During the month of January I taught a series on “The Power of Blessing.” We looked at ten very powerful decrees of blessing that God makes over every one of His children. While most people received these decrees with enthusiasm, I have to wonder how many of them ever expect to see these blessings actually manifest in their lives.
I say this because as I travel the world, I constantly meet Christians who voice that God does indeed bless us, but who show little evidence of that blessing in their lives. In honest and intimate conversation many of them tell me how unworthy they feel to be blessed. They may be struggling with some type of addiction, have had an affair, realize they have manipulated others for personal gain, or failed to achieve some goal they deemed important. Whatever the reason, they judge themselves lacking and feel guilty and ashamed.
Without realizing it, they have put conditions on God's blessings, making them a pay off for good performance. They fail to understand the unconditional love of Father God who desires to bless them more than they desire to be blessed. They disqualify themselves from the blessings that He would so freely give if only they would receive them.
Their situation reminds me of a fable told by the Dutch Catholic priest and author Henri Nouwen. The story goes like this:
There was a man who would meditate every morning under a tree close to a riverbank. One morning as he finished meditating, he noticed a scorpion floating helpless in the water. He was close to drowning. The man stood on the tree roots and stretched over the river to pick up the scorpion, but it stung his outreached hand. Instinctively he drew his hand back and winced. But he was determined to assist the scorpion, so he stretched over the river again to pick him up out of the water. Once again the scorpion stung him, this time deeply penetrating his hand with his poisonous tail.
The man yelped with pain and drew back his hand that was now swollen and bloody. At that moment a passerby saw what was going on and said to the man, “Are you crazy? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly and evil creature like that. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?”
The man looked calmly at the passerby and gently said, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.”
We must not confuse our actions with God's nature. Nothing we do or fail to do can change the fact that Father God desires to bless us. It's his nature to do so. We can react with unbelief and push Him away because we don't feel worthy. Like the scorpion we can remain helpless and struggling when He has supplied our every need in abundance and longs for us to receive His supply. Ephesians 1:3 tells us, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”
Dare to believe that regardless of how worthy you may feel, it is His nature to bless you today and every day!
Please join us this Sunday at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, or 2:00 PM. I am continuing to address God's blessings for us, especially His desire to bless the nations through us. My sermon this week is “How to Wear God's Blessings Well.”
Pastor Che
No comments:
Post a Comment