Sure, God’s Word talks an awful lot about blessing. And yet when I tell people, ‘God wants to bless you’, most often I get one of two reactions: either, ‘Well, I’m not sure He’s really blessed me much yet’; or ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to ask God to bless me. Isn’t that selfish?’

Well, if you were able to join me last week on the programme, you’ll know that we chatted about the prayer of Jabez. What an amazing little prayer that some unknown guy, tucked away in the middle of nine chapters of something as boring as genealogy, prayed. Here it is again:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers. And his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘O, that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from hurt and harm.’ And God granted him what he asked. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)

It’s quite an astounding little prayer for a couple of reasons: The first is because on the surface of things it appears to be entirely selfish; and second, because despite that, God granted him what he asked for. So, either God is in the business of answering selfish self-serving prayers or there’s something else going on here.

And as I said at the beginning of the program, there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus who haven’t really experienced a whole bunch of blessing in their lives. Well, perhaps that’s not quite true. Let me rephrase that … there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus who don’t feel particularly blessed; that’s probably more to the point.

It seems we’re pretty good at ignoring the blessings that God gives us. You know, the basics; our health, the air that we breathe, the food that’s provided for us, the roof over our heads, our family, our friends, our job. Of course, not everybody listening today has all of those things. In fact (as I often say), there are more people listening in to this program today who live in poverty. Many of them in war zones than there are wealthy people living in the western developed nations.

But whoever we are, wherever we are, we all have some blessings to be thankful for. It’s just that we ignore those and we want this and we want that in our lives. And when we don’t get those, we figure that God mustn’t be in the business of blessing me.

And when I suggest to people that they should ask for God’s blessing, I get this response like, ‘No, no, no, that wouldn’t be right. I can’t impose on God like that’. Part of that is because we’ve all probably heard that ‘God wants to make you rich’ distortion of the Gospel and we’ve rejected that. Rightly so, I couldn’t agree more.

But let me take you back to Jabez. He (as we’ve read) didn’t have the best sort of start in life. With a name like Jabez which literally meant ‘pain’ but at some point he decided enough was enough. It was time to ask God for His blessing and he did and God answered him with a great big fat yes.

Here’s how Jesus put it to His disciples. You can read it in John 16:23-24. He said:

Truly, I tell you if you ask anything of the Father in my name he will give it to you. Until now you haven’t asked for anything in my name, ask and you will receive so that your joy may be complete.

This isn’t the only time He says that, by the way. Quite a number times Jesus said, ‘ask and you will receive’. Why is that? Is Jesus promoting selfishness? Let’s stop and think about that.

If a child goes to its mother or father, and asks for help (asks them to do something for them), will the parent grant their request or not? I’m a dad. Let me tell you how it works. I want to bless each of my children. Sometimes though, they ask selfishly, or they’re behaving badly (well, not often these days because they’re all grown-up, but back when they were kids), and on those occasions, I would withhold my blessing. But if they came to me and asked me for something good for the right reason, I couldn’t wait to bless them! It’s just what I wanted to do, because I love them.

Now, the Bible talks about asking for God’s blessing for the wrong reason. Have a listen. James 4:2-3:

You did not have because you did not ask. You asked and you didn’t receive because you asked wrongly in order to spend what you gained on your pleasures.

So God’s just like any father. He’ll bless whenever He can but not when we ask selfishly with the wrong motives. The point is … it’s a point that Jesus made over and over again … that He does want us to ask and to ask and to ask, believing that He rewards those who do because He’s the best Dad in the universe and He wants to bless you. He really does.

Now you may look at your life (at the moment) at the one difficult situation that’s confronting you right now. And doubt deep in your heart that God actually wants to bless you. Let’s say, you have a totally, completely and utterly intractable issue going on in your marriage. You and your wife (or your husband as the case may be), are drifting apart. And you simply can’t see how it’s going to work out for the good. You just can’t seem to get on the same page as each other even though you’ve tried everything in the book. Okay, you’re not perfect and you’ve tried everything, EVERYTHING. You’ve prayed over it and God hasn’t shown up. Well, here’s the answer – believe that God wants you to ask. Believe that God wants to bless you. Take Jesus absolutely at His word, claim the Word of God for yourself because God means it for you.

