God Bless You

God Bless you

Prayer-

Introduction- When we say God bless you to someone, what are we saying to them?

Old tradition that goes almost to the first century is when you say God bless you, you are saying because they believed that you could sneeze your soul out that you don’t wish that to happen and that in that vulnerable state no evil spirit would come into your body.

Today, I think that we usually would mean that God would bless you even if we do not know the person that is sneezing.

This morning I want to talk about blessings!

Try to make it less dramatic. Ok?

That should peak everyone’s attention.

We all should want a blessing. But does it have the same meaning for each of us?

When we say we want a blessing… are you saying that you desire a blessing from God?

Are you saying that you want a break? To get what we deserve? You want luck to go your way?

Because there is a big difference between the two.

There is not a day that goes by that a person does not come up to me and ask that I pray for them that God would bless them. The needs are different and range from deliverance to some financial blessing or to meet an immediate need. Some ask for relational healing and some need to be healed from depression and everything in between. It is endless the needs that we have and when we have nowhere to turn, we ask God to bless us.

Do you want God to bless you or are you just looking for a blessing? You want a bailout or a lifestyle change?

There are certain blessings from God that you can only receive by being a child of God.

You cannot have them while you are in rebellion of God.

The Bible does tell us that God at His choosing can rain blessing on the just and unjust. It is His choice.

If you are going to live in the blessing of God, it is a lifestyle and it is based on relationship with God.

Those outside of God may receive blessing but it is temporary and not eternal.

True blessings from God are not only for today but a storing up of treasures in heaven that cannot be stolen or destroyed by the things of this world.

Do you have your mind on all the blessings being right now or are you storing up, thinking of others, and building eternal blessings that cannot be taken away.

I have done a bit of a study on the blessings of God in scripture.

What I found is that most of God’s richest blessings- those are not just based on our immediate needs, are conditional.

If you want the blessing of eternal life with Jesus Christ and make heaven, you have one way to receive that and it is through Jesus Christ. If you do not want Christ, you will not receive eternal life in heaven.

The Bible tells us that He (Jesus) will not leave us nor forsake us. It is conditional, that is a promise for a child of God. He says that as a child of God, He will not leave us or forget about us in our time of need.

It does not mean that nothing bad would ever happen to us because we live in a fallen world, but means that we do not have to do it alone. If we are not under the blessing of being a child of God, we do not have that assurance.

Andrew Womack is a pastor and makes a broad statement that I agree with.

He says that God’s preference is not to meet your needs through a miracle. He defines a miracle as the suspension of natural law. A miracle is something that you yourself could not do. He says that he believes in miracles, that God still does miracles and still uses them to draw people to Himself.

Here is his quote-

“Would you rather receive a miracle of healing or live with the blessing of good health? Would you rather have the Lord perform a miracle to pull you out of bankruptcy or be so blessed financially that He would not have too?” End quote.

What I am saying to you this morning, depending on what you are looking for… God’s blessing or a bailout will determine what happens in your life.

It is always better to live in God’s blessing than be asking God to bail you out by a miracle.

If you are living miracle to miracle, you are probably living from crisis to crisis and some can be avoided by living under the blessing of God.

Which one of these can you make your life verse?