Crouching, cringing awareness of utter destitution precedes God's blessing.
It is better to drop than be driven to our knees.
The first truth Jesus declared in His Sermon On The Mount (which I call, "The State of the Kingdom Address") was the essential quality of accepting our own personal bankruptcy before God. Sometimes we do not realize our inner need to bow until we have been bowed by the crushing events of life.
In His two Sermons (on the Mount and on the Plain) Jesus referred to this poverty. On the Mount He stipulated spiritual poverty, but on the Plain He only stated poverty. Sometimes we do not realize our own spiritual poverty until we are aware that we are without hope in this world, without the ruling presence of God. Even though it is the kindness of God that afflicts us, it is better to drop than to be driven to our knees.
Notice, Jesus attaches blessedness (spiritual, godly, lofty happiness) to the person who cringes, crouches in utter destitution (the actual meaning of the Greek word), and then He aligns that person with Divine rule, by saying that "the kingdom of heaven," (in the Sermon on the Plain, in Luke, it is the kingdom of God).
Matthew 5:3
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
To stand against the word of God, to resist the way and will of God does not show courage or strength, but rather, ugly stupidity.