Literally, ask and receive that your joy may be complete. That’s what Jesus is saying to you right now. They are not my words. They are not the empty hollow promises of a prosperity doctrine preacher. These are the very Words of Jesus:

Ask and receive that your joy may be complete.

Into that difficult, intractable situation, ask over and over again. Pray, knowing that God hears you … that God wants to bless you, and that God (in His absolutely perfect time) will answer you … and don’t stop until He does. I wonder, given that difficult situation you’re going through, whether you’ve prayed that way – faithfully and consistently – day after day for God to do what you cannot do.

I wonder whether you’ve dived into your relationship with God in this real, practical way, and spent times asking Him over and over again because if you haven’t, that’s what He’s waiting for! If you haven’t, that’s exactly what the Bible tells you to do, because God wants to bless you.

We kind of think that praying is a bit like going to McDonalds and ordering a hamburger … you front up at the counter and then ninety seconds later the hamburger pops down the stainless steel chute. But listen, listen to what Jesus says about persisting in prayer, Luke 18:1 to 8.

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city, there was a widow who kept coming to him saying, ‘grant me justice against my opponent.

For a while he refused but later he said to himself, ‘though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone yet because this widow keeps bothering me I will grant her justice so that she may not wear me out by continually coming and asking’ and the Lord said, ‘listen to what the unjust judge says and will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them and yet when the Son of man comes will he find faith on the earth?

Odd, isn’t it? That He compares God to an unjust judge but He’s making a very strong point here … God wants us to persist in prayer, to badger Him not because He’s mean but because He wants to grow our faith in the process. Because when He grows your faith, through this difficult process of asking over and over again for His blessing (in impossible circumstances), believing that God is going to deliver you in these impossible circumstances, He’s growing you. He’s equipping you with a healthy right sense of dependence on Him.

God’s Word is clear, abundantly clear. God wants to bless you. The question is simply this … will you take Him at His Word or not?

Sometimes when it comes to receiving God’s blessing in our lives, we imagine we have to drag it out of Him, convince Him to bless you. But what if, I mean what if He’s already decided to bless you? What if the blessing is actually already a done deal?

I want to share with you right now the biggest turn around in thinking about God’s blessing that we can ever experience. It’s changing our understanding completely about what God is on about when He talks about His blessing.

I want to go back to another parable about persistence in prayer because I think we can get the wrong impression about God’s blessing if we read these parables from Jesus incorrectly. We’re going to Luke 11:5-8:

Jesus said to them, ‘suppose one of you has a friend and you go to him at midnight and you say to him ‘friend lend me three loaves of bread for another friend of mine has just arrived and I have nothing to set before him’ and this guy answers from within, ‘don’t bother me, the door’s already been locked, my children are already in bed with me, I can’t get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you anything because he is your friend at least because of your persistence he will get up and give you what you need.

It’s an odd parable that one, like the parable of the unjust judge. In this one, God is compared to a neighbour who is unwilling to get out of bed and help you in the middle of the night. Which is really weird because God never sleeps. He never doesn’t want to help you, He’s never short on bread to give you.

So what’s this parable saying? Is it saying that we have to drag a blessing out of God? No! It’s saying that God wants us to be persistent, to keep on asking because He wants to build a healthy dependence on Him (in us). How do I know that? Because immediately what follows on from this parable is this familiar passage, Luke 11:9-13:

So I say to you ask and it will be given to you, search and you’ll find, knock and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who searches finds and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you if your child asks for a fish will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, you give a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

So God’s saying here that He totally gets it that we need a blessing and when we ask Him, even more so than an earthly parent, our heavenly Father will give us every good thing. But here’s the turnaround I want to share with you today. It’s not a case of having to drag the blessing out of God because God has already purposed the blessing for us. Listen very carefully to these words written by the Apostle Paul to the Church in Ephesus (very, very carefully), Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

What does that verse say? It says that God has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So what’s a spiritual blessing? Well the word ‘spiritual’ here relates to the human spirit or the rational soul, that part of us which is akin to God. It belongs to God but its part of us. That’s what the word spiritual is referring to and blessing?

