Question: Does God want to bless you, yes or no? It’s a very serious question because how you answer it, is probably the best indicator to tell you what you think of your God. So I’ll ask you again, does God want to bless you, yes or no?

No, It’s Not What You Think!

I remember, probably a decade or more ago, when I first read Bruce Wilkinson’s book, The Prayer Of Jabez. It had a huge splash when it was first released. And I don’t know how many millions of copies have sold since but it’s been a huge hit. I distinctly remember though, how uncomfortable I felt reading the first chapter of that little booklet, which, I read all in one sitting in a bed when I was in New Zealand. This is the bit that really got me, Wilkinson writes:

That God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend. I know it sounds impossible, even embarrassingly suspicious in our self-serving day, yet, that very exchange, your want for God’s plenty, has been His loving will for your life from eternity past. And with a handful of core commitments on your part, you can proceed from this day forward with the confidence and expectation that your heavenly Father will bring it to pass for you.

Think of it this way, instead of standing near the river’s edge asking for a cup of water to get through each day, you’ll do something unthinkable. You will take the little prayer with the giant prize and jump into the river. At that moment, you’ll begin to let the loving currents of God’s grace and power carry you along. God’s great plan for you will surround you and sweep you forward into the profoundly important and satisfying life that He has waiting for you.

Do you see why I was so troubled by this? On the one hand, Wilkinson was promising me the very thing that I wanted, God’s abundant blessing. Do you want that? Sure you do! I want that too. Who doesn’t want to be abundantly blessed by God? But on the other hand, it conjures up a fear … that perhaps the desire to have God’s abundant blessing was a selfish thing to want.

You and I, both, have seen the gross excesses of some who claim to be God’s people and who live this extravagant lifestyle that looks nothing … NOTHING … like taking up your cross and following Jesus. I found myself in a conundrum that I think we all find ourselves in, when it comes to God’s blessing.

Should I ask or shouldn’t I ask? Does God want to bless me abundantly; or does He not want to bless me abundantly; or at all for that matter? They’re the questions we often find ourselves asking.

Wilkinson hits the nail on the head, though, when he says that we live in a self-serving day, we do. And if we approach God’s promises of blessing unlimited, in a self-serving way, then of course, it’s not the right thing to do. To ask Him for blessings that just serve us. He’s much smarter than to give us everything we want. He loves us way too much to instantly fulfil our every desire.

When I was a child, even back then (over a half a century ago), the retailers in the stores figured out that the best place to put the sweets and the small toys was at my eye level, right at the checkout. They knew that I’d pressure my parents to buy me this and to buy me that. Do you remember pestering your parents to buy you these things when you were a kid, right?

But no, being wise parents, being good parents and loving parents, they didn’t always accede to our howls of protest as they dragged us kicking and screaming out of the store without that packet of lollies that we just had to have. And yet, I’m able to look back on all that my parents did for me, for the eighteen or so years that I spent under their roof, I tell you inequitably, that they blessed my socks off. I think most of us can look back on our upbringing and say exactly the same thing about our parents.

Good loving parents don’t always meet the selfish wants of their immature children. But they still bless them beyond measure because that’s how parents are wired … to bless their children. That’s exactly what God’s like. You don’t believe me? Well, let me ask you this, what’s the very first thing that God said to and did for Adam and Eve, when He created them, the very first thing? Do you remember?

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them and then God blessed them and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good and there was the evening and there was the morning of the sixth day. (Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 to 31)

The last thing He did after completing all of creation, was to hand it over to Adam and Eve. God blessed them and He told them it’s all theirs. The whole cotton picking lot, He gave it to them. He gave it to us. And it was only then, on the following day (the seventh day), once He’d done all the hard work of creation, once He’d given it all away to us that He decided to take a day of rest.

Now, if you have any doubt, any doubt whatsoever that God wants to bless your socks off. If the story of creation still doesn’t do it for you, then please turn your gaze with me to the cross of Christ. Galatians chapter 3, verses 13 and 14:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written ‘cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’. In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

God doesn’t want to bring us up as spoilt brats. But wrap your mind around this; He wants to bless us beyond measure.

The picture that Bruce Wilkinson paints in the passage I shared with you from his book, The Prayer Of Jabez, of standing near the river’s edge asking for a cup of water to get you through each day, is how we’ve been conditioned to think about going to God, and asking for His blessings. ‘Don’t ask for too much, don’t be too demanding, don’t impose on God’.

