One of my pet
peeves is the way many Christians use the word “blessing.” It’s common to hear someone say "I've
been blessed," "It was such a blessing" and so on. It’s become a religious way of saying "I
was lucky," or "Boy, I'm glad that I have that.”
To receive a
blessing is to have someone bestow favor upon you. The Old Testament patriarchs like Isaac and
Jacob bestowed blessings upon their children before they died. The blessing may include material possessions
like land or cattle. But more
importantly, the blessing was a bestowal of goodness upon the person. They were endowed with something special that
would affect their character and identity.
Being "blessed" doesn't mean simply receiving something good,
or even having things work out well for you.
It's even more than acknowledging that God is the one who is responsible
for something good in your life. Being
blessed means that you are different person.
You have been changed in a powerful and positive way. In Matthew 5, Jesus began his famous “Sermon
on the Mount” with the beatitudes: a series of descriptions of how we are
blessed in various circumstances. The beatitudes
are not about wonderful things coming your way.
They are about how the things that come your way will change you in
amazing ways that draw you closer to our Lord.
A
lesser-known passage that helps us understand what it means to be blessed is
Psalm 67:
“May God be gracious to us and bless
us and make his face shine upon us,
that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.”
The psalmist
seeks God’s blessing for himself and his community, but he does so for a very
specific purpose. It’s not about himself
and how he will benefit from God’s blessing.
He wants to be blessed so that everyone will come to know God, and that
God’s plan will prevail over the world.
To sum all
this up, being blessed means that God transforms us in order for others to
blessed and transformed themselves. We
may be tempted to cling to God’s blessings and keep them for ourselves, rather
than recognizing that the way they change us can be a way for others to be
changed as well. If we hold onto the
blessing for ourselves, we block God’s pipeline of grace and joy for the world.
It’s for us
as individuals, but it’s also true for us as a church. The Lord has blessed Old Union in many
fantastic ways. But the blessings are
not meant for us alone. First, they are
not simply heavenly goodies that we can enjoy like trick-or-treaters on
November 1. The blessings that God has
bestowed upon our congregation are meant to change who we are. Pray over this question: “How has God transformed Old Union through
the blessings he has given to it?”
Second, our church has not been blessed for its own sake. We have been blessed so that those around us,
especially those in our community, can discover God’s blessing for them through
us. Pray over this second question: “How can Old Union’s blessings bring others
closer to God?”
