My Life Lens

my life lense- featuredWe all look at life through a certain perspective or lens. For some it is positive; for some it is negative. Another way we can state these two views are the blessed one or the cursed one. The cursed one feels nothing good ever happens to him. The blessed one is amazed at God’s goodness in his life. However, my lens determines what I choose to focus on — the good or the bad. What is reality? Is there such a thing as God’s blessing or His curse on a life? What does it mean to be blessed, and how do I position my life to receive His blessing. The blessing of God is a real thing.

 

God wants to bless you

God’s original desire after creating us was to bless us. It was said of Adam and Eve, “He blessed them” (Genesis 1:28). God created everything, saw it was good and gave it to humans to enjoy. However, He did make us with free will because God wanted us to choose the blessing by choosing Him. So God gave us a test in regard to being blessed or cursed. He gave Adam and Eve one restriction; don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For if you do you will die (Genesis 2.17). In other words they would move from being under the blessing to being under the curse.

God is teaching here a principle that He teaches all through the Bible. The principle is obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings a curse. God created us for a love relationship with Him, and the result of this intimate relationship would be His blessing on our life. Being created in His image means we have the ability to choose or reject this blessing. God reminded Israel again of this principle when they entered the Promised Land. He set before them a blessing and a curse by having some people from each tribe stand on Mt. Gerizim (blessing) and Mt. Ebal (cursing) speaking blessings and cursings based on their obedience to God’s law (Deuteronomy 27-28). Jesus taught us this principle with His sermon on the mount about how to be blessed in life through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:2-11.

 

What is God’s blessing?

Remember the blessing of God is based upon having an intimate relationship with Him. Like any loving father God wants to do good things for His children. The blessing is God doing for us what we couldn’t do on our own. It is God working in a positive way on our behalf. He is providing, protecting and directing our life through His wisdom just to name a few things this means. There are several kinds of blessings: financial, spiritual (the greatest because they last the longest), emotional and relational.

Blessing is God working for us, and the curse is God working against us. In Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned, God pronounced a curse upon them. Both of them would die instead of having eternal life. Eve would have much more pain in childbirth, and Adam would find it much more difficult to grow things. Which life would you rather have, the one where God is working against you making things more difficult or the one where He is working for you? That shouldn’t be too hard to decide. Yet many, because of their stubborn sin nature, would rather do life on their own rather than submit to God’s ways. For this reason God warns us, “Good understanding produces favor, but the way of the transgressor is hard” (Proverbs 13.15).

 

How can I be blessed?

In simple terms obey God if you want to be blessed. This means you have to know what God wants. This is only discovered in the scriptures. So a starting point is to read the Bible regularly in order to come to know God and His ways better. However, knowledge alone is not enough. James teaches us that it is not the hearers of the word that are blessed but the doers (James 1.2425).

The challenge is to read the Bible being sensitive to anything the Holy Spirit would speak to you from the Word about implementing in your life today.

Here is an illustration of how this works. You are reading Psalm 1. The first verse is blessed is the man. You realize God is telling you how you can be blessed. How you can become like a fruitful tree and all that you do will prosper. As you read, you understand this blessing comes from something you do and something you don’t do. The negative is you don’t listen to the advice of the ungodly; you don’t make them your best friends and do what they do. Rather you read and meditate on scripture all the time. You delight in it so you do what it says. What do you do after reading this if you want to be that blessed person? Evaluate your friends, who you listen to and how you act. Do your actions line up with God’s truth. So some action steps may be to get some new friends, read the Bible more or change a behavior that isn’t what God wants.

You personalize the scripture to your life. Then align your actions with God’s truth if they are not aligned. This daily reading and meditating on scripture will slowly change your life and bring you into a closer relationship with Christ, the One who wants to bless your life. God is your friend; He is for you and wants to bless you. You must choose the blessing or the curse.

 

Dr. John Hawkins, Sr. runs Gateway Counseling Center in Boynton Beach along with his son John Jr. He can be reached by visiting gatewaycounseling.com.

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