What does that word actually mean? Well it’s the Greek word eulogia, which means to praise, to speak well of. You know the word eulogy, when someone gets up at a person’s funeral and says nice things about that person. That’s where we get the word eulogy from. So if we put those two words together – spiritual and blessing – God is already, He has already, He continues to speak His good words, His praise for us, good things for our lives into our spirit in the heavenly places.

Now, at first blush that may not be so encouraging. ‘Great, so God’s saying nice things about me.’ But let me ask you, how did God create the universe? Do you remember? Back there in Genesis chapter 1:

Then God said, ‘let there be light and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

And each part of Creation God spoke into existence. Why? How? Well, Paul tells us in Romans 4:17. He says that:

God gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not yet exist.

So God is speaking blessing into existence just in the way that He spoke Creation into existence. In fact, it’s past tense, He’s already done it, it’s a done deal. Not just a few blessings but every spiritual blessing. They’re already on their way because God has already spoken them into existence.

Let’s read that verse from Ephesians again with a brand new understanding, Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

He has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And those blessings are already on their way, a steady flow right when God purposes them into your spirit … into your life.

So not only is God a fantastic Father who wants to bless you, not only does God have the power to bless you but He already has. He’s already spoken every blessing for your whole life into existence and they will each come to pass on the very day that God purposes them.

Has that just blown your understanding of God’s blessing completely out of the water? Has that just given your understanding of God’s blessing a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn around? Because now, when you’re going to God, over and over again asking for His blessing, you don’t have to go there with this hang-dog kind of attitude – that you had to drag a blessing out of a stingy God, who really can’t be bothered getting up out of bed for you.

Now you can go to God forearmed with the truth knowing that He wants to bless you … knowing that He has the power to bless you and knowing that He’s already spoken every spiritual blessing into existence. Now you can go to Him day after day, asking for His blessing and know that it’s really on its way because by knowing the truth God has set you free to receive His blessing.

Listen to me very carefully … God wants to bless you. I know what a huge turn around in thinking this probably is for you. It was for me when I realised what was going on in this whole area of God’s blessing. It still is, every time I sit down and ask for God’s blessing in my life, I have to do a reality check.

No, I don’t have to drag a blessing out of God – He does love me, He does want to bless me, He is more than able to bless me. And oh, by the way, yeah, there it is in the Bible … God’s very own Word to me. God tells me that He has already blessed me with every spiritual blessing. He’s already spoken each one of my blessings into existence and they’ll each be on their way just at the right time.

Wow, do you get it? So now when you read this verse, Mark 11:24, you’ll know precisely how to do it.

So I tell you whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours.

Have you ever sat there and wondered ‘well how in the blazes am I supposed to believe that I’ve already received it? I don’t have that sort of faith.’ Well actually you do, you do now because you know the truth. And the truth is that God has already blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places through Christ Jesus.

So now immersed in the truth … free in God’s truth … you can sit down and you can pray and ask with such joy, with such certain anticipation of God’s blessing that you (in fact), do already believe that it’s yours.

Remember, I’m not a prosperity doctrine preacher. I’m not from the ‘name it and claim it, blab it and grab it’ school of prayer. I am simply opening up the Bible here and telling you what God is saying.

It doesn’t matter which way I come at it, how I read it, how many times I think about it, the answer is always the same – God wants to bless you.

We all need things in our lives. We need food and shelter. We need friends and family. We need a job, some income. But even though they are all things that we consider to be the basics, we don’t each always have the basics. And when our basics are unmet, we can truly say that we’re in need.

Well, what if God is in the business of supplying every need in your life, each and every one?

