I’m sure you’ve heard the popular phrase “count all your blessings.” God does want us to experience and receive His abundant blessings in this life and for all eternity. It is Psalm 103:2 that says we are to “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not ALL HIS BENEFITS (blessings).” However, there are oppositions that rob us from living within the available and relational BLESSINGS that God promises those that trust in Him. Honestly, we can write a book on this topic and not cover it all, but allow me to share with you a very common and dangerous way many are getting the topic of God’s supposed “blessings” so twisted nowadays:
When a person chooses to use a “Self-Centered Modern Dictionary” to define and access God’s blessing instead of the Bible.
That’s right! Unfortunately, it’s become increasingly popular for people to hinge their definitions of “God’s blessings”on the latest popular phraseologies and memes. Anyone can take 2-3 phrases about God from a hip church figure or social media post and then make their own caricature version of Him that fits best for their egos, leading them to arrogantly think they actually understand God’s purposes for their lives. Does a person really think that their understanding of the depths of God is the true one, simply because an unqualified catchy phrase they read or heard is giving them warm feelings at the moment? Instead, they’re actually filling their egos with hot air of false hope, and in essence, not living under God’s relational blessings for them. Worse, they may not even be believing upon God for who He is and what He does according to the accuracy of the Bible, and instead, they have replaced God with a demonic counterfeit that is deceiving them as a false god and enabling them to live a SELF-EXALTING life that rejects obeying the true God by faith, and as a result, they step outside of God’s blessings.
Let’s not be ignorantly deceived about this! To hold on to our own “Modern Dictionary” version of the God who “never does this” or “always does that” for the sake of pampering us toward self-centeredness is pure ignorance of who God truly is. Don’t listen to those hyped up preachers that trivialize and obscure God’s truth! They sound good and feel nice, but judgment will come on them and their following. Many people are actually turning their backs on God and don’t know it. This is one of the biggest deceptions to the genuine BLESSINGS God offers us. Instead of depending on God, we seek to use Him to bend to our wills. But there is always good news!
The BLESSINGS of the Gospel
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gift from God to be believed and received as the greatest of His blessings. It is considered good news because it rescues us from our self-righteous pursuits. The gospel pushes back against all the ignorant and self-centered views of God that actually rob us from the open door of His blessings. Outside of the gospel, there are no blessings from God, no matter how much we may be deceived into believing otherwise.
The gospel is message of grace is simple enough for a child to understand, but it is sophisticated enough for a philosopher or scholar to spend his life’s work pursuing after. Nevertheless, the gospel is also an accurate message of truth, and it tells me that apart from faith Jesus, I am outside of God’s blessings, because I am a lost, blind, deceived, wretched sinner that is separated from God. Instead of blessed, I am condemned! I must know this about myself. But the good news is that I can be truly blessed when I can forgiven of my sinfulness and reconciled to God by faith in Jesus. And that is the greatest of God’s blessings and the gateway to all of God’s true blessings. I can be assured to exist within the blessings of God, because the gospel has made that possible for me, like an open door straight to Him and His blessings for me.
So, he are five questions you can reflect on:
1. Can you articulate the gospel accurately if you confess to believe in God?
2. Is your theology of God and His blessings for you actually accurate to the Bible?
3. Can you distinguish the difference between man-centered preaching/teaching and God-centered preaching/teaching?
4. Do you know if you live to obey God as opposed to falsely bend Him to your will and self-centered desires?
5. Do you truly want to live under God’s blessings according to His truth, and not my false version of truth?
If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, you’re actually in a good place of self-awareness. But I do encourage you to go deeper and pursue how to answer them. You’ll want to know what you believe, because you don’t want to be deceived like many people out there most definitely are. Be set free and BLESSED by the power or the gospel!
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