Walk In The Blessing
Luke 6:32-38
2Corinthians 5:21
(21) For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Psalm 1:1-3
(1) Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
(2) but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
(3) He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
Essence of the Lesson in a Sentence: There is a path in life that we may choose where the blessings of God abound freely.
I’m always amazed by how God reveals Himself in nature. How could it be any other way? The artist will spill his innermost thoughts onto the canvas or other media.
One thing that I enjoy about working outdoors in the yard, in the garden or anywhere in connection with nature is that I usually do it by myself. I intentionally avoid having a radio or MP3 player going because it’s one of the quieter times when I can be totally focused on something. I find that the Lord often speaks to me very clearly when I’m cutting grass, eating weeds, pruning trees or plowing and tending my little garden.
Just last week I was at work, and in the late afternoon a storm blew up. I keep a pretty close eye on the weather as a part of my responsibility for the campus, and we knew rain was coming, possible thunderstorms. I don’t have a window in my office but as I sat at my desk I began to hear the wind pound against the building. I heard thunder crashes and the lights began to flicker. I walked out front to see what was going on and the rain was beating down so hard and so fast I began to think about flooding. I looked at the flagpole out front and it was literally blowing around so much I thought it might uproot at its base or snap off. I jumped on my computer to check for tornadoes, but there was no real threat. The storm passed rather quickly and I literally had to wade to my car through a low area in the parking lot.
On the way home, all of 2.5 miles I thought about how this rain would help my parched lawn and garden! I was so tired I was secretly glad that it would be too wet to cut the grass this evening, which I had planned and needed to do. But the rain is what we needed! It had cooled things off some and thank God that the earth had been replenished.
I got lost in thought during my five minute drive home, but I noticed something odd on the way. I saw several people cutting grass; I saw one guy on a commercial mower thought “hmm, it’s not good for grass to cut it when it’s this wet.” Before I could really settle my thought process and look around a bit more, I was driving up in my cul de sac, and guess what I saw? My next door neighbor was cutting her grass and it was making mine look really bad because our lawns adjoin! I remember thinking “Wow, she’s going to dull her blade and probably damage that nice centipede out front, she really shouldn’t be mowing right now.”
But as I got out of my car, I notice my grass still looked parched. I thought “wait a minute, the driveway is not even wet. What in the world?” I opened the door and hollered to Angie “did we get any rain here?” And she said “no, it kept looking like it but not a drop.”
How in the world can something like an angry storm be so precise, that it can rain like a monsoon at point A, and point B just two and a half miles away doesn’t even get a mist? I know you’ve seen this too: Have you ever been driving down a highway and see it rain in the oncoming lane and not a drop of rain in yours? It always reminds me that God says “it rains on the just, and the unjust.” Nature is very precise, and under God’s express authority.
The weather is something that we can predict somewhat, but to this day with all our technology the meteorologists sometimes miss it by a mile. Predict it? We can to an extent. But control it? There’s not a nation on this earth with a technology great enough to control the weather. We work with it and around it, we position ourselves so that the weather can work for us rather than against us.
We have the choice to plant the right crops (drought resistant or water dependent) in the right kind of climate. We can build houses on stilts in a swamp and we can truck in water to build a city in the middle of a desert.
Have you ever been on a plane and heard the pilot come on the intercom and say “We’re going to pull up to thirty eight thousand feet; we have a little thunderstorm going on and we’re going to fly above it?” There are two paths that are completely parallel. At thirty thousand feet there is darkness, cloud cover, lightning and turbulence.
The route and the journey completely changed from a storm that could make you fear for your life to an amazing, sunny and beautiful scenario in the skies, yet you arrive at the destination at precisely the time you were supposed to. The airline didn’t make a surcharge for giving you a nice ride. It cost nothing. Someone just had to change positions in a parallel path. The pilot pulls the stick and climbs eight thousand feet and the skies are clear, the sun is bright and you can see the dark clouds below where the storm rages. You’ll have to cross back into it to land, but you can choose to take your journey higher than where it rages.
It was the pilot’s choice. He saw an alternative, a parallel path.
Why in the world would he want to stay in the storm? He can’t avoid it altogether, but he can choose a better path.