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Gaither band. But I absolutely love them, love their music and what they’re on about. They sing a song called One Good Song. It’s all about cutting back all the stuff we have in our lives – all the clutter, all the things we buy and we think is so necessary to our lives. The chorus of that song goes something like this. I’ll just say it, I can’t sing it. It says:

I’m learning how to separate the wants from the needs,
A good life now comes with just a few simple things.
Jesus in my heart, a place to belong,
A few good friends and one good song.
Oh my latest list, well, it ain’t too long,
Just a Godly love and one good song.

I first heard that song quite a few years back now, and the line that really convicted me was the one about learning to separate my wants from my needs. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I’d started to believe that a whole bunch of my wants were in fact my needs, that all these optional extras were necessary to my well-being and happiness, necessary to life itself.

It’s easy to do because the more the basics in our lives are met; things like food and shelter and our basic health, a job, an income, enough to go around; the more God has those bases covered for us, the more we start looking into the optional extras – a bigger income, a bigger house, a nicer car, a great holiday, oh and this and that and maybe this and that, wow look at that. And when we can’t have them straight away, we imagine that somehow our existence is impaired.

I say all this by way of qualifying what I’m going to be talking about today because we’re checking out what God’s Word has to say on the important, the vital subject of His blessing in our lives. And I want to make something very, very clear, right now, we’re going to be talking about our needs not our wants, our needs.

Everything I’m going to say about God’s blessing in your life today is focused on what you need, not necessarily on your wants above and beyond your basic needs.

Okay, so let’s get into them. As I said at the outset, not everybody in this world has their basic needs met. There have been times in my life (in the life of the ministry in which I work), where there wasn’t enough income to support the ministry and in fact, to support putting food on the table for our family, that’s a need.

And I know that there are people listening today who are desperately lonely, people who are looking for the right marriage-partner and he or she hasn’t come along. Perhaps, you’re elderly and your family is all gone and you find yourself desperately alone. I know that there are people listening today (many of them in fact) who live in war zones around the world, in parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East.

We have lots of people listening to this program today on stations all around the world from dangerous places and you don’t even know you’re going to be safe, right? And here Berni comes on the radio and he’s yabbering on about ‘God wanting to bless me’ again. Doesn’t this joker realise how desperate my situation is? Doesn’t he get it?

As things turn out, I do and so does God and that’s what I want to share with you right now. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say on having his needs met. And by the way, before I read it to you, let me tell you what the context is. When Paul wrote this, he was on death row chained to a Roman soldier in a Roman dungeon, just so you realise that he wasn’t writing this sitting back on the French Riviera sipping Sauvignon Blanc, right? This is what he said:

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned for me but you had no opportunity to show it. Not that I’m referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share in my distress. You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the Gospel, when I left Macedonia, no Church shared with me in the manner of giving and receiving except you alone.

For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek a gift but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in the glory in Jesus Christ.

To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen. (Philippians 4:14-20.)

So Paul is out there doing ministry. He’s preaching Christ across the known world. That takes finances, that takes resources. And while we know that along the way he worked as a tent maker to support himself, sometimes he also relied on the generous support of the Churches which he planted and helped to grow, like the Church here in Philippi that he was writing to.

And he especially needed the help right now when he was in prison because when you’re in prison (back in those days), you couldn’t earn money. And they didn’t provide for you very well, you essentially had to provide for yourself. So Paul needed prayer support. He needed financial support. He needed friendship. But it seems that for a while, his beloved friends in Philippi had forgotten him. But now he tells them (and he tells us) he’s so thankful for their gifts which no doubt came in just in the nick of time.

Paul talks a lot about being content (however), whether in need or fully supplied, whether with a full belly or with an empty one, because he’s discovered the secret that no matter what the world throws at him, good or bad, he can do all things … he can get through all things … he can be content through all things through Christ who strengthens him. There’s a huge lesson in that for anyone whose basic needs aren’t covered right now – Christ is the answer.

Notice how boldly Paul says that he’s not a victim here cowering in defeat. He’s confident because Jesus is in that place with him. Just as well, because none of the other Churches that he’d served helped support him other than the Philippians. He could have become quite bitter and twisted over that, but no, his faith is in Jesus. Christ is his provision – come what may.