Well, that’s not how we are as parents, are we? Of course, we don’t want to spoil our kids. But the more they show us their gratefulness and maturity and selflessness, the more we want to bless them, right? We’re wired to bless our children without measure, in the right way.

Do you imagine that God isn’t up to the same mark? I mean do you really? Here’s what Jesus said on the matter, Matthew chapter 7, verse 11.

If then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more then will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask it.

So let’s get this thing about God’s blessing straight. God is a good Father. He will never give us things that will cause us to become spoilt brats. So forget asking Him for that boat, or that holiday house, or that personal jet, or that bank account filled with millions and millions and millions of dollars or whatever currency you desire. He will no more fill us with that stuff than my parents would fill me with the candies at the store, that I demanded each time we were there.

But ask Him for good things, worthwhile things, things that will achieve amazing stuff on this earth. And watch God open up the windows of heaven and pour untold blessings into your life. ‘What to ask for? How to ask for it?’ is what we’re going to be chatting about tomorrow and for the rest of this week on the program But right now, let me finish up by saying this, your God wants to bless you!

Extreme Blessing

Okay, so God doesn’t want to turn you into a spoilt brat, we get that, right? Dear God, please give me the latest model of the BMW 7 series, in a nice deep midnight blue colour. That’s a prayer that’s unlikely to get much of a response out of God. And certainly, when I talk about the blessing of God, that’s not what I’m talking about either.

But, in scrubbing those self-indulgent desires from our prayer list, I think, sometimes, we scrub off the idea of all blessings or at least the idea of abundant blessings, the sort of blessing that overflows out of us because we just can’t contain it.

The reason why I’ve called this series of messages, God Wants To Bless You, is because God wants to bless you. And no more so do we discover that, than in the prayer of Jabez. Maybe you’ve read Bruce Wilkinson’s book by that name. I only re-read it again recently. And I realised, even though I’m someone who spends a lot of time in God’s Word, I realised how easy it is to be drawn off track in our thinking, and in our perception of what God means, when He says ‘I want to bless you’.

I truly believe that if we can wrap our hearts around the truth of God’s blessing for us, it will completely change the way we understand God, the way we see ourselves and the way we see the rest of the time we have left here on this earth. So let me read to you straight out of God’s Word, the prayer that Jabez prayed to God. It comes from 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10.

Now Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘because I bore him in pain’. And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that you would be with me and that you would keep me from evil, that I may cause no pain. So God granted him what he requested.

Now these two verses, 1 Chronicles chapter 4 verses 9 and 10, are buried deep inside nine chapters of genealogy. Can you believe it? Nine chapters? I’ve read my Bible – front to back and front to back and back to front and back to front – on quite a number of occasions. But can I be honest with you? I lost it in these nine chapters, really. I know that all Scripture is inspired by God. I know that all Scripture is useful for teaching, reproof and correction and for training in righteousness, 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. I get that, but nine chapters of genealogy? Give me a break!

That is, until you stumble across Jabez’s story in these two little verses. This dry list of names goes on for pages and pages and pages. And the only breather, the only diversion, the only bit of insight in all of that, is the prayer of Jabez. In other words, God is saying to us that this Jabez fellow is meant to stand out head and shoulders above the other five hundred plus names on that list.

He was not a great king, not a great Prophet. He was for all intents and purposes a bog ordinary human being like you and me. That’s the point and yet, he stands out head and shoulders above the rest. In fact, God very clearly tells us that ‘he was more honourable than his brothers’.

Why? Was it because of the great start he had in life, is it? Well, no, we’re told his mother had a particularly difficult childbirth when it came time for Jabez to pop into this world. I obviously don’t know how much it hurts to bring a child into this world. But in theory, I can tell you that every birth has pain associated with it.

For the Bible to comment on this particular birth, means, that it must have been a tough one. So tough! So painful, in fact, that his mother gave him a name that means literally that he was a pain. I’ve tried to imagine what my life would have looked like, if instead of calling me Berni, my parents had given me a name ‘you’re a pain’. ‘Hi you’re a pain, how are you going today’?

Do you think that would have influenced his life badly, in a culture, where the meaning of your name was synonymous with who you are? You bet it would! The kid had a rotten start. But the Bible tells us that he was honoured above his brothers because he prayed a particular prayer. And the first part of that prayer was this.

