Appretiating the blessing

"18"But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." Deut 8:18.

Now, the obvious way to read this passage is to say that God has brought these people out of bondage and slavery and is giving them their own nation. As free people in their own nation they will have the ability to gain wealth. Therefore, God is empowering them to make wealth. That is a kind of "natural" reading of the verse.

The "spiritual" reading that is given is that God is giving them a supernatural power to gain wealth, a kind of "blessing" that is put on the people that will empower them to get wealth.

Whichever way we read it God is still into giving them the power to get wealth! Now we can read that two ways, one way is to see the "power" as something like the wisdom you will need to set up a business and run it successfully, the other is to see it like a money magnet that will automatically draw money.

"22 It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich,
And He adds no sorrow to it." Proverbs 10:22

This verse says the same thing. Here it comes across loud and clear that it is the blessing that makes rich, not our labour. Now, if we look through the bible to see how this was lived out then we can see what we should expect. We have already looked at Joseph. Although he was attacked by his brothers and Potiphar's wife the blessing was still at work in his life working out God's purposes. Joseph said, "20"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive." Genesis 50:20. Did Joseph feel blessed when his brothers were attacking him and when he was thrown into prison? It doesn't matter whether he thought he was blessed, he stayed faithful to God.

If we look at David and Saul, the big difference between them was that David knew he had God's blessing on him while Saul acted as if he didn't! Saul allowed doubts and fear to rise, while David stood firmly on the blessing. He trusted God and trusted that he was blessed by God even though he himself did things that would put him out of blessing. He still trusted in God's faithfulness rather than thinking proud thoughts to say that he could do anything to push God away if God didn't want to be pushed away!!

So, we would think it is quite important that we get this! That instead of looking at those who speak against us and worrying about them we would think, "Hey, I'm blessed by God! His blessing is on me, He is for me, who can be against me?!" The likelihood is that you are not feeling like you are the blessed of the Lord. You may be looking at your life but that's the problem, we need to stop looking at our life and look at Him. It is too easy when you get a car breaks down to say, "I'm blessed by the Lord, He will deliver me!" and expect it to be like waving a magic wand. But when you have been sat there for two hours still waiting for the breakdown guy to turn up, can you still say, "I'm blessed of the Lord!?"

Saul made the mistake of getting impatient. If we trust in the Lord then it doesn't really matter what happens. It's a bit like being called onto stage by a magician, who then says trust me as he starts doing things, we trust but with gritted teeth. Or like a roller coaster ride, we get on because we trust the engineers have done their job properly, but as we are whizzing round we still fell all the fear as if we don't trust them, but at least we trust enough to get on!

We really need to tell ourselves that we are the blessed of the lord. I had a friend who said that she had been told she was stupid so many times she believed it. But she wasn't stupid. Because she thought she was stupid she seemed to be drawn to people who called who stupid. There are people in this world who are so horrible they will call anyone stupid, whether they are or not. They aren't hard to find. We need to learn to listen to those who say nice things about us, especially God. And he says you are blessed! Let us hear that enough times that we believe it. We need to keep telling ourselves until we do. We are royalty, others may not recognise it, but it is the truth about us who believe. In England we have a royal family, and we have people who don't like the royal family. Do you think the queen surrounds herself with those who don't like her? Do you think she allows their criticisms to stop her doing her job, or doing it well, or doing it the way she thinks it should be done? Of course not. The difference between us and the queen is that she really believes that she is royalty. She is royalty and she believes it! We are royalty but do we believe it? We need to tell ourselves and keep telling ourselves the truths about us until we start to believe it.

If you listen to certain songs in church you will notice that some songs are sung to God, but some are sung to each other. They are songs that affirm who we are. "There is power in the name of Jesus!" Who is that sung to? God? He knows it! It is us who need to get it!

We need to hear the truth and we need it drummed into us. We need to reprogram our thinking. The tapes that play in our heads that have been put there by all the negative thinking that we and others have programmed into us. We need to brain wash ourselves until we really believe we are who God says we are!! And that is the important bit, God never lies, if He says it about us it is the truth! It is what God says about us, how dare we not believe it!!