ON OBEDIENCE AND BLESSING

As I ponder the American perspective on Christian blessing, I suspect many of us in the church have missed the point.  When I think of blessing, my mind goes to the idea of getting something.  I so often associate God's blessing with receiving material gain or that which will ease my life in some way.  Seldom am I not pondering what would make my life easier.   If I only had more money, if I only had more time to pursue my interests, if I only had more.... it never ends.  This is because my perception is warped and tainted by the idea of the American Dream.  I love America and consider myself a patriot, but I also recognize that I have to be a Christian first.  My spiritual life cannot be shaped by my perceived right to the pursuit of happiness.

I have been mulling over the idea of blessings and the purpose for them in the life of a believer.  I truly believe God loves His people and wants to bless us, but maybe not in the way we might think. God's blessing is not meant to enrich us or make our life a cakewalk, it is designed to provide us for service in His kingdom.  Enrichment and leisure can be as much as a snare as it can be a blessing, depending on how they are utilized, blessing is always meant to benefit us in serving God.

Blessing is ultimately tied to obedience.  As we seek to do the will of God in our lives, He provides us with the resources and training to accomplish His will.  Following God's commands is not a matter of what we can or cannot do as much as it is being where God wants us when He wants us there.  I envision this as when a soldier arrives at boot camp for the first time.  Everything that soldier needs to be successful is provided to him, he needs only do as he is directed to receive all he needs.

As followers of Christ, we are indwelt by the Spirit of God.  The Spirit is our counselor, our instructor, our guide and our conscience.  All that we need to serve God is made available to us, we just need to do as we are directed to do by the Spirit.  This eliminates the endless "what if" scenarios that we waste so much time debating.  This helps us to see clearly the line between obedience and sin.  There are things that are always sin, such as stealing, murder and immorality, but the so called gray areas are what often trip us up.  The Holy
Spirit acts as our guide to lead us where we need to be to receive the training and provision to accomplish His mission for us.  We get distracted seeking fulfillment in pleasure, leisure and accumulation of stuff and that fulfillment is short lived and often plain elusive.  True fulfillment is always found in discovering who we are in Christ and operating according to the gifting which He has given(blessed) us.