And that’s the first point I want to make to you. When you’re in that place where your needs aren’t being met and Paul’s needs, I think you will agree were pretty desperate there on death row, Jesus is your provision. You can get through it all. You can get through all things through Christ who strengthens you, even though, like Paul you find yourself in a time of distress.

When the days are black draw close to Jesus in prayer. Pull up and rest in Him and rely on Him and ask Him to bless you. And trust Him to bless you because here’s the bottom line, and this is my second point to you today, He will always supply your needs.

Did you notice how Paul, this death row prisoner, finishes his letter to the Philippians? Have another listen:

I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I’ve received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen.

Paul’s not writing a theological textbook here. It’s a letter to friends and out of his own real-world experience sitting there on death row, not knowing if he’ll live or die. He’s able to say to them that his God, the God whom he has come to know intimately in these dark days in the dungeon, that God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Notice Paul makes a sharp distinction here between wants and needs. He’s talking about our needs only and based on his first-hand experience of the faithfulness of God. He is able to tell his friends in Philippi (and indeed you and me) that God will supply all your needs.

How much impact is your life having on other people? Not bad impact, good impact? How much is the miracle of your life, creating miracles in the lives of others? Because if the answer is “not much”, then Houston, we have a problem.

I remember one of the saddest times in my life, I’m going to share it with you. It happened, ooh about twenty years ago now. Everything that mattered to me, everything in my personal life and family life had fallen apart – completely. I’d been working so hard on growing my business that I hadn’t had the time or the energy to work on the things that really mattered in life. The people who really mattered – or should have mattered anyway. It was deeply distressing.

The business that I was a partner in, was an IT consulting firm, you know I guess, in its early stages of success. We were in the process of moving to a larger, better office and one of the things that we had to do was to go through all our stuff and clean out before we packed and moved.

I was sitting on an old, carpeted floor by a number of those grey metal four-drawer filing cabinets, going through all the consulting reports that we’d written for many, many of our clients, sorting out those that we’d keep and those that we’d throw away. We kept probably twenty-five percent and we threw seventy-five percent away.

And I remember looking at that pile of the seventy-five percent of consulting papers there on the floor, thinking … is that what I poured my life into? These reports that we’re about to throw away – is that what I sacrificed everything for? Is that what my life amounts to? Is that the legacy I want to leave behind? A whole bunch of trash!

It was a tragic wakeup call for me, and it was all about the impact that my life had had to date. How much impact? Despite all the hard work, answer: Not very much real impact at all.

I remember deciding then and there, that I wanted my life to have an impact in other people’s lives. I’d made a whole bunch of mistakes to that point in my life. I’d worked hard, I’d been part of a successful business, but in real terms, in life impact terms, in terms of what really mattered – it hadn’t amounted to much. That was one of those experiences that God used to usher me into what I’m doing right now. And while it pays a whole bunch less, it’s a whole bunch more satisfying because it has a whole bunch more impact.

Just last night, I had a Facebook message from someone who said that they were listening to this program each day and it had literally transformed his life. That’s what gets me out of bed each morning – being part of something that God is doing with a real impact in people’s lives.

By the way (he wrote), what he wrote made me realise that he didn’t quite have things right. This is literally what he said, ‘You have changed my life’. Well, no actually, I haven’t. I wrote back, ‘God has. Yes, He’s used our small team here at Christianityworks to do that, but it’s His work and not mine.’

I know that absolutely because there is nothing that I possess, and there is nothing that I, in and of my own self can say or do, that can have an eternal impact on your life or anyone else’s life. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, only He can make that happen. And it happens, when God’s blessing flows down into me in such huge volumes, that I just can’t contain it; that it overflows out of me into the lives of other people, like that man who wrote to me on Facebook last night.

We’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about God’s blessing and the fact that it’s right and proper to ask Him to bless us. I ask for God’s blessing each and every morning in prayer. I pray that He will bless me so that I can bless you. That’s how it works in God’s economy. And if I don’t have God’s blessing flowing into me and out through me, then frankly, I have nothing of value to give you.

