Are You Blessed?

After a long day at work, John came home.  He didn't even make it indoors before his wife greeted him with a cold class of sweet tea.  Satisfied, he continued on to his favorite spot on his deck.  It was recently built, and surrounded most of the house.

This wasn't the newest addition to their house though.  Just three months earlier John and his wife Clara welcomed into their home a new baby girl.  They named her Addison—Addy for short.  She has the most beautiful blue eyes.  John's job, house, and family were everything he ever wanted.

While he sipped on his tea, Clara sat down next to him.  "Addy just fell asleep, I think I'll join you for a while."  She sat down next to John and put her feet up on his lap.

"We truly are blessed," John said.

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Most of my life, this is the picture I had in my mind when I thought of the word ‘blessed’.  I never heard people who were wallowing in poverty, or suffering the death of someone close to them speak of themselves as blessed in those moments.  This left me with a twisted view of the way God blesses.

Blessed to me meant simply that I was prospering.  My family is healthy (nobody has cancer or a major handicap), my bank account is stable, my job is good and so on.  My reasoning was that God must really be on my side for me to be doing so well.

But there's an issue in thinking like this.  If this is the measure of a truly blessed person, does that make Bill Gates the most blessed person in the world?  If the foundation of blessing is wrapped up around material things, then Jesus' 12 disciples must not have been blessed–they had nearly no wealth.  More confusion comes when Jesus says in Luke 6, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God."  Blessed are the poor in spirit?  Nobody talks like that on their deck with a glass of tea.

To associate ‘blessed’ with mere things says a lot about who we view God to be.  To be blessed has to mean so much more than the possessions we have.

Over the past weeks I've struggled to think rightly about my relationship with God as the most precious thing I have.  Like John above, I have a new baby in my life.  Noticeably I'm just happier.  Feels like God's blessing is shining on me a little brighter than normal.

But it's the favor I have with God as his child that makes me blessed.  When I am weak, lowly and fully aware of my need for a savior, Jesus says this is the apex of blessings received.  When I obey him, he says I'm blessed–whether I feel it or not.

Would I have felt so happy if my daughter came out with a major deformity, or a terminal illness?  I hope so, but it's hard to think that I would have felt equally blessed.

We should probably think twice before landing our blessing plane on our financial prosperity or the things we have.  There's so much more going on in our lives as Christians than just the things we have been entrusted with.

The next time you're lonely and rejected, or something hard comes your way, I hope you can grab a glass of tea, sit on your deck and remind yourself of your need for Jesus.  Here you are blessed.

This is an excerpt from my new book, Leading the Last Leg.  You can get a digital, or paperback copy from Amazon.com here.

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