If God is a God of blessing – then what about all the suffering we go through? And anyway, if God does bless, does that just mean a new car and a bigger house?

Does God want to Bless Me?

It is just great to be with you again this week and we are starting a new series that I’ve called “Blessed to be a Blessing”. There’s some really important teaching going to happen over these next four weeks on the subject of God’s blessing. Why is that important? Because I see so much misunderstanding about God and His heart and where He stands on blessing us.

There seems to be a couple of extreme positions on this whole subject of God’s blessing – two opposite ends of the spectrum, if you like. On the one end, it goes something like this. God wants to bless me, therefore, I should believe Him for the new Mercedes convertible, more money and a bigger house and a big diamond ring. In effect it kind of reduces God down to some sort of sugar daddy: it’s all about me, I am at centre stage – I name it and I claim it. And you know something, lots of Christians believe that.

Now the problem that I have with that end of the spectrum is that when I take that and I hold it in one hand and I hold the cross of Christ in the other – when I look at Jesus, this Jesus that gave up everything for me; this Jesus who was nailed to a cross, beaten and bruised and brutalised, not even with the clothes on His back – and I compare those two things, you know something, this end of the spectrum over here, jars with that, don’t you think? And it leads to some of the worst excesses – the tele-evangelists pressuring people for money and flying around in their private jets. Is that where that should end up? I mean is that what God’s blessing is all about?

The other end of the spectrum is you have to be poor to serve God. Money is evil. In fact, we just had a phone call, just the other evening, in the middle of the night, someone responding to a program, saying, “money is evil”. Well, no that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil”, but money itself isn’t evil. “People who are rich are evil.”

I was talking to a man in India recently. India by and large, is a country of extremes – there is the very rich and there’s a large, large number of very, very poor people. And this man was being very critical of a Christian leader who just happened to have a nice house in a nice area. He believed that it was wrong for him to have money.

Then I looked at this end of the spectrum – you have to be a pauper to serve God. And then I go to the Bible and I read about Abraham, who was God’s chosen man; he was very wealthy. I read about King Solomon, he was very wealthy. Yet King Solomon was still God’s anointed leader over Israel. He was full of God’s wisdom.

Do you see the problem? You go to either end of the spectrum and you take teaching about God’s blessing to the extreme and you know, I think you end up with the wrong answer. God is a God of balance and when we look at our lives, what we see is that we go through times of blessing, where there’s joy and everything seems to be going well and we all go through difficult times.

You see the problem. At one end you can have people getting the extreme prosperity thing in their heads and we can end up thinking it’s all about us. It plays right into the hands of the world; it’s the me, me, me – the next plasma TV, the next car, the next big thing. If you don’t have that, obviously you don’t have enough faith.

On the other hand, if you have this perception that you have to be poor to be a Christian, well if that were the case, who would ever fund the work of the Lord on this planet? God has always chosen to fund His work through His people. And then on top of the pure monitory thing, there’s the reality of tragedy and pain and suffering. I mean some of these things are indiscriminate – earthquakes, tsunamis, a young person who loves God dies of cancer, in a car crash or there’s divorce or there’s retrenchment or there’s all that stuff of life that we all experience some times. Are you with me?

So what’s God’s plan? Does God want to bless me or not? Is it okay for me to ask for His blessing? Is it okay for me to expect His blessing, or is that presumptuous? This is an important question. It is in a sense where the ‘rubber’ of faith hits the ‘road’ of life. It’s when it comes to faith in God being active, right in the midst of life’s realities today, the things we all have to face. We get up in the morning, we pray, we look forward to the day … How do I pray, what do I give thanks for? That difficult situation that’s going be confronting me at work today, can I ask God to help me with that? Is God in all of that?

That’s why we are doing this series “Blessed to be a Blessing”. I’m a simple man. I open the Bible, I see what God’s Word says on a subject and you know God is largely a God of balance. I love to be empowered with God’s Word and hopefully as we share these next twenty, twenty five minutes together we will both be empowered by God’s Word.

The problem with teaching on blessing is that you just can’t take one verse and say, “That’s it! See, God is a God who blesses; therefore I can ask Him for the next big car”. You end up with an extreme position. Just as if you say, “You can’t have any money to serve Jesus. You have to sell everything you have, give it all away”, because Jesus did say that to one young ruler. I’d like to look at God’s perspective; the whole thing. Is God a God who blesses?

Well, let’s just start with what we mean by the word “bless”? It has a number of different meanings but the main connotation is God’s divine favour – God intervening to make something better or to give us something that will bring us joy or happiness, financial blessing, spiritual blessing, physical blessing, healing, anything and everything. God’s divine favour – His blessing becoming active in our lives. The question is, is God in the blessing business?

The word “bless” or “blesses” or “blessed” or “blessing”, appears three hundred and fifty eight times in the Bible. The first time you see it is in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 22. Let’s go there and have a bit of a look at what God’s up to. Genesis chapter 1 is the account of God’s creation. He creates the light out of darkness and the heavens and the earth and the oceans and the dry land and the plants. And the first time He creates a living creature, this is what He says:

So God created the creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems. According to all their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind and God saw that is was good and God …

Listen to this:

… and God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth’.

The second time that the concept of ‘blessing’ happens in the Bible is in that same chapter, a few verses on, verse 26:

Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image and in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them” – see, there it is again – “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over every living creature that moves on the ground.’

And then God said, ‘I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food and all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground; everything that has breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.

That’s creation! Let me ask you something – do you think God’s in the business of blessing us?

If God Blesses why do we Suffer?

So we’ve looked at God’s own account of His creation, Genesis chapter 1. The very first living creatures He creates, He blesses them. He says, “Go and multiply, increase in number and fill the earth.” And He creates humanity, man and woman, and He hands the whole of that creation over to them. What an enormous blessing! You and I are joint owners in creation! Why? Because God created us in His own image and then He handed the whole thing over to us. Just stop and think about that for a minute.

What a huge blessing! Right at the point of creation, God was in the blessing business. That’s profound! And His plan for us was to live in relationship with Him – Adam and Eve. Genesis, chapter 2, verse 15:

The Lord God took the man and put him is the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

A perfect plan of blessing and as you probably know, Adam and Eve rebelled. They did the one thing that God said, ‘don’t do’ and there were consequences. Rebellion against God always has consequences.

To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing, with pain you will give birth. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and you ate from the tree about which I commanded you ‘you must not eat’, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you’ll eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken – for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Enter pain and suffering because humanity rebelled against God. And for the rest of the history of humanity, there are consequences. Now you might say to me, “Berni that is so insensitive. If there’s a still born baby, if tens of thousands are killed in a tsunami, if some young teenager is raped and murdered, how can you say that?”