Listen to how Jesus talked about this very thing, John 15: 1-11, He said:

I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

The fruit only happens on a branch, like you and me, when we’re connected to the vine. When the Spirit of God flows from the trunk to the branch – when the blessing of God flows from the trunk to the branch; when the Word of God flows from the trunk to the branch – then and only then, does the branch grow the sort of fruit that God wants it to grow. The sort of fruit that other people can come along then and pick off the branch and enjoy, and be blessed by, and be nourished by.

And do you notice what Jesus says about how much you and I can achieve without Him? Apart from me you can do NOTHING!

The point I’m making right here is that you and I need God’s blessing. We can’t operate without God’s blessing. When we step onto the battlefield of life, if we don’t have God’s blessing and His Presence and His power and His joy and His peace, we have nothing to offer the rest of the world.

It’s a tragedy to me that so many Christ–followers don’t connect with the vine each and every day by quietly, gently starting off their day resting in Him, praying, chatting, asking for His blessing.

Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we absolutely covet the blessing of God and make it the greatest priority to get connected into that blessing through Jesus each and every day? Come on, what’s the matter with us?

Can I ask you this? Do you want to be filled with God’s blessing or not? Do you want to experience every blessing that God has for you or not? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Of course, we all want to be blessed. Well, why don’t we connect with the vine? The answer is kind of obvious and yet it’s easy not to make the blessing of God an absolute priority.

I know that the idea of God’s abundant blessing seems incongruous in difficult circumstances. It seems that it’s simply not possible when you’re going though the middle of a testing time, a wilderness experience, a dungeon experience. It’s simply not possible to imagine that in that place you could receive the blessing of God.

But it’s precisely in that place that you and I need the abundant blessing of God. Think of Paul and Silas in prison. They healed a girl, and delivered her from a demon. For that the crowd attacked them, the magistrates had them stripped and beaten to within an inch of their lives with rods.

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all of the doors were opened and everybody’s chains were unfastened. (Acts 16: 25-26)

See, right there in the middle of their impossible circumstances, their painful and uncertain circumstances, they received the blessing of God. Why? Well, it wasn’t because they were cowering in fear and licking their wounds and grumbling about their plight, it was because they were praying and singing hymns to God.

That’s how you get connected to the vine. That’s how you get the blessing of God flowing through you. That’s how the prison doors swing open and the chains fall off. And then, they went on to bless everyone around them. Hello! Are we getting this?

You and I need the blessing of God in our lives. And God is a God who wants to bless us abundantly.

Let me say it to you again, so that this time it’ll sink in once and for all. God is a God who wants to bless you abundantly! For it is to His glory, that you get out there and you bear much fruit.

A life without impact is a wasted life. If we go through life looking after ourselves but not impacting others for good, then, when we get to the end of it all, no doubt, we’re going to be asking this question, ‘so what was the point?’ And at the end, well that’s not such a good time to be asking that question, is it?

Yesterday on the program we were talking about the impact of your life on other people. And that’s a theme I want to continue to explore right now. Because when we talk about the blessing of God in our lives, the whole point of that blessing isn’t just that it should be a blessing to us, but that it should flow out through us. And be an abundant blessing to the people around us.

I am here with you today because some people who had experienced God’s blessing in their lives, shared that blessing with me amidst of some of the most difficult circumstances I’d ever experienced. God’s blessing to them overflowed into my life.

I think of an elderly woman, well into her seventies she was at the time, with whom I boarded for several months (this is about 20 years ago now), when I was going through a tough time and I was in the throes of giving my life to Jesus. Her name was Norma. And she gave me a place to stay when I didn’t have anywhere to live. Each night after dinner, Norma and I would sit down over a cup of our favourite Twinings Russian Caravan tea. And she would share with me the abundant joy that she had in her relationship with Jesus. Her husband had died eighteen years before from a massive heart attack walking back from the letterbox on their front lawn.

