Blessing In, Blessing Out // Blessed to be a Blessing, Part 4

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

One of the things that Jesus always managed to do – was turn everything on its head. Love your enemy, is just one of his startling sayings. And the same is true, when He talked about God’s blessing.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a man called S D Gordon. Sometime in the late 1800's or early 1900's he wrote a book called Quiet Talks on Power. In that book he uses a simple and powerful example to describe the consequences of expecting all of God’s blessings to flow into our lives without letting any of them flow out again. He uses the picture of the Dead Sea.

Now the Dead Sea is that body of water where all the rivers flow in but none of them flow out and as a result it's dead. Nothing can live in it, not a thing; no fish, no plants, no birds, and the water is incredibly hard and brackish. He makes this point in his book, that if we expect all of God’s blessings to flow in and none of them to flow out then our lives become like the circumference of that Dead Sea. It's an interesting point.

This week on the program we're talking about God’s blessing, getting it balanced, and a powerful understanding of exactly what God means by blessing and how it works in our lives.

Now our generation is born to consume. We are consuming the planet right down into the ground, we just can't help ourselves. I know lots of people who try and buy their way to happiness. Hey I used to be one of them. God blessed me with a new car, God blessed me with a salary increase, and I’m going to believe God for more. No doubt God does those things. God’s blessed me with things that I've needed along the way and even things that were just kind of ‘icing on the cake’ kind of things because he felt like it. Now that's nice but they're not the main thing. The Bible says:

The love of money is the root of all evil.

I regularly speak on this subject because quite frankly our failure to get a grip on what God means by blessing is one of the greatest maladies in society today and let me say it really bluntly, even amongst God’s own people, people who say, "Yep, I believe in Jesus." If we think that God’s blessing is all about stuff flying to us and stopping there, we're missing the whole point.

Over this week we've seen that God started His plan for blessing right from the beginning, right from creation. You know he created all of creation and then he created male and female, man and woman, and he gave everything to them and said, "Here, it's yours. Bless, prosper, go for it, it's all yours." But it didn't take Adam and Eve long to interrupt that blessing. They rejected God, they turned their backs on him and so now we live in a fallen world. We're living out the consequences of humanity's rejection of God.

Why is there suffering? Why is there pain? Because way back then we turned our backs on God and you and I, we've done it too, in our own ways we've turned our backs on God. And yesterday we saw that for blessing really to be a blessing, for Gods blessing really to be Gods blessing, it has to flow in and out. Now I want to continue on with that a bit more today and unpack it a bit more.

If you were with us yesterday you heard me read this passage from the 6th chapter of Luke:

Blessed are you who are poor because yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you'll be satisfied. Blessed are those who are weeping now because you'll laugh.

Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject you because of me. Rejoice in that day, leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven for that’s how their fathers treated the Prophets but woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you for that is how their fathers treated false disciples but I tell you, listen to me, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

You see, this is the heart of Jesus; this is the heart of God. It's not to have a whole bunch of wealthy people running around saying, "I'm wealthier than you." It's not about people having a big party and say, "Life’s good." While there's poor and hungry and starving out there. It's not about fame and fortune and recognition. We're missing the point. Particularly, let me say this, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others, we are blessed in order to be a blessing.

You know something? it's like a double sided book-keeping transaction. And when you're doing book keeping (if you've ever studied book keeping) double sided entry into the book, if the two sides of the ledger don't balance, the whole thing’s out of whack. And it's a bit like that with God’s blessing. If we think it's all about God pouring his material blessing into us, even his spiritual blessing into us but us then not sharing that out, the whole thing gets out of whack. I know people who believe that their relationship with God is about getting the next BMW or Mercedes. Now I, per say, don't have a problem with people having BMW's or Mercedes but that's not what God’s blessing is all about. Jesus, after he said those really challenging words about the poor and the hungry and all these people at the same time going off and having parties, he said this:

Give and it will be given to you.

Just again:

Give and it will be given to you, a good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap for with the measure that you use it will be measured to you.

In other words Jesus is saying, "You are blessed to be a blessing". He said it over and over again, he said it another way, you can read it in John, chapter 7, verse 37 in the Bible:

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,” listen to this, "He stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within them." By this he meant the Spirit.

Can you see it? It's in and out, "If anyone is thirsty, come and drink and if you believe in me streams ...” in fact it literally says, "Rivers of living water will flow from within you." Are you thirsty, looking for that something, you're parched and you're needy? Come to me, says Jesus and drink, put your faith in me and rivers of living water will flow out from you.

One of the greatest passages of the whole Bible. It's powerful; it’s the crux of being a Jesus follower. It's saying, "You are blessed to be a blessing". Not just one little river, not just one little creek, it says literally, "Rivers of living water will flow from you" – a Nile and a Ganges and a Murray and a Mississippi and a Thames and a Rhine and a Yangtze and an Amazon. Rivers, huge flood tides of blessing will flow from you.

Get this, it is not always convenient to be a fountain of God’s blessing. Have you ever noticed that? It's not, it's not for me. I have to say, leaving my consulting career and a six figure salary, at the time, was a hard decision you know, it wasn't particularly convenient or easy. And some days, shock horror, some days I don't feel like coming to the studio and other days I have to deal with difficult people in ministry and that’s life. But here’s the rub, the bottom line is that I wouldn't be doing anything else.

I am so blessed because I get to do this. because when I let those rivers flow out through me, there's a flood tide of blessing to other people and it's such an incredible joy, I wouldn't change any of it. The joy for me is telling people about Jesus, loving him and telling people about him, that's the blessing. Nothing, nothing is more important than that. Whoever we are, whatever our gifts are, when we let that blessing flow through us to other people then we really experience the blessing of God.