Here it is, God made us in His image but when who He is doesn’t suit us, we try and remake Him into our image. God is a God of blessing – that was His plan, that’s why He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But they rebelled and when that happens there is an interruption of blessing, there’s an interruption in the relationship with Him.

Have a look at it. In Leviticus chapter 26 is a perfect summary of where God stands on this. It’s a summary of the old covenant; the relationship between God and Israel. And He lays out the relationship in this chapter. Let’s go there and begin at verse 1. He says:

Don’t make idols or set up a sacred stone for yourselves, don’t place a carved stone in your land to bow down to it because I am the Lord your God. If you observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary, I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commandments, I will send rain in its season and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field will be full of fruit and your threshing will continue until grape harvest and grape harvest will continue until planting and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

I will grant you peace in the land and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid of them. I will remove savage beasts from the land and the sword will not pass through the country. You will pursue your enemies and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you with favour and make you fruitful and increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last years harvest when you have to make room for the new one.

I’ll put my dwelling place among you and I won’t abhor you and I walk among you and be your God and you will be my people. I’m the Lord God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yolk and enabled you to walk with your heads high.

But, but if your won’t listen to me and carry out all these commandments and if you reject me and my decrees and you abhor my laws and fail to carry out those commandments and so violate this covenant, then I will do this – I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease and fever will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee, even when there is no one pursuing you.

See, God first and foremost is a God of blessing. He wants to be in relationship with His people and He is God – He gets to say this is how it is. And when Israel turned against Him, there were consequences. And you and I both have rebelled against God; we both have turned our backs on God at some point in our lives. I was talking to a man just the other day. He’s my own age, he’s a good friend of mine and he was talking about his three adult sons. This man had a dream to bless his sons.

He’s an entrepreneur. He’s good at making money. He worked as a team with his sons; he wanted to build a business empire and to see them blessed and their children blessed. But one by one, they rejected him and his plans – they didn’t honour their father. They went their own way; they turned their backs on him. It sounds like a parable, doesn’t it? This is a true story – a friend of mine.

And this is what my friend said to me, he said, “Berni, I really wanted to bless them, I wanted to give to them but now that they have rejected that, in their self-centered, selfish ways, I can’t bless them.” and it’s the greatest sadness of his life. That man is made in the image of God. What he said about his heart to bless his sons is exactly, exactly where God is coming from.

God is a God of blessing, but when we reject Him, when humanity rejected Him, when you and I as individuals rejected Him, it interrupts the relationship. And it’s in that relationship that we are blessed – that’s God’s plan. So we’ve all done that. Can we still go to God and ask Him to bless us?

Can I ask for God’s Blessing?

I hope that as we have looked into God’s Word so far on the program, it’s had a profound impact on you. God’s heart is to bless us – it’s in His very nature. That’s what creation was all about. A huge abundant, indescribable blessing from Him to us. But when we reject Him, when we try to reconstruct God in our own image rather than accepting Him for who He is, we interrupt that blessing. It’s as simple as that. Now we have all done that, so can we still ask God for His blessing, for His favour, for His grace? Absolutely, because God is a God of forgiveness.

I’d like to take you to a place, a prayer by a man called Jabez. Someone wrote a book about this a few years ago and it became very prominent, but this prayer is in the Old Testament. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to First Chronicles, chapter 4, verses 9 and 10. It‘s in the middle of nine chapters of genealogy, you know, so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who begat so and so – nine chapters – riveting! Smack bang in the middle of that God stops and tells us the story of this Jabez. Obviously He thought it was important enough to break this riveting flow of the genealogies. Good stuff, thank you Jesus. Here’s the prayer of Jabez:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers and his mother named his Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying, “O God, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory and that your hand might be with me and that you might keep me from hurt and from harm.” And God granted his request.

Jabez gets called “You’re a pain” by his mother. Imagine if your mother or my mother named us that. Not a great start in life is it? Mustn’t have been for Jabez because Jabez cried out to God. He cried out to Him in desperation, out of his pain, out of his imperfect life. We don’t know much more about him but what we do know is that everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and he rejected God in his life at some point, just the way that you and I have. And in his desperation he calls out to God.

You might say, “Berni, how do you know that Jabez rebelled?” Let me ask you, if you’re a parent, what’s the first or the second or the third word that every child learns? “No!” Isn’t it? And God’s Word clearly teaches that we all have turned our backs on Him. So Jabez is a fallen man just like you and I are fallen human beings. What does Jabez ask God? “God, that you would bless me indeed.” Not just any sort of blessing an ‘indeed’ blessing; not just an ordinary blessing of God, “I really, really, God, want you to bless me.”

Secondly he asks God to enlarge his territory. In the Old Testament, land was very important, in terms of blessing. I mean, land is somewhere we live. If you have a house in the suburbs, you might take that for granted. If you happen to live in a Liberian refugee camp in Sierra Leon, where you are listening to this program, you won’t be taking land for granted. Jabez asks God to enlarge his territory.

Thirdly that God’s hand might be with him. What a great blessing that is! And fourthly, that God would keep him from hurt and harm. And listen to what it says, (Jabez is a person just like you and me) listen to what it says next. It says, “And God granted his request.” This man put his faith in God and he asked God for a blessing.

Once I discovered this prayer, I started praying it regularly, with my own twist. I said, “God, that you would bless me indeed today. I want to see your presence; I want you to be with me. God, that you would increase my borders and my territory. That more and more people would listen to these programs.”

You know, I started praying that two years ago when these programs were being listened to by a few people on a few stations and now they are listened to by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in over eighty countries around the world. God answers those prayers. “God that you would send your hand with me that doors would open for the work that we do and that you would keep me from evil that I wouldn’t cause any pain.” It is just the Lord laid on my heart.

The point is we can ask God for blessing. God is a God of great blessing and blessing happens in relationship with Him. When we reject God – listen to me – when we reject God it breaks the blessing. Just like that friend of mine that I was talking about with his sons. God wants to bless you … God wants to bless me and there’s a purpose; there’s a reason for His blessing. It’s not just for us but as we will see over the next few weeks on the program, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others.

But right from the beginning, right from the first creature that He created on this earth, He wanted to bless them. And when he created humanity, He wanted to bless them. And when He had a relationship with His people, Israel, He wanted to bless them. And we all turned our backs on Him and so God then gave us the greatest blessing that there could possibly be – He opened the door to a relationship with Him through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. God is a God of blessing.