Oh, that you would bless me indeed. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Now, in some of the contemporary Bible translations they omit the word ‘indeed‘, which is a mistake. And which is why I’ve used the New King James translation here. The short of it is that the tense of the original Hebrew word for ‘bless me’ makes it emphatic. It’s as though he underlined it and put three exclamation marks after it.

So the sense of what Jabez is asking God is this, ‘Oh God bless me a lot’, that’s the meaning. Have you asked that of God? Not a specific prayer for this or that but an open prayer for God to choose the blessing. And whatever it looks like, whatever form it comes in and whenever it does come, that it would be a huge blessing, that you will be blessed indeed. That the blessing would be so big that your tiny mind simply can’t comprehend it.

Have you ever asked God for that sort of blessing? And if so, why not? Because the Bible tells us that because of this prayer, Jabez was honoured above all his brothers. And as a result of this prayer, verse 10, God granted him what he requested.

This is a prayer that I pray often, almost every day of my life:

Dear God, bless me a lot. Not the blessings that I choose but the blessings You want to choose. Because I know, that You’re going to think of stuff that I would never ever think of. I know that You’re going to come up with blessings beyond anything I can ever hope for, dream or imagine.

How do I know that? Because in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20, I’m told that God is the God, who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask for or imagine. And if that’s the God He is, if He can and He wants to do stuff that we can’t even imagine, why wouldn’t we simply ask Him to bless us the way He wants to bless us.

Why wouldn’t we leave the choice open to Him? And if the Bible tells us that Jabez was honoured above all the others. And that God gave him what he asked for, why wouldn’t we ask for the same thing?

It seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? And here’s what happens when we do, God begins to move supernaturally in our lives despite and even through some of the tough things we’re going through. God starts to make appointments for us. He starts to give us opportunities to take the blessing He’s giving us, to let it flow through us, into the lives of other people.

A blessing is literally someone speaking well of you. In the New Testament, the Greek word for blessing is eulogia, from which we get the word, eulogy. A blessing is God speaking well of you. But when God speaks, something amazing happens. The Bible tells us,

God calls into existence things that do not yet exist. (Romans 4:17)

So when God blesses you, He speaks into your life and supernaturally makes things happen that don’t yet exist and would otherwise never have happened.

Sometimes, He does that of His own accord. Dad’s are like that. As our Father, His heart is to bless us. But as any father does, He longs for us to come to Him and ask. He longs for us to humble ourselves and turn to Him and ask for His blessing, His eulogia. He’s calling into existence things that don’t yet exist into our lives.

Does that give you a different perspective on God’s blessing? Does that make you want to get down on your knees right now and ask for His blessing? Does that make you want to pray this prayer at the start of every day? If it doesn’t I have absolutely no idea why.

And here’s the great thing, the totally fantastic thing … by leaving the decision up to God, it means that instead of asking for selfish things, we know that we’re going to get God’s good things. And you know what Jesus said? He said,

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

So then, the only question is, what are you waiting for?

It’s Time to Ask

I’m not a great one for prayer formulas. I don’t think God works that way. In fact, Jesus made it clear that the way to pray wasn’t to heap empty praises upon empty sentence before God; that just doesn’t impress Him at all.

What God wants us to do is to pray from our hearts, but can I tell you this? Since I’ve started praying along the lines of that Jabez prayer (it’s something that I do almost every day these days), I have seen God’s answer to that prayer in so many ways; in powerful ways; in mighty ways; ways that have always been much, much further and beyond anything that I could have conjured up.

The Bible says that:

God desires everybody to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth. (1 Timothy 2:4)

And that’s why He blesses the likes of you and me; so that we can be the entry point of His abundant overflowing blessing into this world; so that He can bless the lost and the hurting through you and me.

If you’re still not convinced that you should be asking for God’s blessing, then listen to Jesus Himself. John 16:22, Jesus said:

Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

I want to encourage you to start asking for God’s blessing every day in your life. The thing about God is that He’s like any good father. He knows when to bless and He knows how to bless.

Just the other morning, I was talking to a very, very wealthy man about his children over breakfast, and I asked him, ‘How do you go about blessing your children? In fact, when they grow up, are you going to help them financially or will you allow them to make their own way through in life?’ and this is how he answered me. I thought it was really wise.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that depends on them. If they want to go out and serve God and sacrifice their lives for other people, I have told them if they can’t afford it, I’ll buy them a house. I’ll help them, of course I’ll help them, I’m their father. But if they want to go and sit on the beach and laze around and be selfish and lazy, I’ve told them, they’re on their own. The choice is really theirs.’

