God said to Abraham:
“… Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
(Genesis 12:1-3).
We are beginning a new year… and I feel that the Holy Spirit wants to lead us from the start into a new pattern in our walk with Him..
He wants us to be a blessing to others.. a blessing to many..
God said to Abraham:
Get out.. of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you..
And He is saying to each one of us today, at the beginning of this year:
Get out of the land where you are used to live, get out of your problems, habits and old traditions..
Get out of the land where you are confined to the land that I will show you..
Get out and live and work with the purpose to bless others..
Because if you meditate a little bit on your daily events and your life, you will soon discover the following truth:
Everything revolves around you “the ego”, and very very little reaches others!!!
All our requests, prayers and preoccupations pivot around ourselves.. and even if those preoccupations were spiritual, they are revolving around ourselves in majority not to say in totality..
I want to be blessed.. I want to rejoice.. I want to be set free.. I want to grow.. I want my ministry and fruits to increase.. and I want.. and I want…
All those requests can be summarized with the expression: What about me?
And without us noticing, we forget the essential role that the Lord entrusted us with.. To be a blessing to others.
For He said to Abraham: And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.. Yes all..
And this is precisely the purpose of God that I’m trying to bring to your attention in the beginning of this year..
The book of Proverbs says:
“By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, But it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.” (Proverbs 11:11).
“Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34).
Every believer has to be conscious of his role, and the importance of him being within his family, his community and homeland..
We have to realize that through us the Lord blesses our families, cities and countries, as well as the righteousness that we have through Christ, lifts the state of the nation we live in.. and perhaps what the Holy Bible recorded for us in Genesis, when the Lord answered Abraham saying:
“… I will not destroy it (the place) for the sake of ten (righteous).” (Genesis 18:32).
Is the greatest evidence of the importance of the role we have to play..
All those things will not happen if we are not conscious of our role and do not perform it, if we do not ask the Lord to fulfill His promises for us in this area, and if we do not work daily to bless all the families of the earth..
And in the New Testament the Lord confirmed the necessity to perform this role.. to bless others.. moreover He lived all His life on this earth for this purpose, and He asked us to imitate Him:
“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8).
The Lord has freely granted us salvation on the account of His precious blood, He has freely showered us with every blessing, and what He asks of us is to bless others with the blessing that He has generously given us.
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).
These are clear words.. the Lord did not come to be served rather He was the great servant, who lived His life to heal, deliver, bless and save.. and He died giving Himself for the sinners.. and He left this pattern of life for us to live by.
Also the apostle Paul who imitated the Lord, and we all know from the Bible the pattern of the life he lived, says to us in the book of Acts:
“I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35).
Yes.. It is more blessed to give than to receive.. it is more blessed to bless others than to ask for the blessing for ourselves.. this is the Christian calling or the active Christianity that the Lord asks us to live..
Beloved: I want to bring to your attention today two important matters in this area:
1- One of the major goals of the war of Satan against believers, is to prevent them in every possible way from blessing others, whether it is to win souls for the kingdom, or to let believers live the life of victory and blessing that the Lord has prepared for them.
Satan has lost us when we accepted the salvation of the Lord and we moved from his kingdom to the kingdom of God. But he will fight us with all his power to prevent us first from stealing lost souls from him and to bring them to the kingdom of God. And second, he will fight us to stop us from helping the believers and guiding them to live a victorious life. And the most helpful weapon he uses in this area is to occupy us with ourselves, and to pivot around it, to prevent us from saving others and blessing them.
2- The second matter, is the deception in which fall most believers, and it is that we have to grow first, be purified and trained, and have experience in order to be able to serve others and bless them.
How shrewd is this deception, because beloved all our life on this earth we will be growing and changing, and if we wait for the complete growth that all of us are hoping for to serve others and bless them, let me assure you that we will leave this earth before we bless anyone..
For when the Lord asked His disciples to feed the multitudes, they answered Him saying:
“We have here only five loaves and two fish”.
They saw that their capabilities were weak and not enough to serve and bless others, just as we see ourselves today most of the time, but He said to them:
“… ‘Bring them here to me.’ Then He commanded the multitudes, to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained.” (Matthew 14:17-20).
No matter how few are your capabilities, and no matter how great is the need, don’t wait to have the necessary capabilities according to your own human point of view, because this may never happen, rather come with what you have and put it in the Lord’s hands, and He will use you to fill the multitudes and bless them, you only need to have from now on the following attitude of heart: I want to be a blessing to many.. to all the families of the earth, and let the Lord finish the work with you.. never postpone.
But what about me? Is it not my right to be also blessed?
Of course.. and this is the promise of the Lord for each one of us.. because He said: I bless you.. and you shall be a blessing..
It is the Lord who will bless you, but according to His own way, which I’m showing you today. So do not be afraid to lose your blessing, you will certainly receive it.. but what the Holy Spirit asks of us today, is not to keep this blessing only for ourselves, but to trade it, and bless others, and in return our blessing will increase hundredfold..
The owners of the two talents and of the five talents had their talents increased when they traded them, so they blessed others and were also blessed, more than the owner of the talent who buried it and didn’t bless anyone with it, he lost it and everything with it.. and definitely lost the blessing..
The word of God says:
“… Bless, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.”
(1 Peter 3:9).
This is the principle of God.. so let us abide by it in order to be blessed and to bless!!!
The Lord wants us to be a spring of water and not a well..
For the well keeps the water within it, which will soon decay and stink, whereas the flowing out spring which water reaches to everyone, has its water always fresh, the spring receives its water from the rain and does not keep it, rather it flows out to everyone.. this is how the Lord wants us to be..
When the Lord spoke with His people about the fasting that He wanted He said to them:
“Is it not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose water do not fail. Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.” (Isaiah 58:6-12).
Those are clear words.. I will bless you and you shall be a blessing.. you bless others and you inherit the blessing..
There are great promises in this passage.. so do not be afraid to live for others, to serve them and bless them.. because through this you will be blessed a hundredfold..
Beloved: Let us respond to the Lord’s message in the beginning of this year, and let us set our goal to be a blessing to others because we were called for this. Let us change the pattern of our life to which we got used maybe for so many years. Let us get out of our land, from our family and from our father’s house to the land that the Lord will show us today, so He will make us a great nation, bless us and glorify the work with us, so we become a blessing to many, and we can strongly witness the Lord’s faithfulness to us, and His abundant blessings on us. And we shall see our life change, all infertility will disappear from it, we will delight in the joy of giving which is more blessed than to receive, and we will delight in the joy of rewards that the Lord will shower on us.. To the Lord all the glory.