So here she was a widow, lonely often. And yet when she told me about Jesus and her relationship with Him, and what that meant, and how He blessed her (on and on, night after night) I could see it in her eyes and I could hear it in her voice. It was infectious. And that ‘it’ (I now look back and), I can give that ‘it’ a name. It was the blessing of God in her life. It was so real.

And so the blessing of God in Norma, overflowed into my life. And since then; as I do what I do now, sharing the love of Jesus with you and many other people through this program; the blessing of God that first came to me through Norma and a handful of other people (just like her) now overflows into so many more lives.

That’s God’s plan. That’s how it works in God’s economy. His blessing fills us to overflowing and then multiplies to feed countless more people. Have a listen to this beautiful, powerful story of the multiplication of God’s blessing:

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they had seen the signs that he was doing on the sick. So Jesus went up on a mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.’

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’ Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, when he had blessed them, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’ Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew to the mountain by himself. (John 6: 1-15)

The disciples thought they had nothing with which to feed the thousands. But Jesus knew that He had more than enough, more than enough! So He took the little that they did have, and what did He do? He blessed it! He gave thanks for it! And when He’d done that, there was more than enough blessing to go around for five thousand

Watchman Nee was a Chinese Evangelist who was martyred for his faith and Gospel work in the 1970s. This is what he wrote about this perspective, this expectation issue, in relation to this sign – the feeding of the five thousand. In a little booklet that he published called Twelve Baskets Full, here is what he said:

What do we mean when we talk of God’s blessing? We mean divine activity that is not based on human activity. We mean a working of God that is not based on our work. The blessing of God is not something that we can earn by our efforts. It is not something that we can buy with our money.

One penny should always procure one penny’s worth; but if with our one penny God gives us ten thousand penny’s worth, that is His blessing. His blessing makes our calculations futile because it leaves us without any basis on which to calculate. When five small loaves provide nourishment for five thousand people and leave a surplus that fills twelve baskets, that is God’s blessing.

So many of us, instead of looking to our Lord to bless the loaves, are looking at the loaves in our hands. Our one hope in the face of today’s immense need is that He will perform a miracle and that He will do it by taking the bread into His hands and blessing it.

When the Lord in His goodness brings us to a totally new position where we recognise the paramount importance of His blessing, then the way will be open for Him to work.

I’ve shared this story on the program before. But I’m sharing it again as we come to the close of this series about God’s amazing blessings because I deliberately want to blow your mind with the power of expecting God to bless you. I want my calculations and your calculations to be absolutely futile when it comes to sharing the blessing of God around, because I want God to bless more people through you and me than we can possibly ever imagine.

Now, in my case, I don’t say that arrogantly because what God does through me and what He does through you is completely up to Him. But when we desire His blessing, when we expect His blessing and we see it happening through us, it’s just the most amazing thing that we can ever experience. It’s like being there and having a small part to play. But really, at the end of the day, you feel like a privileged spectator.

Let’s say in your life, that you impact just ten people, ten, with the amazing blessing of God. And those ten people impact another ten, and those ten, another ten. That’s not an unreasonable expectation. Then, in just those three generations of blessing (if I can call them that), a thousand people will have been blessed by God, because you were God’s entry point of blessing into this world, in your little corner of the vineyard.

And those thousand people are going to go on and have children, and their children will have children, and their children will have more children – and the blessing of God as it came into this world can ripple down through countless generations – the blessing of God that came through you.

There are people in this world that need you to be the entry point of God’s blessing into their lives. Just like Norma was into my life. There’s something about you that’s absolutely unique.

And I know, you kind of look at yourself and think, ‘Well, I’m nothing special and I don’t have a lot to give’. Welcome to the club! When I was sitting around that Laminex kitchen table with Norma all those years ago, I knew absolutely that I was nothing special, I had way less than you to give. But as Norma’s blessing flowed into my life, something happened to me. I can’t put it into words, I just knew that I had to take the little I had, and start sharing it with other people, using the abilities that God had given to me

And here we are today (twenty years on), you and I, and I’m privileged to share the blessing of God with you. I can tell you beyond any shadow of doubt that God wants to bless you and it’s time for you to get out there and for you to multiply that blessing.