And I thought to myself, ‘What a Godly piece of wisdom!’ Isn’t that how God wants to deal with us? Of course, He wants to bless us, but it really depends on us – on our heart; on our attitude. And if you and I have an attitude of putting other people before ourselves, of serving them and serving God, hey; why wouldn’t God want to bless us abundantly? He’s the best Father that’s ever been, or ever will be.

So I pray the prayer of Jabez pretty much every day – not by road, not as a formula, but from the heart. That’s why I find myself praying for you every day. I pray that God would expand my territory by letting His Word take a hold of your heart – by growing the kingdom of God in you and through you, into the lives of countless other people.

To me, sitting here and chatting with you, (and just quietly a few million other people around the globe as well), is like throwing a pebble into a pond and seeing the impact ripple out through your life. It’s like throwing a few million pebbles in a few million ponds, and seeing them ripple out. That’s been the impact for me of asking God to bless me indeed and to expand my territories. A simple prayer by a simple, ordinary guy, and it’s what God does. And if He allows His blessing to flow through a clutz like me, I can’t begin to imagine what He can do through someone as beautiful and gifted and talented as you are. Are you starting to get the picture here?

Perhaps, you haven’t been receiving because you haven’t been asking. Perhaps, it’s time to start asking and asking, and asking and asking, day after day after day after day, ‘cos I guarantee: if you’re asking for the right reasons and not selfish reasons, you are going to see miracle after miracle happen in you and through you

So here’s the challenge, here’s the dare: start asking! You’ll be amazed at the miracles because God wants to bless you.

You know, I used to think that getting things done in this world was all about having control. If I could just control this and that, then I’d be able to achieve X, Y and Z. But the older I get, the more I’ve realised that it’s all about influence and not control. Because as things turn out, influence is far more powerful than control.

Expanding Your Influence

Well, if you were able to join me last week on the program you’ll know that we chatted about the prayer of Jabez – a man who had a pretty rugged start in life. His name literally means ‘You’re a Pain’, and yet he stood head and shoulders above his brothers and the hundreds of other names listed in the nine chapters of genealogy in the middle of which we find him.

Why did Jabez stand out from the crowd? Because he prayed a prayer for God’s abundant blessing. Here it is again:

Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother called his name Jabez saying, ‘because I bore him in pain’ and Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your hand will be with me and that you would keep me from evil that I may cause no pain’. So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chronicles 4:9,10)

We’ve seen the power so far of asking for the first part,

O God that you would bless me indeed. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Bless me abundantly, bless me just the way you want to bless me. That’s a powerful prayer. Ask God to bless you and then leave it up to Him … His Father’s heart to choose how He wants to bless you. God wants to bless you abundantly, He really does. Not with trinkets and toys but with the sort of blessings that will fill your heart with joy and flow through you and over the top of you and right into the lives of other people. That’s how things work in God’s economy of blessing.

You know that line ‘faith without works is dead’? The opposite is also true. When our faith is working its way out – as God’s blessing flows through us into the lives of other people, as God uses the gifts He’s given us to bless others – all of a sudden our faith becomes alive and vibrant and real. Flat, dry, lifeless faith becomes a thing of the past. So can I say, faith with God inspired, God empowered works is so incredibly alive?

Now let’s go onto the second part of what Jabez prayed. Right after asking God to bless him indeed, what was the very next thing he prayed?

Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Territory was a big thing back in those days. In fact, for all of Israel’s history having your own land has been a big deal. They spent centuries waiting to take the Promised Land. And when finally, God took them there under Joshua they had to fight for it battle by battle. So expanding your land, expanding your borders, your territory was a huge deal for an Israelite. Still today, Israel is fighting for land several millennia on from when Jabez prayed this prayer.

A little while back on the program, we talked about whether or not you and I are kingdom builders or empire builders. Are you in the business of building your own personal empire or are you in the business of building the Kingdom of God? Good question, a question each one of us should be asking ourselves on a constant basis.

But let’s go back for a minute to the first part of the prayer, the request for God to bless us indeed – a whole lot, abundantly, over flowingly, more than we could ever hope for, dream or imagine – let’s say God does that. Let’s say God blesses you so much that you can’t contain it. The natural result is an overflow, kind of what, like Jesus was talking about in John chapter 7, verses 37 and 38. He said:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’.

