Many of us struggle to believe that God wants to bless us because we have wrong ideas about what blessing looks like.
God is not Father Christmas, doling out presents to us whenever we ask for them. Blessing is not like advertising hype which promises much and delivers little. We often fail to recognise God’s blessings because we think of blessing in material terms only, viewing prayer like a divine slot machine!
We have to be careful not to simply associate blessing with temporal things, thinking that if God is going to bless us, we will have expensive cars, mansions to live in, pots of money and no financial stress. Paul reminds us that ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Tim 6:6) and that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.’ (1 Tim 6:10) Jesus taught unequivocally that ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Matt 6:21) and reminded us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt 6:24). If we understand blessing to mean solely material success and wealth, we will be disappointed and will certainly not have a right understanding of Scripture. There is a cost involved with discipleship (see Luke 14:27) which can never be ignored.
Blessing does not mean we can live how we please with no consequences. God’s primary purpose is to bring glory to Himself, which He does through transformation: transforming us from sinners in the kingdom of darkness to people who will be imitators of God, reflecting His nature and His light, life and love to everyone else. He is a God who will not yield His glory to anyone else (Is 42:8) and He will do everything He can to shape and mould us into His image so that we can fulfil our destiny of being heirs with God and joint-heirs with Christ, sharing in His sufferings so we can also share in His glory. (Rom 8:17) We mustn’t view God’s grace and blessing as a licence to do whatever we like with no regard for holiness. Blessing and grace are free gifts from God, but there are also consequences for sin which cannot be ignored. Only when we truly understand how God views blessing (in counter-cultural ways as the Beatitudes make clear) will we be able to enter into the blessings God has for us.