It’s just as important to note too that sometimes you don’t have the option of flying above the storm. The storm is just too big and all encompassing. That’s when you’re called to fly right through it, using your instruments in the blackness of the night. The plane shakes and quivers and groans, but you know it was engineered and outfitted for just this time, and you keep your eye on the destination and the throttle down.
What I want you to understand today is that in our journey that we walk daily, we follow a certain path. If you look to your right or left you can see a parallel path. They’re both heading in the same direction but the conditions on each path vary. Sometimes they converge, a storm cloud covers both. Sometimes the storm is over one and not the other. There are boulders in the way and obstacles that require some time and thought to overcome. Sometimes they are covering and blocking both paths, yet other times the obstacle shows up in one or the other. There’s even an occasional fire that will come in the same fashion-to both, to one or the other.
I’m talking to the Christian, about the Christian life today. You know Christ is Lord and He is your Savior. Yet there’s this large parenthesis between your birthday and your appointment with the casket that you will choose how to fill.
Let’s go back some thirty five hundred years to the ancient day when God was laying it out for Moses and all of Israel. He gave them a principle that is as constant as any physical law that we have, and from the same author:
Deuteronomy 30:19
(19) I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,
The operative word here is choose. There is a choice for God’s children. There’s no question who God is or what His power is like, but He’s so secure in His all-consuming power, that he can give His own creation a choice in how they lead their lives.
Life and death, blessing or curse: We choose. Rain or shine, famine or plenty, boom or bust, we choose which path. Our choice will decide whether we live in the destiny that God has for us; we must be in a position to receive what He has for us. We can choose to walk under the curse, or under the blessing and it has absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances in our lives-we are engineered for whatever comes in Christ!
The Psalmist gives us the path in Psalm 1, but he contrasts it to the way of the ungodly:
Psalm 1:4-6
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
The way of the wicked, the ungodly, the ones who scoff and rebel against God-that’s a completely opposite direction. It is one hundred eighty degrees difference, polarized and in direct opposition to the path of the Godly.
Today, God is speaking to HIS children. He leads us to a choice: will we walk in the Blessing? Have you ever known someone who seems to have a dark cloud follow them everywhere? They’re never happy, they always feel bad (and they can’t wait to tell you just how bad), their problems are greater than anyone around them and they talk about them constantly. And after they’ve gone over every ache and pain and how miserable their life is, they tell you “well, I suppose God will get us through somehow or another.”
I have a good friend who works for the College who is in a wheelchair missing a leg. He’s an electrician and had an accident where high voltage coursed through his body and literally just killed his leg, and it had to be amputated. For several years he’s had on-going problems and he hasn’t been able to wear a prosthetic because his stump won’t heal. They’ve had to take his leg higher several times, in effect amputating the same leg over and over. This man is in his late fifties or early sixties I suppose, and he works every day of his life from a wheelchair. He can get out there and diagnose an HVAC problem with the best of them. He’s the one we look to for advice and counsel on every area of plant maintenance, and he’s a right-hand man to the director, one of the best electricians and HVAC men I’ve ever known. Recently he was visiting with me at our campus and we were walking around looking at the buildings. I asked him “Wallace, how are things with your leg?
He looked at me and said “Mark, still giving me trouble. Hurts all the time.”
But in that moment, there was a slight pause. I noticed something in his face as I caught his eyes. There was a steely determination and at this point he was making a choice. I saw a friendly and inviting smile come across his face, and I saw a determination and a joy that I will never forget.
Wallace continued: “But let me tell you Mark, through all this I have seen so many people in so much worse shape than me. You just wouldn’t believe what people go through. I am so blessed, so fortunate to be where I am. I’m able to work, to get around, to enjoy life. This thing will not stop me!”
I choked up a bit, and had to get my composure on that one. In that moment I had a choice too. I could feel sorry for him, and then go on about my business, or I could look at my own life and evaluate my path. That very day I had been feeling sorry for myself, thinking that my circumstances were terrible and that my problems were overwhelming me. I was ticked off at the whole world. In that moment this guy who’s been through what I can’t imagine with his own health brought me back where I needed to be, and helped me preach this sermon.