When you have that much of God’s blessing overflowing out of you, when you have the Spirit of God flowing out of you – it’s not just a trickle, it’s not just a stream, not just a river – but rivers of blessing, rivers of living water flowing through you into the parched dry land, of the lives of the people around you, people who need more of God’s blessing.

If that’s happening, what’s the next logical thing for you to ask? More influence of course, more people to share the blessing with. More people to experience the mighty blessings of God that you’ve been experiencing. The request for God’s abundant blessing flows, naturally and logically, into a request for God to expand your borders. So that His Kingdom will come one soul at a time, to more and more souls.

When I came to Christ (way back in 1995), right from the beginning, I couldn’t contain the goodness and the joy of what I felt. I knew right back there, on that first day, day one, that I wanted to share this love of Christ with lots of other people. So I started to pray that God would give me the chance to do that and He did. And today, here I am with you and a few million other people across a hundred and sixty countries, chatting about the good news of Jesus.

None of that came because I was particularly clever. None of that came through the great strategic planning of our Board of our ministry. It came as an answer to a simple prayer. Lord, please expand my borders and grow your Kingdom through me. It’s a prayer that I pray daily because I know that’s the only way people will be touched by the Holy Spirit through what I do.

You see, we all labour in different parts of Gods vineyard, with the tools and gifts He’s granted us by His grace. His blessing isn’t limited by a lack of power or a lack of will. The well of God’s blessing is infinitely deep. Imagine the delight in His heart when He hears you pray:

Dear God, please bless me. Bless me, indeed. Please bless me more than I can imagine. And then Lord, God, expand my borders, my territory, my circle of influence so that I can share your blessing … the blessing that’s overflowing through me with people who desperately need to experience you and your blessing.

What do you think God would think when He hears you pray that prayer every morning, huh? I’m thinking that God would be absolutely over the moon at your motivation and your desire. I’m thinking that God would be ready to show up and answer that prayer. After all that’s exactly what He did when Jabez prayed that prayer.

All the Power You Need

Before the break we’ve been talking a lot about God’s desire to bless us. Let me be a little more specific – God’s overwhelming desire to bless you abundantly. No, not a sugar daddy kind of blessing, not an answer to prayers like, ‘Lord what I really want is a million bucks in my account, a Mercedes SLE in the driveway and a twenty-seven room house overlooking the water’.

Now, in the right context, none of those are particularly bad things in and of themselves. They’re just not prayers that God answers very often. God does want to bless us abundantly, super abundantly, Jesus said, ‘Beyond measure, without limit’. But He wants to bless us in a way that glorifies Him and in a way that’s good for us.

If you have a spoilt child at home, a teenager maybe, whose always demanding this or that and throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get it. Would you bless him with more stuff? I hope not, because if you love him you need to help him grow up.

If on the other hand, you had a child with a heart for helping other people, and doing the best she can possibly do, and sacrificing her life for other people – if she asked you for a blessing would you bless her? Absolutely you would! The only thing that would constrain you would be your resources and your power.

Well, here’s the good news, God is not constrained by resources or power. He has an infinite quantity of both of those. And like any good Father, God’s heart is to bless us without measure provided that our intentions are the right intentions.

And that’s why we’ve been looking at the prayer of Jabez found tucked away, amidst nine chapters of dry boring genealogies. Jabez stands out head and shoulders above his brothers and above hundreds and hundreds of names in that genealogy and he stands out for this reason.

It’s because of what he prayed, what he asked God for. Let’s take another look at it today, 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10:

Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother called him Jabez saying ‘because I bore him in pain’ and Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that you hand would be with me and that you would keep me from evil that I may not cause pain. So God granted him what he requested.

Starting his life off with a name that literally meant ‘I’m a pain’, well, it’s not such a good start in life, is it? But despite that less than optimal start in life (something that a lot of us can relate to), he asked God to bless his socks off. And as that blessing overflowed out of his life, he then asked God to expand his territory to enable him to share that blessing with so many other people.

Blessing is something that flows into us from above. But when God blesses us abundantly, it flows out through us to those around us. And as we see them being blessed through the blessing that’s overflowing through us, the next natural thing to ask for, is for God to increase our borders so that we can share this blessing with more and more and more and more people. And that … that is something that God’s only too delighted to do because after all, you and I are the entry points of His blessing into a lost and hurting world. We’re here to be His blessing to those who need it.

