Way of Blessing Part 1 - Discovering Your Blessing - Chapter 2 of 26
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Types of Blessing
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Philippians 4:19 says: But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus.Let's look at some of the things that we could consider blessings in our lives. Notice that this passage says that He will provide our needs according to His riches in glory (the heavenly realm).
How will He do it? He will do it through Christ Jesus (in Christ).
You see the same link between blessing, the heavenly realm and being in Christ. They are always together. You will see it continually in the Scriptures.
He Provides Your Needs
What are some of your needs? Let's start with basic living expenses, such as food, clothing, transport, electricity, and a house with a roof over your head.
These are things that each one of us must have in order to survive in this world. Does God want us to have these? Of course He does.
What about health? You cannot survive with ill health. If your body is sick, you cannot go out and work and live a normal life.
What about wisdom for living? You need to know how to conduct your life.
You must have the ability to be employed so that you can bring in an income. You should be able to deal with problems that come your way, and handle every situation that you face in life.
These things are blessings, and according to the Word of God, He has provided them for us. God wants us to have our needs met.
He wants us to live comfortably. He wants us to have good clothes to wear and to have a good house to live in. He wants us to have good transport to travel in. He wants us to eat good healthy food. They are our needs and God wants to provide these needs for us.
He Provides Your Desires
There is an old cliché that says, "God provides our needs and not our greeds."
That might sound very spiritual but it is not in the Bible. God not only provides our needs, but He also provides our desires.
Can your desire be classed as a blessing? Most of the time we desire 'things'; things that we enjoy and make like more comfortable.
Now you might not really need these things. But it doesn't matter. God still wants you to have them.
I love to give my children things they really desire and not just the things that they need. I love to see the effect it has on them. As they unwrap those gifts, a smile comes to their face and joy just pours out of them.
When I see them so full of joy and excitement, it really stirs me deep inside. I am blessed just watching them enjoy my gift.
Things are part of the blessing of the Lord and He made them for us. They certainly were not created by the Devil.
When God made the earth and everything in this world, the Scripture says that He looked down upon it and said that it was good. When He called out His chosen people Israel, what was His main promise to them?
"I am taking you to a land that flows with milk and honey."
Of course you could drink water instead of milk and you would be fine. You could live without honey and still be fine. But God wanted to bless them with the best, so He gave them a land that flowed with milk and honey.
The Scripture says: He brought honey out of the rock for them.
He went to so much trouble to give them the honey that He made it come out of a stone.
God wants to give you every good thing that He has created. He wants to withhold nothing from you. In Christ Jesus He has provided for you to have whatever your heart desires.
The Scripture says: Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
God certainly does not only provide our needs. He also provides in abundance, the things that we desire.
Being Recognized and Accepted
We all crave recognition and acceptance. We enjoy being recognized and revered by others. We like to have positions of authority and fame.
You might consider this very unspiritual. It is considered spiritual to be humble and stay low, not to be seen by anyone. But God seemed to see things differently.
He told the nation of Israel that if they would obey His commands, He would make them the head and not the tail; above only and not beneath.
God wants you to be lifted up; to be a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden. How will the world see what He has put in you, and how will you display the blessing of the Lord, unless you are in a place where it can be seen?
There was a time in my life that I was always in the background and no one seemed to know that I existed. I had so much that I wanted to give out for the Lord, but I did not want to impose on others.
I looked at men that God had raised up to preach the Word. One person at that time had become famous and was travelling around the country. I thought to myself, "Lord, you have given me more than what this man has. How come you are allowing him to be lifted up and not me?"
There was a well-known preacher in my area that was quite arrogant. He liked to draw attention to himself and I really did not think he was glorifying the Lord.
But when I complained to the Lord about it, He said to me, "He is accomplishing more for my Kingdom than you are right now."
Ouch, that hurt, especially since it was the truth.
Christians Should Stand Out
I was a bit confused at first. Then I realized that it was not necessarily a bad thing to be lifted up. It can put you in a position where God is glorified in you.
If you are walking around groveling, wallowing, poor, sick and insecure, how would people respond to you? Would someone walk up to you and say, "Wow I want what you've got. How did you get it?"
But because you are not showing this to them, they are going instead to the world. They are buying all the success books and the do-it-yourself books of the world that say something like, "How to become a millionaire in 10 easy steps. This is how I did it. These are my secrets to success."
Often the main secret to success of those who have become wealthy is, "Destroy the opposition. Lift yourself up."
The Bible calls that strife and vainglory. It is time that the people of God rise up into positions in the world that are recognized; into positions of authority and success.
They must rise up into positions of wealth, so that they can declare to the world, "I am what I am because of what God did in me."
Then the world can say, "I want some of that. Tell me how you got it."
But we try to be too spiritual. We try to stay humble, and refuse to be taken up with things.
There is an old song that goes, This world is not my home. I'm just a passin' through.
As a result of this way of thinking, we prefer to leave all the wealth for the Devil and his crowd.
How many children do you know who respond badly to a gift? Can you imagine a child looking at the gift and saying, "Well, I'll just give that away to somebody else."
It is very unlikely that this would happen.
