desires to be poor in spirit, no matter what his previous ideas or his grasp as to its meaning may have been, he is bound to come to the place quite soon where he wants to know exactly what it is that he is praying for. What does God mean by this? So it was with Mrs. Robinson who testified, “I came to that place and stumbled over it, wondering what it is.”
This question is very likely to be followed by an utter emptying of one’s preconceived ideas of the subject, in order that the soul may come into complete reliance upon Christ, Himself, for the experience. Then it is that the Holy Spirit Himself can begin to instruct the seeking child in the ways of the Kingdom of God, for poverty of spirit is absolutely fundamental to having Christ reigning within the soul.
Oh, to be nothing, nothing!
Only to lie at His feet,
A broken and emptied vessel,
For the Master’s use made meet,
Emptied — that He might fill me,
As forth to His service I go;
Broken — that so unhindered
His life through me might flow.
These words sing the experience, for to be nothing and Jesus everything is the secret of poverty of spirit. To be poor in spirit is to have the consciousness that you are nothing, that you know nothing, that you can do nothing. True poverty of spirit brings one into utter silence about one’s self, into utter abandonment to the Holy Spirit, and into utter reliance upon Christ. To be poor in spirit is to have the mind of Christ with His thoughts and attitudes instead of one’s own. It is an all-inclusive experience and at the same time one so exceedingly simple as to be easily misunderstood and lost.
Not I, but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted,
Not I, but Christ, be seen, he known, be heard,
Not I, but Christ, in every look and action,
Not I, but Christ, in every thought and word.
(The author of that blessed song remains anonymous, but the music for those words was written by a man who had a deep, rich experience of poverty of spirit, A. B. Simpson.)
Doubtless this portrayal of poverty of spirit is inadequate and imperfect, but the fact is that it is not something to be grasped intellectually or to be described by words of man’s wisdom. As Mrs. Robinson herself said at one time, “You don’t understand it until you experience it.”
Another thing that is certain is that it is not entered into simply by prayer. “You must be ready to go through the mill connected with getting the experience,” she once taught a young man who desired to be poor in spirit. And that mill’s stones grind exceedingly fine! So fine, in fact, that very few are willing for the milling.
Mrs. Robinson prayed on and on to be poor in spirit. Throughout these months she indeed went through the mill — God allowing “just the trials,” the rubbings, and the hurtings, needful for the perfecting of His child.
“I prayed seven months for it, and then the Lord stopped me and told me I had it.”ⁿ She did not, however, feel that she “had it” in the sense that it was an experience she could hold and keep, apart from Christ. Oh, no! for “poverty of spirit never lets anyone feel he knows anything or can do anything, but lets him have faith for the indwelling Christ and the inworking of what He wants to do.” It is allowing the King to set up His Kingdom within the soul. Hence He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Note: The exact time when this occurred is unknown to the author. Mrs. Robinson did state that she began this prayer before her baptism in the Holy Spirit (December, 1906), and it appears likely that she probably finished this prayer before that event too.
In the school of the Holy Ghost at this time she did learn that a person would have to be poor in spirit if he was to be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use, for it is one of the prime preparations for a Holy Ghost ministry.
She learned something else. She found that poverty of spirit is the key to all the other Beatitudes, that if one has prayed the first one through, the rest follow almost as a matter of course. More than this, perhaps, was the light given that it is the open door to the glories of all the truth that is in Christ Jesus.
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Martha Wing Robinson (1874 - 1936)
Martha held meetings which touched people to return to the work of the service of God. The Robinsons opened a "Faith Home" where people would come for teaching and prayer. Like George Muller they depended on God to provide what was needed for expenses. Thousands came through her home and healings were a regular occurrence. Her husband died in April of 1916, but Martha continued in her ministry. She had a very sharp gift of discernment and regularly told people the secrets of their hearts. She often had directive prophetic words for those under her care. Many young people came to the home for training and went into the mission fields and evangelistic endeavours.Martha Wing Robinson died June 26, 1936. Shortly before she died she stated her life's message "Nothing matters but Christ Jesus." Her whole life was spent in the service of God and for the Glory of His Son Jesus. She had seen many healed, saved, delivered, empowered and sent out. She was truly a mother in Israel. In 1962 Gordon P. Gardiner wrote a book about her life called "Radiant Glory" because that is how she lived her life.