Before the break, I shared with you last week how early on (when I gave my life to Jesus); I knew that I just couldn’t contain that blessing. I knew that I had to tell people about it and so I asked God to expand my borders. This He did beyond anything I could have imagined (way back then). Here I am now with you sharing the love and the blessing of Jesus Christ.

But immediately, when those borders began to expand, I found myself completely out of my depth. When the number of radio stations airing this (this very program that you’re listening to) grew from a handful to a few hundred to over a thousand, there were many times along the way that I was completely overwhelmed by how much had to be done to make it all happen. How many things were beyond my ability and my wisdom and my foresight, by how inadequate I was (and still am) for the task.

Trust me, I’m not into false modesty. I’m telling you – the things that God calls the little ministry of Christianityworks to do (as we produce radio and television programs and reach out across the globe) – is breathtakingly, gob-smackingly scary on a daily basis.

I suspect that’s exactly what was happening to Jabez. And so the third part of his prayer went like this:

God that you will bless me indeed and enlarge my territory and that your hand would be with me.

He prayed that God’s mighty hand would be with him and upon him. Throughout Scripture the hand of God is used as a symbol or a reference to God’s immense power. Jabez knew – as more blessing came his way, and more opportunities to share that blessing came his way, as his territory grew – he simply couldn’t do it on his own.

Years ago, I stumbled across this amazing Scripture and it’s one that I want to give you today, 2 Chronicles chapter 16, verse 9:

For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth to show himself strong for those whose heart is true to him.

Isn’t that a beautiful scripture?

The eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth to show himself strong for those whose heart is true to Him.

In other words, when our heart is true to God – remember, God looks on a man’s heart not on his exterior qualities – when our heart is true to God, He actively sees that because His eyes are roaming the earth looking for precisely that.

And when He finds it in you and in me, He comes to us in a show of power to meet the incredible challenges of the abundant blessing and the expanded borders. God knows you and I can’t do it on our own, He knows that. In fact, His plan was that we should always, always have to depend on Him.

As Bruce Wilkinson writes in his little book, The Prayer Of Jabez, for the Christian, dependence is just another word for power. I love that! For the Christian, dependence is just another word for power. God wants us to depend on His power.

An Iron–Clad Defence

The prayer of Jabez is an incredibly powerful prayer. Here it is again if you’ve missed it so far on the program:

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called upon the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10)

Jabez asks God to bless him indeed, to bless him a lot. He asks God to enlarge his territory so he can share that blessing around. And with that increased territory and the increased opportunities to be a blessing, he asks that God’s hand – God’s power – would be upon him because he knows he won’t be able to do it on his own.

But it’s the last part of the prayer, the part that we haven’t yet talked about which is as important as the first three bits. Have a listen to it again:

Lord keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.

Now remember the very name Jabez means to be a pain because of the great pain that Jabez’s mother experienced in giving birth to him. So Jabez was already a pain, that’s how people saw him because in Hebrew culture (way back then), your name was synonymous with whom you are. It was seen as a prophetic statement of who you’ll become and how your life will turn out.

So imagine the teasing and the chiding that Jabez must have had growing up at school. I mean other kids can be so cruel. Imagine as a young man being introduced to someone, something like this, ‘Hi David, meet the pain’ and having David say, ‘wow what’s that about? This guy must be some kind of loser’.

Now Jabez did not want to cause pain and the one way to cause pain on this earth is to be evil. There’s something that David Wilkinson wrote in his little book, The Prayer Of Jabez, that leapt out at me. He wrote this:

Without doubt success brings with it greater opportunities than failure. As someone once said, ‘blessedness is the greatest of perils because it tends to dull our keen sense of dependence on God and make us prone to assumption.

And Jabez had been praying for huge untold blessing, for a great expansion of his territory of influence, for the power of God to be upon him. And God, as we heard, granted him his requests. Now, we know the Bible says:

Pride comes before the fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

When things are going really, really well, your enemy and mine (the devil), is roaming around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Just think about it … if God blesses you so much that you can’t contain the blessing, that His blessing flows out through you into the lives of other people, if He increases your territory so that you can share His blessing with more and more people, whose territory do you think you’re treading on? The enemy’s of course!

