Having looked at many of the battles in the Old Testament which can teach us so much about living a life of faith, today’s message looked at the fact God is a God of blessings too! Ps 115:12-13 reminds us that God’s natural inclination is to bless, and in the NIV the verb ‘bless’ features 389 times and the noun ‘blessing’ 94 times, vividly illustrating the fact that every good and perfect gift comes from our Father in heaven (see James 1:17). For many of us, however, the battles of life and the difficulties we face at times make us question God’s goodness and love. Sometimes we have absorbed wrong ideas about God, believing He is ‘out to get us’, willing us to fail. Charlie Cleverly says, ‘Many feel uncertain and find that they have developed a kind of Achilles’ heel in this area, so need daily doses of realisation of the constant covenant love and good intentions of God for them.’ (‘Epiphanies of the Ordinary’, P 130)
Achilles was a Greek warrior who was full of valour and strength and loyalty… but who had one point of weakness, his heel. The story goes that his mother wanted to make him immortal and so dipped him into the river Styx, which would supposedly ensure he would live forever; unfortunately, she did not realise that the heel with which she held him as she dipped him did not get covered by the waters and so this became his vulnerable point, the place where he could be defeated. Ultimately, in the Trojan War, despite all his courage and skill, Achilles was killed by Paris, the brother of Hector, whose poisoned arrow landed in his heel, the only part of his body which was mortal, and he died. We can be like Achilles in many ways: strong in so many areas, brave in so many regards, and yet vulnerable in this one area when it comes to believing God is who He says He is.
The Bible makes it clear that God is for us, that He is on our side (see Rom 8:31-32). Eph 1:3 affirms that God has blessed us in the spiritual realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus – not a future blessing, but something He has already done. Our task is to learn to have confidence in who God is, to define blessing in Biblical ways and to focus on what God has already done for us so that we can enter into the blessings and victories He has for us. We need to spend more time looking at God than we do at our problems and have our vision and attitudes shaped by the truths we find in God’s Word.