I will bless you…

When we think of the blessings of God, we often think of good things to make our lives better now.  Oh we  realize that God’s blessing to the believers includes eternal life, but often we really just what to feel blessed by God today.

Let’s look at God’s promise of blessing to Abram (later known as Abraham).  Read through the verses below and notice what is said about blessing.

Genesis 12

   1  Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you;  2  And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; 3  And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

 4   So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 

Did you notice the repeated phrase “I will“?  God’s promises of blessing at this point lack the specific details, we like to have.  And based on this general promise of future blessings God asked Abram to leave everything he knows (country, relatives, father) to go to a land that God will show him in the future.

Exchanging the known for the unknown…leaving all behind for the promise of future blessings…

Even though it may seem like a lot to ask, was God’s call to Abram really so different then Jesus’ call to us, those who He has called to be His disciples?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ… Ephesians 1:3

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy Me.  He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.  Matthew 10:37-39

As believers in Jesus Christ we too must be willing to leave behind all that is familiar and go forward looking to Christ and the hope of the promised blessings that lay ahead.

Oh, by the way, did you notice that Abram was 75 years old when he started on this journey of faith.  God had plans for his man of faith, that started what we may think of as late in life.  We too need to trust God with our lives no matter how slow we may think He is about revealing His will for our lives.

God blessed…

In trying to understand God’s blessing we need to start in Genesis, the book of beginnings.  In fact we will start in Genesis 1, where we learn about God’s work of creation.

27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every try which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you,

God blessed the man and woman.   How did God bless them? Well, He gave them plants for food, He gave them the responsibility to multiply and to rule the earth.  We might think of the last two not as blessings but as curses.  Let’s consider the following definition–To bless in the Old Testament means “to endue with power for success, prosperity, fertility , longevity, etc.

If God wanted the man and woman to multiply and rule over the earth, could we then say that God’s blessing on them was giving them the power to to as He had commanded them?

Does being blessed by God mean God supplies us with the ability  to do what He has commanded us to do?

Consider, that today God has blessed you, He has enabled you to do all His has commanded you to do.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13