He doesn’t want the blessing of God to get around because people might discover who Jesus is. People might discover salvation is real and it’s in Him alone. The blessedness of having a true and intimate relationship with God through Jesus – nah, the devil does not want that getting out. And he is a wily, cunning, smart individual.

Don’t ever think that satan is a dummy. No, he’s been around the block a few million times. And nine times out of ten, satan has enough experience and enough gutter cunning to defeat us. He’s stronger than you and me. In his own way, he’s often smarter than you and me. And if we take him on – head on, on that field of temptation, it’s much more likely than not that we’re going to end up on the losing end of that equation.

You’ve seen great men of faith fall, haven’t you? Through sexual immorality leaving behind so many hurt and disillusioned followers. Ah no, the moment the blessing of God and the power of God is flowing through you (to touch the lives of other people), you can bet your life that your enemy, the devil, will be on your case. He’ll be coming after you with a pickaxe to undo your plans to have an impact for Christ in this world.

And the best way … the very, very best way … to win is not to fight at all. When I first read that in Wilkinson’s book I thought, ‘that’s so obvious, how come I didn’t think of that?’ And that’s exactly what Jabez prayed:

Keep me from evil, that I may cause no pain.

It’s exactly how Jesus taught His disciples to pray:

Lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil. (Matthew 6:13)

Let me ask you, how often do you pray that prayer? ‘Lord keep evil away from me, keep the devil away from me, keep temptation away from me’, how often? Because it’s the one prayer that provides you with an iron-clad defence against the enemy. Take him on and there’s every chance you’ll lose. Have God help you to avoid the battle and you’re guaranteed of a win.

Now, sometimes God allows us to be tempted as He did with Jesus, when He was cast out in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (for forty days and forty nights) to be tempted by the devil. Sometimes God tests our faith in Him by using the devil as His tool. And that’s when you need to be clothed in the armour of God.

But my friend, when you’re tired and weak (in the cut and thrust of your day), the devil wants to slip under your guard. And the best way to avoid that is to ask God to keep you from evil each and every day. It’s amazing how supernaturally He answers that prayer, remember the devil has to obey God; he just can’t do anything without God’s permission.

I mean, when he set out to attack Job in the Old Testament and each step of the way the devil required God’s permission. ‘Lord keep me from evil, lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil‘ is the most powerful prayer that you can pray to preserve your heritage, to keep the devil from robbing you of the blessing that God is giving you.

The thief comes only to kill, steal and destroy but I have come (said Jesus) that you may have life in all its abundance. (John 10:10)

Ain’t that the truth? God wants to bless you. And one of the things He will do for you is bless you by keeping evil away from you. That’s what Jabez prayed, that’s what Jesus taught because each of us have a Achilles heel, mine is perfectionism and anger. I used to be a very, very angry man. Now, I’m still not a softy. I’m no push over but there are certain people who I know who are going to rub me up the wrong way.

I cannot stand, for instance, laziness. It completely sets me off. So when I know that I’m going to be running into someone who’s going flick my switch as it were I pray this prayer:

Lord, Keep me from evil.

And the power of God to do that is simply amazing. Truly, I’ve said it so many times in my life where the Lord stills my spirit to avoid that critical spirit of perfectionism and anger that comes with it. Or He just changes the circumstances to avoid the temptation all together.

Truly, I tell you, when you ask God to bless you … when you ask Him to expand your territory of influence and blessing, when you ask Him to have His mighty hand upon you and with you … He will answer you in the most amazing ways. In ways that you can’t even hope for, dream or imagine.

And as that starts to happen, the devil will come along, just as Jesus predicted, to kill, steal and destroy – to rob you of the blessings because he knows that if he can get you to sin he will interrupt the flow of God’s blessings through you into this world. It’s like capping the oil well. He knows that, that’s why the moment you see the blessing of God flowing through you, you know that you have a target painted on your chest that the devil is going to be aiming at.

Listen to me … God wants to bless you. He so wants to bless you and yet like any father, if the child sins He’s going to interrupt that flow of blessing. That’s why you and I need to pray:

Lord, Keep me from evil, lead me not in to temptation but deliver me from evil. (Matthew 6:13)

It invites the supernatural power of God to protect you and to give you an iron-clad defence. Pray the prayer and like Jabez, God will grant you what you request.

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?’

Why Don’t I Receive?

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.