Yes, we go through ups and downs in our lives, and we’re going to have a look at some of those things over the next few weeks, but when I open the Bible I see a God who wants to engage, not just with humanity as a whole, but with little people like you and me and His heart is to bless us.

You often hear people talking about how God’s blessing flows on their lives. But sometimes, we can take a narrow view of what God’s really up to.

A Deep Truth of the Bible

It’s great to be with you again today and this is the second message in a series that I have called “Blessed to be a Blessing”. The society in which we live tells us it’s all about “you”; it’s all about “me”. I buy the newspaper reasonably frequently and the one that I buy on Friday, once a month, has a glossy magazine inside it called, “Wish”. It’s full of expensive watches and expensive holidays and expensive dining experiences and coffee and real estate and it’s so glossy; it’s so seductive.

Sociologists talk of the phenomenon of “cocooning”; of wrapping ourselves in comfort. For so many people in the West, that’s what they are trying to do. To somehow ignore everything else that’s going on; to hide from all the problems in the world and imagine somehow, that we can be satisfied in the cocoon of luxury. There’s an airline that for a long time, had an advertising campaign for it’s business class and the by-line of the advertising campaign was, “It’s all about you”. And that’s it isn’t it? To cocoon ourselves in these luxury things and experiences and ignore the pain and the starvation and the sickness that’s going on in the rest of the world.

There are billions of people in poverty today. There are billions of people who don’t have enough food and some of those people are listening today. I had feed-back recently from a listener in a Liberian refugee camp, in Sierra Leone and there, life is purely about survival – food, water, avoiding disease, keeping away from war. And when I am talking about God’s blessing, the one thing that I’m conscience of is the need to speak into both ends of that spectrum.

A man who I really admire, who taught me a lot, a man called Barry Chant, was a great influence on me. He’s a lecturer at the Bible College I attended, and I have a great respect for this man. One of the ministry classes we were in, there were a small number of students and we were having a discussion and we were talking about the tendency in some parts of the church to preach what some people call a “prosperity doctrine” – to believe God for a bigger car and a bigger house.

Now Barry has been ministering around the world for over fifty years and when we came to this, his face became very serious and he said this:

If you are going to preach on God’s blessing and God’s prosperity, then what you say has to apply to the poor and to the rich. It has to work in the West and in the developing world and if it doesn’t, it’s not God’s truth.

You see, God doesn’t have favourites. Sure, God plants us in different places, in different circumstances but if we are going to talk about God’s blessing in this series “Blessed to be a Blessing”, I am really conscience of the fact that what we say, what we uncover in God’s Word, has to apply to everybody. Now, that’s always really stuck with me and what I want is never to open my mouth and speak unless I’m speaking God‘s truth.

Today we are going to look at two deep truths of the Bible – God’s Word, God’s very heart. We are going to talk about God’s blessing and particularly look at the story of Abraham. One of the things that strikes me about the Bible is that when God blesses people He expects them to take that blessing and bless other people. And that’s the first deep truth. It’s this: a blessing is only really a blessing if it flows in and out. Let me say that again: a blessing is only really a blessing when it not only flows into us from God, but it also flows out again. That’s the first truth.

And the second is this: the birth of a blessing in our lives can often be very uncomfortable and painful, and so we often miss exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. I wanted to put those two truths right up front because that’s what we are going to be talking about today. I believe that God is a God of outrageous blessing but so often we don’t understand how He blesses and what He expects. We need good teaching on God’s blessing – Biblical, profound, truth.

God’s blessing is God’s favour. It’s when He intervenes in our lives for the good – it can be Spiritual, it can be emotional, it can be physical healing, it can be in relationships and even material. I weep when people reduce the blessing of God just down to the next big, expensive car that they want to buy. I know some people will get upset with me saying that but it’s a matter of priority. God is a God of blessing but we are blessed in order to be a blessing. A blessing has to flow into us from God and out from us to others, otherwise it’s not a blessing at all.

Let’s have a look at the story of Abraham and we clearly see how God works. We are going to Genesis, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. If you have a Bible, grab it:

“The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation,” – listen to this – “and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and in you all the peoples on the earth will be blessed.” So Abram left as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran and set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh, at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land and the Lord appeared there to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

So Abram built an alter there, to the Lord who appeared to him. From there he went toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

See, there are a few aspects to this story. Firstly, God said, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household. Leave everything you’re comfortable with and step out. And if you do that, I will bless you. I promise, I will make you a great nation. All the peoples on the earth will be blessed.” The point of the blessing was not just that Abram would be blessed but that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed, through him. That’s huge! Ultimately Israel was blessed in that they received the Promised Land and you and I were blessed in that Jesus Christ was physically a descendant of Abram.

Now this required a lot of obedience. This man was seventy five years old. Most of us are heavily into retirement aged seventy five – not that I know, I’m not quite there yet – but it was no obstacle to him. Abram was quite wealthy yet he set out into the unknown; he set out into God’s blessing and to be a blessing. I always admire this man because he had no Bible; it wasn’t written then. I don’t know how God talked to him, but somehow God did and Abram believed Him and he set out. He left his father’s house, his comfort, his people, recognition, his own country, his home on a promise from God.

“Step out of your comfort zone, Abram, follow me to this land that I will show you.” He didn’t even know where he was going, there were no planes, trains or automobiles or air conditioned business class. This was God’s promise: “I will bless you so that you will become a blessing to all the nations.” Aged seventy five, he went on an uncertain journey on God’s promise. So what happens next?

Stepping out into the Blessing

Okay, today we are talking about God’s blessing and the two deep truths: firstly that a blessing has to flow. A blessing isn’t a blessing unless it flows into us from God and out from us to other people. And secondly, when God starts to birth a blessing in our lives, it’s not always comfortable and it’s not always convenient and it doesn’t always feel like a blessing.

God’s promise to Abram was a huge blessing. Remember, Abram was seventy five years old; the greatest sadness of this man’s life was that he had no children. To the Hebrews, the two great signs of God’s blessing were lots of kids and lots of land. If you had those you were blessed, if you didn’t you weren’t.

God not only called Abram out of his comfort zone but He promised him those two blessings. Firstly in Genesis, chapter 13 verse 14, it says this:

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had departed from him, “Lift up you eyes from where you are and look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if anyone could count the dust then your offspring could be counted. Go; walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you.”

And again in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 4:

Then the word of the Lord came to him. “This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them,” then God said to Abram, “so shall your offspring be.”

