Mar 04 2010
What is blessing?
I am an observer of life. I often overhear people say things when I’m at local coffee shops or restaurants and some of the things they say make my ears perk up. I recently heard two women talking about how God had blessed them. The one lady’s evidence of God’s blessing was the fact that God sold their house for a profit in less than a week. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of that thinking in the past. But we’ve had mixed success with selling our house. In fact, we sold our house in Mobile in less than 24 hours when we moved to Charlotte. I felt that was God’s blessing and evidence that we were in God’s will. I don’t believe that anymore.
Matthew 5 says blessed are the poor in spirit. Jesus said the widow who gave a mite was closer to God than the Pharisee who threw in a bunch of money in Mark 12:38-44.
When we moved from Mobile to Charlotte I received a pay raise. Wow! I guess we were blessed. But to say that our time there resulted in blessing would be false. I’m making considerably less money today than I have in 12 years. By American Christian standards I’m going backwards. I must have angered God and am not receiving His blessings—right?
Wrong. How arrogant for us as believers to associate material wealth with God’s blessings. There are some people whom God uses to make money so they can bless others but I don’t think that how much is in one’s bank account tells how blessed they are. They could just work harder than others. They might be lucky. They may have inherited the money or maybe they did something dishonest. Money has nothing to do with God’s blessing in my opinion.
Before we left Atlanta to go to the Gulf Coast and then North Carolina I believe God did bless me. Not financially but in ministry. For some reason God used me to share my faith and people would accept Him. I realized it was a Spiritual Gift that God gave me. But I don’t know if it was out of disobedience or just to bring me to a dry period but we/I have experienced the driest period in my life.
I’m making less money now but feel like God has given me back my Spiritual Gift. God has given me the privilege of leading more people to Christ in the last 3-4 weeks then I did in 3 years in NC.
So am I blessed or does the fact that we are starting over financially mean I’m not blessed? Luke 9:23 says that if we want to follow Jesus we have to take up our cross and follow Him. So by Jesus standards one who is blessed is one who dies. That won’t preach well on TV will it? I think following Jesus is much harder and complex than we make it. There is no magic genie that gives us all of our desires. When you look at people who are homeless and those who live in 3rd World Countries we shouldn’t have any complaints. I think we need to come up with a better definition for what a blessing really looks like.