That’s a choice. That’s a path that my friend has chosen to follow. It’s the path of blessing, and it does not revolve around favorable circumstances nor does it entail denial or an unrealistic view of things. His leg is in constant pain, and the future is uncertain. He works from a wheelchair and yet he says “I will be victorious-I am a blessed man!”
Yep, we got problems. But guess what? God is good, I will walk the path of the blessing every time, everywhere. Will you walk with me?
As I asked God to reveal more of this to me through the Scriptures, I believe He gave me several steps that will help us to walk this path of blessing where God is in control, and to avoid that other parallel path of darkness where circumstances and other influences rule us.
First, Evaluate your Influences
“The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff…”
Who are you really listening to? Whose values are you buying into? Who is setting your standard? Why do we allow ungodly or just plain stupid people to determine our standard, in effect rule our lives? We listen to Hollywood, we listen to television, the advertising industry. We listen to government bureaucrats and others who tell us how to live, and what our values and standards should be.
It can be very subtle. The ungodly world system can influence your mind in ways that you don’t even realize. You can live in popular culture without being defined by it, or allowing it to dictate what you will believe, how you will act or think.
I live in popular culture and I enjoy certain aspects of it, but I will live my life by the eternal counsel of God, there is no higher authority. I will know the difference when what the world tells me conflicts with what my God tells me, and the popular culture will bow its knee and lose its authority at the feet of my Savior.
Evaluate your blessing
Secondly, Acknowledge Your Source
All blessing in your life is from God, packaged for you, his ability to bless you is unlimited from His perspective.
The Word of God is replete with blessings and promises for you and your generations.
James 1:17
(17) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
The Father of lights? Why does James refer to the Lord this way? In twenty years of pastoral work, preaching, seminary, continuous Bible study I have quoted this verse, and never really stopped to ask why James and only James calls the Lord “The Father of lights.” It always sounded a bit strange to me. I guess I had always thought it was just a neat spiritual title, where He is like a shining light to us.
Wrong! As I studied this week I realized that the language there says he is quite literally-the father of LIGHT. That energy, that physical force that drives the universe. Put an S on it and you see him as the father of the stars, the planets, the UNIVERSE and whatever is beyond it.
The same one who said “Let there be LIGHT” and there was light, and that light is still expanding today; the same one who spans the universe with his thumb and forefinger; the One who can speak a world into existence…
Is your Father, and the author of every blessing in your life. The same voice that created Light provides for you, cares about you and knows you intimately. He also invites you to talk to Him as often as you want. He calls us to walk in the blessing, knowing that His power is greater than any storm or circumstance.
It’s a choice. What path are you on?
Choose blessing
Third: Give and give Abundantly
No, we’re not going to take up another offering! To limit this giving to money would be a travesty. Sow blessing, give and give, not give and take. It applies to every aspect of life.Money is only one avenue of giving-important but not all-encompassing.
Bless by giving
Watch Your Mouth
Careful on Comparison with other people-you don’t have all the information.
Your words reflect what is in your heart and have great influence over your destiny and the success of others. You have the capability to cast or break curses. Many of us curse ourselves and those around us unwittingly.
Your words can change what is in your heart, and can literally change another person’s life.
Who is setting your standard for success? You are attempting to break into someone else’s destiny and apply it to your own when you compare yourself to them. Be careful of your motivation and the basis for your comparison. It can easily turn into envy.
The Scriptures are replete with instruction in the power that our words have, the power of the tongue:
Proverbs 18:21
(21) Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.
James 3:6-10
(6) And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
(7) For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,
(8) but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
(9) With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
(10) From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
Speak the blessing
Remember Who You Are
…and he shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water
Do you really believe that God is your Father and that Jesus Christ has redeemed you?
You are a tall, strong tree with deep wet roots.
You are a blessing-you are given the power of the blessing-Walk in it!
And Finally: Bring Others Over!
…that brings forth fruit in His season
This is for everyone, there’s plenty to go around and forget that idea that you want to have more than the others around you. It’s deep inside you, we human beings crave superiority.
The more we have, the more we are called to give away. We must bear fruit, we are designed for it.
You can bless
Conclusions and prayer.