The guy is seventy five; his wife Sarai is about the same age. These are huge, impossible promises: the land that God is promising him is inhabited by the Canaanites; they’ve been childless for all these years, and yet God calls Abram and Sarai out of their comfort zone into the absolutely impossible – He sends them on a long journey.

When you read the story out of the next few chapters of Genesis (and I encourage you to do that) the two things that leap out are these: firstly it was an interminable journey – twenty five years! It went on and on and on and on. We are talking “God” and “blessing” and we think an hour, a day, a week at the most. Twenty five years! What was God thinking? Not even twenty five years in the comfort of their own home, but twenty five years of rough and rugged time on the road in tents, with all their animals and possessions and servants travelling with them. Imagine the organisation and the difficulties and the discomforts all for some vague, impossible promise of blessing.

And the second thing that leaps out at you as you read the story of Abram and Sarai are their imperfections. They didn’t do this perfectly, they made lots of mistakes. Abram took Lot with him. God didn’t ask him to take Lot with him. They had to separate and Abram had to give land away and then he had to rescue Lot from captivity, putting God’s plan in risk again. And they doubted God over and over again. And then Abram and Sarai think, ‘Well, God’s not showing up so maybe we’ll give Him a hand.’ So Abram sleeps with a woman, a servant, Hagar and has Ishmael. They laughed at God’s promises. They said, “God, do you understand how old we are?” Twice Abraham lies about Sarah; says she is his sister not his wife and she ends up in some king’s harem.

Abraham was not some super Christian, you know, who did everything perfectly – just a simple, ordinary human being with an extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God. After twenty five years God gave them a son and God told them to call this son Isaac, which means “he laughs”. You see God had the last laugh, “he who laughs last, laughs best”. And they were blessed to be a blessing. They were called out of their comfort zone into God’s promises – so called “blessings” – in order to be a blessing to all the nations. But all they saw for the first twenty five years was heartbreak and trial after trial on an interminable journey.

You see how easy it is to make a mistake when God is birthing a blessing, to mistake that birth of a blessing for a curse? We go to God and ask Him to bless us and – listen to me, here’s a deep truth – often it gets a whole bunch worse before it gets better. In a relationship, if you pray for your husband or your wife or your children: “God bless them, improve our relationship, deal with that thing in them that I can’t deal with.” The most likely thing that is going to start happening is that it will get worse. They’re going to start acting up and then we give up.

When they start acting up, when it gets worst … praise God! When things take a turn for the worst after we’ve prayed for a blessing in that area, thank God, because God is up to something good. That’s His way. The birth of a blessing often is a difficult birth because that’s how we learn and grow and walk in faith. It’s a deep truth that the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we often miss out on exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. When someone taught me that, when I finally learnt that, it made a huge difference to my life. We need to stop putting our trust in circumstances we can see and put our trust in the God we can’t see.

When God starts something He will finish it! Even though we bumble through it imperfectly, like Abraham and Sarah, even though we lose heart sometimes, even though we even laugh at God and say, “Look God, this is impossible”, God wants us to learn this lesson today. It’s one of the things that He will use mightily and powerfully over the rest of our lives.

God’s blessings so often involve change in people and in circumstances and in attitudes and when they start breaking forth, it feels risky and uncomfortable and uncertain and sometimes it even feel worse. When you are in that situation, I pray that the Holy Spirit will bring this back to you. God is a God of blessing and we will sometimes suffer incredibly as His blessings come to pass. It seems to be so often His way.

Believing the Promise

God is a God of blessing and I truly believe that He wants to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Abraham was the case in point. Right from the beginning, God promised that Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. At that time he had no idea what that meant. He spent twenty five years wandering after that promise. Finally, finally a miracle – a son, Isaac. But what about this other huge promise, that through Abraham God would bring blessing to every nation on earth?

Well, let’s roll forward a little bit now, to the New Testament, about fifteen hundred years on and the writer of the Book of Hebrews says this – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it at chapter 11 and verse 8:

By faith, Abraham, when called to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going. By faith he made his home in this land, like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were his heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, who’s architect and builder, was God.

Isn’t that beautiful?

By faith, Abraham, even though he was past the age and Sarah, herself who was barren, was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made that promise. And so, from this one man and he was as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the sea shore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return, instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for He has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God said to him, “It will be through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead and, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

See, this is a beautiful story! Abraham stepped out, he wandered for twenty five years, he finally had a son but he never saw the promises of blessings to all the nations. See what it says in Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” Now we are going to go back to those two profound truths of God’s blessing that I talked about at the beginning of the program.

The first is this deep truth: a blessing is only a blessing if it flows in and out. That’s the first one. And the second is: the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we can miss exacting what God’s up to and what’s going on.

Now the story of Abraham brings these two truths together. It was uncomfortable for twenty five years, but even more so, he never saw the major promise come to fruition. The promise from the beginning to Abraham was this: ‘I will make you into a great nation’ He never saw that. It didn’t happen until after he died. And again, ‘All the peoples will be blessed through you’. He never saw that.

Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. He suffered for that blessing but never fully saw its fruition. Through Abraham, Israel received the Promised Land and through Abraham you and I receive Jesus Christ because Jesus was descended, physically, from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on.

Jesus is the greatest blessing of God to all humanity and Abraham had no idea. He had to suffer those twenty five years so he could be part of that blessing but he never saw the end of it. God blessed him in order that God’s blessing could flow through him, down to the centuries, to you and me, here and now. And that is utterly amazing.

Do you see how limiting it is when we want God just to bless us, and somehow we imagine that blessing stops with us? It’s not God’s plan. God’s blessing is only really a blessing when it flows down to us from Him and out from us to everybody else. He wants us to be the place where His flood tide of blessing brings life to the rest of the world. Look what Jesus said about exactly that: John chapter 7 verse 37:

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice (notice: He said this in a loud voice so everyone would hear) “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.

See, there’s an “in” and an “out”. Are you looking for something? Are you parched and needy and dry? Come to Jesus and drink; put your faith in Him.

And whoever believes in Him, rivers of living water will flow out of them.

It’s one of the greatest passages in the Bible. It’s powerful. It’s the crux of being a disciple. We are blessed to be a blessing! Rivers – Nile and Ganges and Murray and Mississippi and Amazon – rivers! Again Jesus said:

Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it would be measured to you.

God blesses us so that we can be a blessing. Whether we are Abraham or just some little person living in this century – we are blessed to be a blessing! It is a double sided transaction. When we limit God’s blessing to just flowing in, that’s a very, very sad thing.

You and I are blessed to be a blessing.

God has an amazing plan. He blesses us so that we can be a blessing in the world. The question is – how? How do we take what God’s given us and share it around.

