Blessings Upon Blessigns

We are not feeling blessed only because of the hotel and the parrots but because we have just begun to unwrap this idea of God’s blessings on those He loves and his desire to bless us.  The first thought I had when I saw this place and the good food that was served to us was that I didn’t deserve all of this.  I was expecting to eat beans and rice all month and sleep in a tent and yet I am living with way more.  I was thinking that I’d become spoiled with all these amazing blessings and so it was hard and almost unbelievable to accept these gifts from God.  But since we have been here, God has been revealing something so profound to me.  Rather than feeling bad all the time, God just wants me to be thankful.  He has showed me that his blessings are rich and abundant.  They are not things we could do for ourselves or what we expect because he wants the glory from them.  He wants his blessings to produce our praise to him.  And as I was in this thought process he asked me, “Why do you think that you couldn’t deserve this?”  And I didn’t have a reasonable answer.  So gently he reminded me that I am his daughter, whom he loves to lavish with love and gifts.  He reminded me of King David in Psalm 21 where he recounts the rich blessings that God has poured out on him and instead of covering up pride with false hulimity, he receives the blessings and in turn praises God who is his rock and his refuge.  If a man who was said to have a heart after God can receive the Lord’s blessings, he must know something profound about his own identity and how God saw him.  He must have understood God’s desire to give us really good things…even things we may not necessarily need.  But in that place of understanding, he lived a life of thankfulness and praise toward God, the giver of all good things and all blessings.

That is the life I long for.  That is the fullness of life that I desire…to walk in such a manner of honor and excellence before God’s eyes and that I would be able to receive the blessings that come with that lifestyle with my heart in a posture of thankfulness and praise.  I absolutely adore my Father in heaven and I desire to know him so much more.  This life that I am living is better than I have ever experienced in my life.  And the reason is because I cannot settle for inactive Christianity anymore.  My God is interactive and involved.  He is not distant but is right next to me all the time, giving me wisdom and insight.  He is always speaking to me.  He is always revealing truths to me that I could have never known on my own.  He is always refining me and making me more and more beautiful as I reflect him more and more every day because He is the definition of beauty.  I love that I can talk to him and he talks back.  I love that while it was difficult for a time of listening and trying to hear his voice, that he is so faithful and has brought me to a place where I can know his voice so clearly.  I love that he loves me enough to take out all the crap in my life.  He loves me enough to deal with some serious, messy issues like control and fear and rejection and comparison.  And he does all of this so that I can walk in the fullness of who he created me to be.  I LOVE that my identity is a SAINT…not a just a sinner saved by grace.  I love that God didn’t stop with the cross but that he continued with the resurrection.  I love what happened at the cross, but that is not where my hope is…my hope is in the resurrection.  If Christ had died for my sins, but stayed in the ground, I would still be bound to my sin and separate from God.  But THANK GOD that Jesus is alive; that he conquered death and sin once and for all.  And because of that I have the ability and choice to die to my flesh and sinful nature and come to life through the resurrection of Christ.  I am ABLE to move from the natural way of life (sin, lies, worldy…) to the unnatural.  Which gets flipped around when you live as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven because it is natural to live a righteous life, filled with truth.