Where Do God’s Blessings Come From?
Chances are good that, if you turn on the television and tune into a religious channel, you will hear a lot about God’s blessings. You will hear that God wants to bless you beyond your wildest imagination. You will hear that God’s main concern is that you be happy, fulfilled, wealthy and blessed. Actually, they are right! But, many times, they are just as wrong. Allow me to explain.
First, we need to understand what blessing means from God’s perspective. The word for blessing in the Old Testament actually comes from a root word that means to prepare. It is a word that, properly translated, means much more than just stuff. So many times we think blessing means that we get a new car, new home, lots of money, etc. Sometimes this is the case because God gives us those things in preparation for what He wants us to do and do with them. This is not always the case. God equally blesses the person that has nothing as He works in his or her life to prepare them for the ministry He has ahead of them. Sometimes God even uses difficulty to prepare us to be useful for His Kingdom!
Consider the story of the widow in 2 Kings 4:1-7. Her husband has died, the food is gone, and the creditors are going to take her two sons away as payment for her husband’s debts. She is at the absolute end of her rope. She has nowhere to turn; however, she does have one last desperate choice. She goes to Elisha, the prophet, and asks for his help. With the desperation that we can only see in a mother that trying to keep her family together and her home intact, she cries out to God through His prophet. Much to her chagrin, the prophet asks what she wants him to do? She has no answer. He asks what she has left in her house. She replies that she only has a little bit of oil and that is it.
This is the chance where she has a choice to make. She has presented her request to God and He has responded by asking her to give up the little she has. That would probably not make for a successful television ministry, but it was what God wanted. Faced with this call to action, the widow had a chance to obey or not obey. By not obeying, she could protect the little she had and continue to find a way out that was more appealing or popular. If she obeyed, she would have to trust that God knew what He was doing and would take care of her. She chose to obey even though it made no sense from a human standpoint. What did she receive? God’s blessing. In this case it was stuff, but it was not the stuff that mattered. It was her obedience that taught her to trust God and provided her example for us that mattered and still does. Her difficult circumstance was the blessing!
What are you facing right now that is tempting you to question the goodness of God? What are you going through right now that is not what you wish it would be? What difficulty is threatening to crush you? Perhaps, just perhaps, this might be God blessing you, not with stuff, but with the opportunity to obey and learn about Him, grow closer to Him and be used more by and for Him. Maybe instead of searching the television channels for a person to make you feel more guilty and inferior because of what you are going through, you should spend that time talking to the One in charge of your circumstances and ask for Him to guide you through it.