Let’s Get it Straight

It is great to be with you today. This is the third message in a series that I’ve called “Blessed to be a Blessing”. I think it’s important for us to take a really deep look at God’s way of blessing us because when we understand that; when we know how God’s working and operating in our lives, it’s such a wonderful thing to see His blessing flow.

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen that we often get things the wrong way around when it comes to God’s blessing. I mean, sure, God is a God of blessing; we want to be blessed but what we often don’t come to grips with in our hearts, is how God wants to multiply His blessing through us. To have a flood tide of blessing go out to a parched and dry and hurting world. For His blessing to flow into our lives from God and out through us to other people.

Last week we particularly looked at two verses that made that abundantly clear. The first is John chapter 7, verse 37:

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink, and whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow out from within them.” By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.

You see, it’s in and out. If anyone is thirsty, come to Jesus and drink. If you’re looking for something and you’re parched and needy, come to Jesus to drink. Put your faith in Him and rivers of living water will flow out. It’s in and out. It’s one of the greatest passages in all of the Bible. It’s powerful. It’s the crux of being a disciple. We are blessed to be a blessing – rivers of living water. Remember, we looked at it – Nile, Ganges, Murray and Mississippi and Thames and Rhine and Yangtze and Amazon and again – rivers of living water.

The other thing He said was:

Give and it will be given to you, of good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it will be measured to you.

We are going to expand on that theme today and get really practical. If God’s blessing is something that flows through us, if that’s a part of how He works, how should that happen? Because if all those rivers head in and none of them head out, we’re going to end up being like the Dead Sea – dead.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a man called S.D. Gordon. Sometime in the late eighteen hundreds or nineteen hundreds, he wrote that book called, “The Quiet Talks on Power”. And in that book he uses the simple and powerful example to describe the consequences of expecting all of God’s blessing to flow into our lives but not letting any of them flow out. He uses this picture of the Dead Sea.

Now the Dead Sea is exactly that; a body of water where all the rivers flow in and none flow out and as a result, it is dead. Nothing lives in it. Not a thing. No fish, no plants, no birds and the water is incredibly hard and brackish. He makes this point in his book; that if we expect all of God’s blessing to flow in and none of them to flow out then our lives become like the circumference of the Dead Sea.

Now it’s a big turn-around for us because we are programmed to think that blessing is all about me. It should all flow into me, right? But that’s not it in God’s economy. Blessing is really only a blessing when it flows out through us again. Think about it, a material blessing like a home … isn’t the joy, the real joy of a home, sharing it with your family? It’s a natural thing! In Acts chapter 20 and verse 38, it says this:

The Lord Jesus Himself said, “It is more blessed to give that receive.

That is so profound – “It is more blessed to give that to receive.” See Jesus is throwing our whole idea of blessing on its head. And He’s saying when the blessing flows out through you, you’ll be more blessed than when it flows into you. Do you get it? God’s way of blessing is the blessing flows down from Him and out through us and in that process, standing in the middle of His great river of blessing, we to are blessed. That’s it!

The world’s dropped this notion into our heads that it’s all about us – me, me, me – and we end up twisting and perverting God’s plan. We end up thinking God’s blessing is about the next “this thing” for me or “that thing” for me. Now He loves to do those things, but principally, God’s blessing is the thing that flows out of us to the rest of the world. What if Jesus, the Son of God, had come to earth and said to Himself, “You know something, it’s all about me.” No, the Son of Man didn’t come to be served but to serve. See, in and out.

Now, Berni Dymet, the business man: I tried so hard to get everything to flow into me, with a huge house and gold plated taps and a car worth so much, just thinking about it now makes my toes curl. You know, the blessing of ‘me’ became an art form. That’s what my whole life was about and it never, never, never satisfied me. And when God got a hold of me a dozen or so years ago, over several years He changed me to the point where He trusted me to do what I’m doing now. And I walk with Him in the quiet, cool hours of the morning and experience Him and delight in Him and hear Him and spend time in His Word, and then prepare these programmes and sit here and spend time with you and the blessing flows in and out again.

Today, I’m one of the most deeply satisfied people you will ever come across, even though the way God has chosen to bless me is different from what I would have planned. I had to re-learn what it meant to be blessed by God. And it’s in this serving and using our gifts and skills, abilities and resources as channels of God’s blessing, that we discover blessing. A close connection with God – it’s a two sided transaction – intimacy with Jesus and then letting Him use us … us whom He’s made what we are meant to be, to let Him flow out through us into the parched, dry land around us. You and I are blessed to be a blessing. “It is more of a blessing to give than to receive”, is what Jesus said.

Now, maybe you’re listening to this and you are thinking, “Ok, I get the theory; I believe that; I understand it, but what about the practice? How can I be a blessing?” Well, that’s what we are going to look at through the rest of this programme.

What Gifts do I have?

It’s so easy for us to think, “Well, I don’t have anything to bless other people with. How can I be a blessing?” The “how” is so important. It’s about making the rubber hit the road and about getting our lives aligned to God’s way, so that we are working with Him and not against Him. We talked before about the fact that God’s blessing is a two-sided transaction – in and out. You can’t do the “out” without the “in”. Jesus said in John, chapter 15, verses 4 and 5:

Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me – I am the vine and you are the branches. If anyone remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.

See, this talks about the “in” and the “out” again. We need to be close to Jesus, we need to be grafted into Him; He is our life blood. And when we set our hearts on Him; when we spend that time with Him, His Spirit flows into our lives and we can’t help it, we just end up bearing fruit – He bears fruit. And who’s the fruit for? It’s not for the vine, no, it’s for other people … in and out. Isn’t it amazing how this theme recurs over and over again through the Scripture? How easy it is for us, though, to miss it, to pervert it to the “me, me, me” thing.

We’ll look at that a bit more next week; how we are prone to twist and pervert God’s plan for blessing. If we think for one minute that we can peddle and peddle and peddle hard on the outside to make things happen, whilst our relationship with Jesus on the inside is in tatters, we are kidding ourselves. The only way I know of having that relationship with Him is to lay down my life and to spend time with Him.

I was speaking a while ago at a Christian leaders conference about our priorities, about God being first and a lot of the people there were very well known leaders of Christian ministries. And one by one they came up to me afterwards and said. “You know, this is an area I struggle in. I’m busy doing ministry and somehow I don’t have time to spend with God.” So a lot of people struggle with the “in” side of the equation but others struggle with the other end.