As I said at the beginning of the programme, 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 programme today who live in poverty (many of them in war zones) than there are wealthy people 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 or 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 the ‘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:

Truly I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in My name, He’ll 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 of times, Jesus says, ‘Ask and you will receive’. Now 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, ‘cos 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 do not have because you do 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 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. Ok; you’re not perfect, but 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 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. 

The Blessing is a Done Deal

I want to share with you right now the biggest turnaround 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 them at midnight, and you say to them, ‘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’s 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 is never short on bread to give you.

Soo 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’ll be given to you. Search, and you’ll find. Knock, and the door will be opened. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you, if their child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if their child asks for an egg, will 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 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 it’s 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, His good things for our lives into our spirit in the heavenly places.

Now, at first blush that may not be so encouraging. ‘Okay, 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 blessings 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 turnaround? Because now, when you’re going to God over and over again asking for His blessing, you don’t have to go to Him with this hangdog kind of attitude – that you have 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 has already spoken every spiritual blessing into existence. Now you can go to Him day after day, asking for His blessing and knowing 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.

Every Need Fully Supplied

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 thing.
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.

No Blessing, No Results

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.

No Blessing, No Fruit

Before the break, we were talking about the impact of your life on other people. And that’s a theme I want to continue to explore some more 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.

A Daily Prayer for Blessing

Well, as we come to the close of another series of messages (don’t the weeks fly by?), I’d like to take us back to where we began, with the prayer of Jabez. It was such an audacious prayer of a Mister Nobody, buried deep in the Bible amidst nine chapters of genealogy of all things, that prayer that audaciously asked God for His blessings.

Let’s listen to it again because there’s something that I’m going to challenge you with as our time together in this series God Wants to Bless You draws to a close. 1 Chronicles 4: 9-10:

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, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my borders, and that your hand would be upon me, and that you would keep me from evil that I may cause no pain.’ And God granted what he asked.

If there’s one thing that we’ve discovered throughout this series, it’s that God wants to bless us and that He wants us to ask for and depend on His blessing just as Jabez did.

As you know, I’m not into prosperity doctrine at all and I’m not into name it and claim it style of faith. That’s not what the Bible teaches. But what the Bible does teach, as the very living Word of the one true living God, is that God wants us to ask for and rely on His blessing.

Jesus commanded His disciples to ask for God’s blessing. Jesus taught His disciples how to live in the power of God’s blessing to feed the thousands with just a few fishes and loaves.

And so my challenge to you over the next thirty days, every morning, is to faithfully spend just a few minutes praying this prayer of Jabez. Not a meaningless rote type of prayer. But from the depths of your heart, believing what God’s Word says, taking God at His Word that He does want to bless you and that He wants you to ask for His blessing.

If, at the end of thirty days of this faithful (simple way of praying), God hasn’t shown up with such power and might that you will want to keep on praying this way for the rest of your life, I will be completely and totally gob-smacked.

Don’t expect every wrinkle in your life to be ironed out in thirty days. Don’t expect your coffers to be full at the end of thirty days. But please, do expect that you will be filled to the brim, to overflowing, with the blessings from God that you couldn’t have dreamed of or imagined. Because God wants to bless you!

There are many times when we hear someone talk about God’s blessing and we kind of relate to it but from a distance, or in small doses, or as a theory lesson. Well I’m not here to entertain you or to tickle your ears with stuff you want to hear. I’m not here to give you a theory lesson.

I’m here to challenge you to believe that God wants to bless you beyond measure and challenge you to take the steps that the Bible teaches us to take hold of His mighty blessing. And be prepared for such great blessing to flow into your life that you simply won’t be able to contain it.

I believe that if you start praying this prayer with me each day, you’ll be imploring God to fill you with blessing, to expand your territory, because you have so much blessing to pour out and share around. And you’ll be imploring God for His mighty hand to be upon you, because you will know that you will be in desperate need of His help to share that much blessing around.

Will you step up to the plate and take the challenge or not? Are you ready to be overwhelmed by God’s blessing or not? Are you ready to get out there and start sharing His abundant blessing around with others or not?

Look at Jesus’ life on this earth. Despite the difficulties – the persecutions, the afflictions, the lack of a steady income, the lack of even a place to rest His head on a regular basis – He spent His whole time sharing the amazing blessings of God His Father flowing out through Him. Will you do the same? Will you be Christ to a lost and hurting world? Will you?