God – The Blesser You – the bless-ee
I heard a Bible teaching the other day, which inspired the above idea in my mind, and started me thinking about being blessed.
First of all, people say, “God bless you” all the time, especially in the south. While this is an acceptable practice and I love hearing it; is it cliché? Are these merely nice sounding words to speak? Perhaps for some. But we as Christians should always consider what it means when we say, “God bless you”. We cannot allow those words to become a simple pleasantry.
It is interesting to look up the word “bless” in the Bible. The first time it’s used is in Genesis 1:22. After God created the whales and creatures of the sea and birds of the air, He blessed them and said, “be fruitful and multiply”. This shows us the basic essence of God’s blessings.
God told Abraham that He would bless him. This blessing from God to Abraham (and by association also to us) involved prosperity, health, success, protection, vitality, comfort, peace, progeny, and longevity. These are just some of the categories in which God blesses us so that we can be fruitful and multiply – literally and figuratively.
I don’t think that anyone questions God’s ability to bless people, but some may doubt His willingness. This may stem from people’s misconception that God demands a level of achievement from us before He will bless us. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible declares that God remembers that we are dust. This figure of speech refers to the lowliness and fragileness of human beings. God remembers those things about us and meets us where we are. We are weak. We cannot raise ourselves up to God! But God is strong. He can reach down and pick us up – and pluck us out of any trap.
People might argue that they have to follow God’s law in order for God to bless them. Okay, if you want to be under God’s law, what exactly is His law?
Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
God’s law is to love Him and love each other. How do you act toward someone that you genuinely love? When the love of God is the motivation for your actions, you will be obeying God’s law. (You can also look at Romans 13:9)
So, I think we can agree that God is able and willing to bless us; and that the Bible is full of proclamations of God’s blessings. For instance, it says that God will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing that there won’t be room enough to receive (Mal 3:10); that He gives us richly all things to enjoy (1 Tim 6:17); and that He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Eph 1:3). But life is more than just receiving blessings from God. Granted we absolutely need God’s blessings, but in order for our lives to be truly blessed we need to give blessings as well.
Many of us love reading Psalms. The Psalms talk about MANY blessings from God to us. But we may also notice that the Psalms direct us to bless God too. A number of times in Psalms, it says “bless the Lord…”. When you really think about that, isn’t it incredible that we human beings with all our frailties can bless God? Yet, we can! There are exhortations for us to bless God throughout the Bible.
Our blessing God isn’t giving Him prosperity or longevity or any of the things that He blesses us with. (He doesn’t need any of those things!) Our blessing God is in praise and worship and thankfulness. The root of the Hebrew word used for ‘bless’ means ‘kneel’. That doesn’t mean that we must physically kneel down, (you can if you want to) but we must show the humbleness and recognition that kneeling before God implies. We bless the gracious God, who blesses us so much, by praising Him with a thankful heart.
In addition, we can bless each other. When we are blessed, we have what we need to be able to give. And when we give, we open the windows of heaven to receive more blessings. It is a delightful lifestyle that God laid out for us to enjoy. God, The Blesser, blesses us and then we, the bless-ees, are blessed with all that we need so that we can become blessers ourselves. It is a remarkable way to live!
I just have to share one of my favorite verses here:
Proverbs 27:14
He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.
God has blessed us with His sense of humor! 😊 Even He knows that nobody likes a loud voice early in the morning!
But seriously,
Psalm 34:8
O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
We are blessed when we put our trust in God. We are blessed because God has already blessed us in Christ. We are blessed because God is The Blesser. And with all these blessings, so many that there isn’t room for them all, we have a lot to be thankful for and A LOT to give! We truly have blessed and happy lives!
Note to my readers: God bless you! Thanks for reading.