They have a relationship with Jesus; they have time with Him but they become what I call a Spiritual couch-potato – they don’t do anything with that. And the Bible says that faith without works is dead. Now you might say, “Berni, that’s unfair; I just can’t do any of that ‘out’ stuff.” Have a listen to what Paul wrote. Romans chapter 12:

Therefore, I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is you Spiritual act of worship. Don’t conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good and pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, don’t think of yourselves more highly that you should. But rather think of yourselves with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members and these members don’t all have the same functions, so in Christ, we who are many from one body and each member belongs to all the others – we have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy according to your faith; if it’s serving then serve; if it’s teaching, well, teach; if it’s encouraging, encourage people; if it’s contributing to the needs of others, give generously to them; if it’s leadership, govern diligently and if it’s showing mercy, do it with cheerfulness.

See, God calls us to be living sacrifices.

Last week on the programme we saw how Abraham was blessed to be a blessing and he spent twenty five years on a painful, uncomfortable journey. He was a living sacrifice. If we are going to be blessed to be a blessing, if the blessing of God is going to flow into our lives and out again, there is a cost. It is not always convenient; it’s not always fun; it doesn’t always look like a blessing. We are called to be living sacrifices.

And then we shouldn’t let the world squeeze us into its mould.

Don’t conform any longer to the pattern of this world.

See “world” says it’s about you and me and Jesus is saying, “No it’s not! Die to yourself! Sacrifice your life!” And it turns everything on its head.

With sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith that God has give you, exercise the gift that is given.

See we make two equal and opposite mistakes here. Firstly, some people embark on things that they were never cut out for by God. You know, that never, ever works. People operating outside their gifting are really ugly, with a capital ‘UG’.

Some people have said to me, “Berni, you should be a pastor”. UG! You know it’s not going to happen – I’m not pastorally gifted. It would be like dragging my wife Jacqui in here, who is pastorally gifted, who in fact, is wonderfully gifted in the area of service. And if you are in Australia and you ring our ministry, chances are, you’ll talk to her. And if someone rings and they order a CD or they do this, she wants to get it out today. She’s just gifted to do that but if you dragged her here in front of the microphone, all you would get is this … dead silence, because she’d be petrified. Or if you put me into her job, you probably wouldn’t get your CD because that’s not what I’m motivated to do.

Let’s start doing what God has made and gifted us to do. We’re all different so let’s not compare; that’s so dumb. There is something that God made in you that is uniquely you, it’s special; and when we compare that with others, we’re missing the point. The gifts we have are given according to the grace of God. Prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, giving, leadership, mercy – they’re motivational gifts. They’re things that God has birthed in us and there are all sorts of different manifestations of this.

We all have something, we all love doing it, and it’s unreal when we’re flowing in that; when the blessing of God is manifest through us doing the thing that He made us to do. And it’s terrible when people aren’t working in that gifting. You see it in business. You get served by a waiter in a restaurant, and they just don’t have the gift of service and it’s terrible – it doesn’t work. “Aw, you don’t understand Berni. I’m a mum with a screaming baby, I can’t do anything; I’m stuck at home”. And there’s probably a mother’s group somewhere with other mum’s in it who are just dying for your gift of encouragement. If only you would see it as an opportunity for God’s blessing to flow through you.

Blessing and service go hand in hand. You can’t separate them. God’s blessing comes in and it flows out. The problem is can I tell you this? – the problem is that so many Christians allow themselves to be stuffed into the world’s mould and they still think, “It’s all about me.” “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” God has given you a gift.

“Aw, Berni, that is so spiritual. I work sixty hours a week in business and I have a lot of money but it don’t have time to do this stuff; this giving,” and all along God is giving you a heart of generosity and there’s some young evangelist in your church, who if someone funded them for just a day and a half a week, they would be able to touch so many people with the love of Christ.

Do you get it? We all have something that God has put in us, through which His blessing will flow to a lost and hurting world.

Putting First Things First

I guess this message of being blessed in order to be a blessing is a bit “in your face”, but I think God is doing an exciting thing. I think sometimes He wants to challenge us through His Word. I don’t know about you but I want to be transformed by the renewing of your mind and I grew up with a very selfish “me, me, me” attitude – straight out of the world’s mould.

Maybe you are like that too and today is a day where we decide to put first things first. To get our priorities in life straightened out. To stop thinking about God’s blessing as material blessing only. He does bless us with material things and people who don’t have enough food, have to rely on God for His blessing. But listen to what Jesus said:

Therefore I tell you, don’t worry about your life; what you’ll eat or what you drink or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air – they don’t sow or reap or store things in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you much more valuable than them?

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about your clothes – look at the lilies of the field – see how they grow – they don’t labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even King Solomon, in all of his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and gone tomorrow in the fire, won’t He clothe you much more – you of little faith.

So don’t worry saying, “What will I eat or what will I drink or what will I wear – the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them, but first seek His Kingdom and His righteousness and all of these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow – tomorrow will worry about itself – each day has trouble enough of its own.”

See, the context here is a bunch of people who are worrying about their own needs and whether you are poor and you have genuinely a cause to worry about your own needs or whether you’re wealthy and you are racing after God’s blessings for a bigger car and a bigger house, the same truth applies. Jesus is saying here, “Get your priorities right.”

Get a deep abiding, enduring, intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Spend time in prayer and in God’s Word and then let Him use us as His fountain of blessing, a flood tide of life and all the other things will get added to us. God knows what we need and you know something, God knows the things we want too. God is a wonderful God to come along and bless us with just little things along the way that we didn’t even think for; didn’t even ask for, but God thought of them. You know, He’s worried about the little things in our lives as well.

It is so crazy for us to reduce the blessing of God down to just material blessing. “First seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” Now this is counter-intuitive. It’s a deep ask. God is asking us today – you and me – to trust Him and to do it His way.

Why does He do it this way? Why does He say, “Look, bow your life down to Me first and then get the blessing?” Why do we have to die before we can live? Why does He ask us to step out and start serving in order to be blessed? Why did Jesus say, “Give and it will be given to you – a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap, for with the measure you use in your giving, it will be measured to you.” Why did He do that?

Because that requires faith and God wants us to be a people of faith, completely dependent on Him. And when we do that; when we step out with our gifts – meagre as they might seem in our eyes – when we live the struggle and the rejection and the disappointments for Him, He honours that. We are blessed to be a blessing.

You have incredible abilities and gifts and talents and motivations that God has planted in you, worked into your very DNA, that God prepared and nurtured through the experiences of your life, even through the hurts of the past – especially through those. When we put those in His hands; when we let Him use them to be a blessing to others; when we draw so close to Him that no one else could ever understand what’s going on in our relationship between us and our Master – then we see what happens.