When God made the world, He did not make it for the Devil. He made it for His man Adam. And what He created in this world He created for Adam and for us, Adam's descendants.
Adam gave it away when he handed it over to Satan in sin and Satan took control of this world.
But Jesus came to this earth to buy it back for us. He paid the supreme penalty. He paid the supreme price of shedding His own blood, to buy back for us what Adam had given away.
The Devil tried to sidetrack Him by tempting Him and saying, "Here are all the kingdoms of the world. I have control over them, and I will give them all to you if you will bow down and worship me."
But Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan."
He went to the cross instead and reversed what Adam had lost. He took back from Satan what Adam had handed over to him, and it cost Him His life.
Can you imagine taking all that you have to buy your wife a beautiful gift and she won't take it? Could you imagine her offering to pay for the gift that you have bought?
Jesus paid for everything. The Scripture says: He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things?
All what? All things.
Are you missing out on this because you are trying to be spiritual? You are losing something that Jesus paid a huge price to purchase for you. He wants you to rise up and have the things you desire, and receive the recognition you desire.
Spiritual Blessings
Do all our blessings have to be spiritual?
One of the biggest mistakes that people make is confusing God's blessings in the Old Testament with those in the New.
The common misconception is that under the Old Covenant God's blessings were all temporal.
God's blessing and His covenant with Israel was the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. They were given all the things - the temporal blessings - and the land that they conquered under Joshua.
But the blessings of the New Testament are all spiritualized. You will hear it taught like this.
"The crossing of the Jordan was the crossing into the Promised Land, which is heaven. And the crossing of the Jordan is death, by which we leave this life and cross into the Promised Land.
One day we will walk the streets of gold. And one day we will have that wonderful mansion."
Have you ever heard this old song? I have a mansion just over the hilltop.
I used to sing it when I was younger, and we were taught to look forward to our mansion in heaven one day. But what use is a mansion to me over there? I need one now. Why would I want to walk the streets of gold then? I need gold now.
They say, "Well we are only permitted to have the spiritual blessings now. And when we get to heaven one day and we are in the presence of the Lord, then we will have the physical blessings."
Something is wrong. Paul meant something completely different when he spoke about spiritual blessings. He was giving us a clear indication that since God lives in a spiritual realm, His blessings are going to be spiritual in essence.
The Scripture says that God is a Spirit, so if He is to bless us, He has to do it from the spiritual realm. He has to bless us through His Spirit.
Who was the main agent of creation? The Bible says in Genesis 1:2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters.
It was the Spirit of God that moved in to bring about a creation, as God spoke forth His Word and said, "Let there be..."
As He did that, the Spirit moved in and created. Spirit always dominates the physical. The spiritual is always superior to the physical.
Spiritual essence can be made into something that is tangible, and that is exactly what God did when He made the worlds. The Scripture says that God, by His Spirit, created the worlds out of nothing. The Spirit has that ability.
So when Paul says that God blessed us with every spiritual blessing, what he is saying is, "God has given you the spiritual substance - all that you will ever need - to create every kind of blessing you might possibly need in this life."
Can you see that? All blessings are given in spiritual form, but how do you obtain those blessings? It all happened when you were born again.
When you received Jesus Christ into your life as your personal Lord and Savior, the Spirit of God came into you.
He moved in and took up residence within you and became united with you in your spirit. Your spirit and God's Spirit are now one in fellowship and in unity.
God poured into you His permanent, indwelling, abiding presence by His Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit came in there He brought all of Heaven and all the blessings with Him.
He brought all the spiritual essence with Him that would be needed, to create anything that you might ever need in this life.
That is why the blessings have to be spiritual, otherwise they would be limited. But because they are spiritual they are unlimited, and that is why we can have every blessing, not just some of the blessings.
The Heavenly Realm
Paul says: God blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. Where is the heavenly realm?
Some people believe that God lives up there in Heaven on one of the planets. That is where Jesus went to when He ascended and then disappeared. He took off to another star or planet. God is up there somewhere.
Have you ever stood on a clear night and looked up at the stars and thought, "I wonder which way Heaven is. I wonder where God is."
Where is the heavenly realm? Well the Scriptures speak about several different realms. In Philippians 2:9 and 10 it says: Therefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him the name that is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth;
There are three different realms mentioned here.
'Things in heaven' refers to God's realm. 'Things in earth' refers to the physical realm that we live in. And 'things under the earth' refers to the underworld, or the realm of darkness which is Satan's realm.
God's realm is also referred to in the Scriptures as the 'realm of glory'. So Paul tells us in Philippians 4:19: But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus.
How far do you need to go to get to the heavenly realm, since God is so far away and you have to pray these blessings down?
Do you have to 'get in the Spirit' and have long times of prayer and fasting? Do you have to beam your prayers up there like rockets, and hope that your rockets are strong enough to reach the heavenly realm?
You could get scientific and expect that God would probably send the answer back at the speed of light. But the nearest star is probably several hundred light years away, so what is the use of that?
When you try to look at it with the human mind, it becomes ridiculous doesn't it?
No wonder so few people expect God to answer their prayers. They see Him as someone far off in space somewhere that has little interest in their problems. But God is actually closer than breathing. You don't have to go that far to find Him.
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