Are you able to discern the difference between the blessings of God and being fortunate, the favor of our Lord upon your life and the beneficial aspects of the life that you now live. I do not believe that there are very many Christians today that can tell the difference between the two, for they have decided to look outward to see these blessings, instead of towards the inward man, the spiritual is being compromised by the temporal, the transitory, the world.
How many of you would say that the job that you have, the place where you go to earn money each day to provide for yourself and your family, is a blessing from God, that the talents that He has blessed you with you have honed into a skill that is viable for employment. Can you think beyond your own “working as unto the Lord,” (Col. 3:23) thoughts that you have in your mind each day that you are at this place of employment of how else God is being glorified in what you do while you are there. Is it a blessing from God to go someplace five or six days a week to work only for the temporary continuance of a planet that will be destroyed in the end, or are you there only for the money, are you fortunate or blessed? Your neighbor down the street is doing the same thing every day, the one who has no fear of God before his eyes, (Rom. 3:18) are you looking at your place of work as an opportunity to witness to those that you meet there, and to do so continuously, or as I said, is it just a place to go and earn some money, and if the latter is the answer, should you be saying the same thing at this point in your life that the twelve said in Acts 6:2, “Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.” Are you serving Christ, is it one of the ways that you see the blessings in your life from Him, or is it just the money.
Would you count your house and home here on earth a blessing from our Lord, running water, plenty of food and more clothes than you could wear in one day, how many vehicles are out there in the garage, two, three? Was the reason that you were blessed with that job so that you could purchase all those so-called necessary items, so that the things of the world, as much as is financially within your grasp, could be yours for the taking? If so, then what would your consideration of Him be if He decides to take all of it away from you, would you still feel blessed, would you truly be able to say with Job, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) or are you going to ask the Lord why, are you going to think that His hand of blessing has been removed from you, do you need the things of the world for God to show you His blessings upon you, and not only those items, but the ability to obtain more of them.
What if He decides to take your health, are you able to say, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.” (Psalm 34:19) Are you going to repeat “Blessed be the name of the Lord” after he removes your ability to walk from you, will you be able to truly see it as a blessing, or will these words only be repeated with a sort of anger hidden beneath them, wondering why constantly. “I’m going to put you in a wheelchair for the last ten years of your life, my child,” “Thank you Lord, thy will be done, let thy name be glorified above the heavens.” Sound like you? Are you fortunate or are you blessed, do the blessings of God as you perceive them fixed upon a variable rate, if He does, then I feel blessed, if He does not, well then, not so blessed. Can you really tell the difference between your own personal accomplishments, the talents and abilities that you have today, the items that you possess and have come to expect, from the blessings of God.
Too many tend to equate materialist possessions with blessings from our Lord, health, peace and prosperity with the love of Christ towards us, and I am in fear that if these things are taken away from them by Him, they will falter in their faith, in fact, they may find that they truly had no faith in Him in the first place. Are the blessings of God a pain wracked body, living on the handouts of others, being carried to somewhere where you hope to be fed today, Lazarus seemed to think it was. Does our Lord need to take you to a place where you can be shown just how much faith you really have, is it necessary for you to have your patience tested, “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience,” (James 1:3) is it time for you to suffer persecution so that you can be shown just where you stand with the Lord in your own heart, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2nd Tim. 3:12) How far do you need to be knocked down the ladder before you come to the realization that you have always been on the top rung of His love and kindness towards you?
“And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30) If you have of your own free will and for the glory of God already accomplished these words of Christ, what more could He need to take away from you, if you have left all for Christ, what greater blessing could you possibly seek after. For those of you who may have already desired this to be a reality in your life, do not forget, do not miss those two small words that our Lord put in this verse along with the promises, for it also is a promise, “With persecutions.” If you truly desire to serve Christ to the fullest, you must see persecutions, troubles, trials and problems as blessings.
Now we have come to the meat of the matter in this letter to you, how much is Christ worth to you, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:14) Can you press on without your job, without any money, without a place to call home, without mother, father, even children, are you willing to lose all, to give up all of your free will for the prize that is Jesus Christ, or are they just cute Scripture verses that you hope the Lord will never need to see fit to have enter into your life. Are you blessed or are you fortunate. Blessed to have so much, or fortunate that you have what you have, blessed when all of it is taken away from you, or has misfortune entered into the doorway of your house when it all is removed. There is no one that I have ever met, myself included, who is happy at the moment that pain enters into their lives, no matter the form in which it arrives, but there are few and far between those who will give God the glory when the pain does not disappear in the amount of time that they want it to, they have predetermined that the blessings of the Lord have a time frame accompanied with them, and believe that as Job was, in the end everything will work out for the better, the problem is that they believe that this time frame will be while they are still here on this earth.
“Surely God would not let me die in this condition, surely His hand of blessing will return upon me before I meet Him in glory.” Maybe not, maybe so, our response is to be “Thy will be done,” it depends on what you see as a blessing, doesn’t it. So then, knowing that we have a sovereign Lord who loves us deeply, a Lord who has promised never to leave us or forsake us, what is it that you would not consider a blessing from the Lord, what one thing is it that He might decide to take away from you, or add unto you, that would make you think that His love has left you, what is it in your life that you would not call a blessing. If He decides that He wants you to sit beside Lazarus and wait for the crumbs of the rich, will you be able to see that as a blessing, or does He actually need to allow this type of event into your life before you could say truly that it is a blessing from God. How far does your faith need to be tested.
If you are in the will of God, where you are at today is where the Lord wants you, if He decides to modify your position, for better or worse in our eyes, that also is His will, it is the acceptance of His will in our lives that is the determining factor as whether we see it as a blessing or not. A blessing is not what we think it is, it is what God determines it to be, if we do not see it as such, then our perspective is amiss, and we need to open our eyes to what is and what will be, instead of what we have predetermined it should be, a servant can be expected to do no less. Are the people down the street in the large house blessed more by the Lord, while the ones on the opposite side of the street who are barely making ends meet less blessed, are you still seeing the blessings of the Lord only in the gifts of the material, only in the health of your body, only with your eyes?
He is God Almighty, the sovereign Creator and ruler of all that is, we have no rights whatsoever, it is a blessing alone to serve Him, as He does, we are to accept, whether it be in sickness or health, riches or poverty, all should be seen as a blessing from the Lord our God. “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.” (Deut. 10:14) All that He allows to come into our lives is a blessing, the fortunate are those who accept and believe this.