I am never as blessed as I am than when I’m right here with you now, doing what God crafted me to do. That’s His plan. And it’s a phenomenal plan and He has the same plan for you, with your gifts and your talents and abilities and your motivations. You are blessed to be a blessing.

Go on! Let the blessing flow through you to other people, no matter what the cost – let God use who you are for His glory and you will be blessed beyond anything that any words can describe.

You and I are blessed to be a blessing.

The Bible talks about the land of blessing. Where is that? How do we get there? Is it really for us? Does God want to bless me? Good questions.

Blessing In, Blessing Out

It is great to be with you again this week and this is the last programme in a four part series that I’ve called, “Blessed to be a Blessing”. We’ve been talking about God’s blessing over the last few weeks and it’s easy when you talk about the blessing of God to get it out of balance. My generation, the baby boomers, were called the “me” generation. And it’s easy for my generation and I guess, just about every generation, to think about God’s blessing and then we think “Ah, that’s about filling me up so that I’m happy and I’m fulfilled and I’m full and … “.

Over the last few weeks we have been looking throughout the Bible, from the beginning to the end. That’s what we have to do when we look at God’s blessing. We need to look at the whole council of God because if we just take one verse and we create a doctrine of blessing out of that, it’s so easy, in our context, to get that out of whack. Do you know what I mean – to take it to an extreme? Do I think that God is a God of abundant blessing? Absolutely!

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.”

Now we can take that because we’re brought up in the “me” generation and we’re brought up in materialism and we can immediately reduce that down to a material blessing. After all that’s what the advertising industry tells us we should do. I’ve said it over the last few weeks on the programme, and I’ll say it again today: I spent the greater part of my life trying to feel satisfied with stuff – things and experiences and cars and houses – and it doesn’t work.

When I look at the whole council of God (which is what we have been doing over these last few weeks on Christianity works) what I discover is that we are blessed in order to be a blessing. The pictures throughout the Scripture make it clear over and over again.

Jesus said, “Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use in your giving, it will be measured to you.”

In other words blessing comes in from God and goes out again to others – in and out, in and out, in and out – over and over again. It’s like breathing. God’s blessing is in and out, in and out. A blessing isn’t a blessing unless it flows, you know, unless it flows in from God and then out through us to other people. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, this is what happened:

The Samaritan woman said to Him, “You’re a Jew and I’m a Samaritan woman, how can you possibly ask me for a drink?” Because Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans. And Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who asks you for a drink, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.”

Those words “living water” literally mean “water that is flowing”. You see, when water stops flowing, it becomes stagnant. It becomes dead. We talked last week about the Dead Sea. And the Dead Sea is a huge body of water where all the rivers flow in and none of the rivers flow out. And it’s dead because it’s so salty because nothing can live in it.

I have a disease called Glaucoma in my eyes and what happens is the fluid flows in but the outlet is clogged and so the pressure builds and ultimately, if it’s not treated, you end up going blind. The Bible says that “faith without works in dead”. In other words, if we expect everything to flow in and for us to be filled and that’s it, it’s not going to work. Romans chapter 12, verse 2, says this:

Don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mould, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God for you.

The world’s mould is what the advertising industry tells us it is. The world’s mould says, “Consume and you will be happy.” It’s a mantra that you see over and over again so we just end up taking it for granted. We just end up believing that stuff. And in stark contrast, Jesus says:

Take up you cross and follow me. If any man would save his life he will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake you will find it.

You see Jesus is saying the exact opposite. Get it? Let’s open our hearts and our minds to that. It’s a beautiful paradox but it’s a paradox that we all know to be true. “If any man would save his life, he will lose it.” In other words if we think it’s all about us – saving our lives, filling our lives, getting gratification and pleasure – it won’t work. We’ll lose it.

But if we lose our lives for His sake, we’ll find them. And that means giving away God’s blessing. Being prepared to lay it all down. Everything we have. Everything we are. All our hopes. All our dreams. Saying, “God, they’re in your hands, I’m just a steward – even my gifts and abilities – I am just a steward. Now you use them, Lord, for your glory.”

And when we give away God’s blessings, then and only then do we discover what blessing is all about – in and out, in and out. We want the ‘in’ bit but we often don’t want the “out” bit. Today, my prayer is that we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds as we look at what the Bible says about God’s blessing. Over and over again the truth is this – a blessing isn’t a blessing unless it flows out to someone else.

God has blessed you and me with His Son Jesus Christ. With His presence in us. With His love and mercy and His forgiveness. So that we can shine that light into a hurting world. So that we can be salt. So that we can be a blessing. So that we can bear fruit. We are blessed to be a blessing. And the paradox is, the more we try to hold onto it, the more we try and keep it to ourselves, the more we say “I’m right Jack”, it ends up not being a blessing at all.

In a moment we are going to look at a passage from Hebrews, chapter 6, so if you have a Bible, grab it and open it up there. It talks about the land of God’s blessing. I don’t know about you, but I want to live in that land. Well, if we want to live out God’s blessing, we have to do it His way – in and out. We will look at that next.

The Land of Blessing

The writer of the Book of Hebrews paints a beautiful picture of God’s blessing, when he talks about how rain falls on the ground. Let’s have a look. It’s in Hebrews chapter 6, verses 7 and 8:

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those from whom it is farmed, receives the blessing but land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed – in the end, it will be burned.

I love this: “land that drinks in the rain that often falls on it.”

Where I live, we have been going through one of the worst droughts on record – parched, dry, red soil – crops are down by sixty percent. And our lives are like that, until we receive Jesus. And when His Spirit rains down on us and over us, over and over again, with living water, then we have life. “The land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God.” Isn’t that wonderful? Rain that often falls on us – we drink in God; His Word and His Spirit and we spend time in His presence – it’s a beautiful thing; it’s a blessing; it’s life itself.

But anything to do with life has a natural flow, a cycle, a consequence. And what does this Scripture say that that consequence is? ‘Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that – here it is – produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God.’ Get it? We are supposed to produce a crop – fruit, a harvest. For whom? For us? No, that’s not what it says, “a crop that is useful to those for whom it is farmed.”

See the picture. The rain falls down, the presence of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God falls down into our lives and the natural consequence of that is that we produce a crop, a harvest. Something that is useful for other people, for whom God has farmed it, in us and through us.

You spend time drinking in God’s Word and He fills us with His blessing. You spend time drinking in God’s Spirit and He fills us with His blessing. That’s how it starts – God always blesses us first. We don’t produce fruit and then earn God’s favour. No, no. God blesses us first and then somehow, His presence and His Spirit and His Word enliven the gifts that He has put into us and they grow into a harvest.

I was sitting last year with a man, a wealthy business man who had made a lot of money and sold his business. Now, I guess he is in his late fifties or early sixties. He has a substantial fortune. You know what he does now, full time? He works with ministries to help them and fund them for God’s glory. That’s his gift, what’s yours? Maybe not some great fortune!

Another friend of mine spent a lifetime as a minister in the Anglican Church, he’s now semi-retired. He’s moved to an area where there’s lots of dysfunctional people and families. His gift is to be a counsellor and so he does that. He counsels families and husbands and wives and all sorts of people. Now the things that he goes through, the cases that he deals with, would make your toes curl but it’s his gift. What’s yours?

The natural cycle of blessing is in and out – blessing in, blessing out. “The land that drinks in the rain, often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God.” See, when it’s produced the crop, then it receives the blessing of God. The land of God’s blessing – when you and I exercise our gifts; when we allow God to enliven them, to produce a crop useful to those for whom it has been farmed – we receive the blessing of God. Do you get it?

This is awesome! Often when people call us or write to us after a programme, they say, ‘Berni sounds so passionate’. You know why? Because I’m living a transformed life. I’m living a life of God’s blessing. Just about every morning I spend time with God – I did it this morning; in the cool of the morning – resting in His presence, the Word of God open. I have my own devotional reading, apart from what I do in these programmes. I’ve just finished the Book of Judges, just working my way through the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. Man, that is blessing me. And I have figured out my gift. My gift is doing what I’m doing right now. It’s how God wanted me. And you know something – I’m having a ball!

The six figure salary that I had in my secular consulting life; it was hard to leave behind; it was hard to make a decision to change but since I did that, God’s blessing – His joy and His peace and even His material blessing – hasn’t stopped chasing me down the street. I have a deep satisfaction at producing a crop that’s useful for you and when I see lives of people being transformed by the Word of God, because the Holy Spirit has enlivened my gifts, guess what, I’m blessed.

We are blessed to be a blessing and when that harvest grows and we let it flow through us, that is such an awesome thing. And you know, then when God comes along with the little “other” blessings that only He can figure out for us – some of them material, some of them are emotional, some of them relationships – they all come along behind when we let Him rain down on us and the crop flows out through us.

See what God’s Word says: “Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God”, but sometimes … sometimes people come against us, they want to oppose us. It’s like they want to rob us of God’s blessing, then what?

Don’t Let Other People Ruin Your Life

We can’t talk about God’s blessing flowing through us without talking about those people in our lives who seem to … they want to interrupt the flow; to rob us of the blessing. You know, we want to do the right thing, we want to be a blessing and somehow, they just want to spoil it. I wonder do you know anyone like that in your life? I sure do in mine.

Here’s the truth! God’s blessing is from God and He doesn’t want us to let other people ruin the blessing in our lives and the crop that He wants to harvest through our lives in other people. So His Word contains specific guidance about how to do that. About how not to let other people rob us of the blessing of God. Are you ready?

Open your Bible, if you have one, and go right towards the end of the Bible. First Peter, chapter 3, verses 9 to 15. This is what it says. here’s the specific advise of God:

Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult but with blessing because to this you were called, so that you may inherit a blessing, for who ever would love life and see good days, must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good, he must seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer but the face of the Lord is turned against those who do evil. Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

This is the hard bit because we want the blessing to flow in and we don’t mind the fear of it flowing out but sometimes we don’t like the “out” bit so much. We want it to come “in” but “out” is hard. And you and I have been blessed to be a blessing – we have been called to a life of blessing, here and now and eternally. And people come along with evil and you know what our natural response is? We want to give up the blessing. We want to curse them. We want to have a go at them. We want our just desserts. We just want them to pay when they hurl evil at us or insult at us.

What does God want us to do?

Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult but with blessing because to this you were called, so that you may inherit a blessing.

That is so incredibly radical. That is so incredibly Jesus. It turns everything up side down. It says, “You know something, when they do evil to you, when they insult you, when they curse you, don’t give it back to them like that. Instead sow blessing into that relationship, sow blessing into that life.”

Do you love life; do you want to see good days? Then just do good in the face of evil. When every fibre of your flesh is screaming at you, “Curse them”. Listen to the Holy Spirit and bless them. Actively turn away from evil and do good in the face of evil. Seek peace and pursue it. Take up you cross, because blessing involves sacrifice.

This is such a radical departure from the world’s ways. And why should we do it? Well, Peter tells us:

Because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

And you know, even when we suffer, God’s blessing is upon us.

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good but even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

We want to believe, some days, that we are victims. We want to believe that when we trying to do good and someone comes along and stabs us in the back and hurts us or disappoints us or rejects us, we think we have a right to pay them back. But here is the message of Jesus Christ for you. If you want to live in the land of God’s blessing, if you want God’s blessing to flow through you, then when they curse you – bless them, when they insult you – bless them, when they do evil to you – bless them.

I’m not saying this is easy. It isn’t. We all want to punish people who do wrong to us but God doesn’t punish us when we do wrong for Him. No, God blesses us by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die on a cross, to pay for your sin and for mine. That’s God’s way. And as a result of what Jesus did on the cross for us, His blessing flows into our lives. The Bible says “be imitators of God”. Let’s be imitators of God. Don’t let other people rob you of God’s blessing. Don’t let other people ruin your life. This is powerful stuff!

Do you love life? Do you want to see good days? Then don’t be conformed to the world’s mould. Don’t get revenge but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you are able to discern the good and perfect and wonderful will of God for you. Listen to me! You are blessed to be a blessing.

And when we let the rain of the Spirit and the rain of the Word pour down into our lives, God naturally grows a harvest. It’s a harvest of peace and joy and goodness and love and self-control. It’s a fruit that grows for other people. And when we let that fruit grow, uninterrupted – even when the storms come; even when the locusts come; even when the pests and the plagues come – when we let that crop grow in our lives, no matter what it costs us; no matter how much it hurts, God’s Word says, we are blessed.

God’s blessing is a radical blessing. It flows into our lives, it flows out of our lives and I want to encourage you today to seek after God’s blessing. Don’t let anyone stand in the way of that. God has a plan. It’s more powerful than any thing else in the universe and He showed it to us through the cross of Christ.

You and I are blessed to be a blessing! That is an awesome plan and when we live that out – the in and the out, the in and the out, the in and the out – then we are blessed indeed!

God bless you!