No Blessing, No Fruit, No Results // God Wants to Bless You, Part 4

How much impact is your life having on other people? Not bad impact, good impact? How much is the miracle of your life, creating miracles in the lives of others? Because if the answer is “not much”, then Houston, we have a problem.

NO BLESSING, NO RESULTS

I remember one of the saddest times in my life, I’m going to share it with you. It happened, ooh about twenty years ago now. Everything that mattered to me, everything in my personal life and family life had fallen apart – completely. I’d been working so hard on growing my business that I hadn’t had the time or the energy to work on the things that really mattered in life. The people who really mattered – or should have mattered anyway. It was deeply distressing.

The business that I was a partner in, was an IT consulting firm, you know I guess, in its early stages of success. We were in the process of moving to a larger, better office and one of the things that we had to do was to go through all our stuff and clean out before we packed and moved.

I was sitting on an old, carpeted floor by a number of those grey metal four-drawer filing cabinets, going through all the consulting reports that we’d written for many, many of our clients, sorting out those that we’d keep and those that we’d throw away. We kept probably twenty-five percent and we threw seventy-five percent away.

And I remember looking at that pile of the seventy-five percent of consulting papers there on the floor, thinking … is that what I poured my life into? These reports that we’re about to throw away – is that what I sacrificed everything for? Is that what my life amounts to? Is that the legacy I want to leave behind? A whole bunch of trash!

It was a tragic wakeup call for me, and it was all about the impact that my life had had to date. How much impact? Despite all the hard work, answer: Not very much real impact at all.

I remember deciding then and there, that I wanted my life to have an impact in other people’s lives. I’d made a whole bunch of mistakes to that point in my life. I’d worked hard, I’d been part of a successful business, but in real terms, in life impact terms, in terms of what really mattered – it hadn’t amounted to much. That was one of those experiences that God used to usher me into what I’m doing right now. And while it pays a whole bunch less, it’s a whole bunch more satisfying because it has a whole bunch more impact.

Just last night, I had a Facebook message from someone who said that they were listening to this program each day and it had literally transformed his life. That’s what gets me out of bed each morning – being part of something that God is doing with a real impact in people’s lives.

By the way (he wrote), what he wrote made me realise that he didn’t quite have things right. This is literally what he said, ‘You have changed my life’. Well, no actually, I haven’t. I wrote back, ‘God has. Yes, He’s used our small team here at Christianityworks to do that, but it’s His work and not mine.’

I know that absolutely because there is nothing that I possess, and there is nothing that I, in and of my own self can say or do, that can have an eternal impact on your life or anyone else’s life. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, only He can make that happen. And it happens, when God’s blessing flows down into me in such huge volumes, that I just can’t contain it; that it overflows out of me into the lives of other people, like that man who wrote to me on Facebook last night.

We’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about God’s blessing and the fact that it’s right and proper to ask Him to bless us. I ask for God’s blessing each and every morning in prayer. I pray that He will bless me so that I can bless you. That’s how it works in God’s economy. And if I don’t have God’s blessing flowing into me and out through me, then frankly, I have nothing of value to give you.

Listen to how Jesus talked about this very thing, John 15: 1-11, He said:

I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

The fruit only happens on a branch, like you and me, when we’re connected to the vine. When the Spirit of God flows from the trunk to the branch – when the blessing of God flows from the trunk to the branch; when the Word of God flows from the trunk to the branch – then and only then, does the branch grow the sort of fruit that God wants it to grow. The sort of fruit that other people can come along then and pick off the branch and enjoy, and be blessed by, and be nourished by.

And do you notice what Jesus says about how much you and I can achieve without Him? Apart from me you can do NOTHING!

The point I’m making right here is that you and I need God’s blessing. We can’t operate without God’s blessing. When we step onto the battlefield of life, if we don’t have God’s blessing and His Presence and His power and His joy and His peace, we have nothing to offer the rest of the world.

It’s a tragedy to me that so many Christ–followers don’t connect with the vine each and every day by quietly, gently starting off their day resting in Him, praying, chatting, asking for His blessing.

Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we absolutely covet the blessing of God and make it the greatest priority to get connected into that blessing through Jesus each and every day? Come on, what’s the matter with us?

Can I ask you this? Do you want to be filled with God’s blessing or not? Do you want to experience every blessing that God has for you or not? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Of course, we all want to be blessed. Well, why don’t we connect with the vine? The answer is kind of obvious and yet it’s easy not to make the blessing of God an absolute priority.

I know that the idea of God’s abundant blessing seems incongruous in difficult circumstances. It seems that it’s simply not possible when you’re going though the middle of a testing time, a wilderness experience, a dungeon experience. It’s simply not possible to imagine that in that place you could receive the blessing of God.

But it’s precisely in that place that you and I need the abundant blessing of God. Think of Paul and Silas in prison. They healed a girl, and delivered her from a demon. For that the crowd attacked them, the magistrates had them stripped and beaten to within an inch of their lives with rods.

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all of the doors were opened and everybody’s chains were unfastened. (Acts 16: 25-26)

See, right there in the middle of their impossible circumstances, their painful and uncertain circumstances, they received the blessing of God. Why? Well, it wasn’t because they were cowering in fear and licking their wounds and grumbling about their plight, it was because they were praying and singing hymns to God.

That’s how you get connected to the vine. That’s how you get the blessing of God flowing through you. That’s how the prison doors swing open and the chains fall off. And then, they went on to bless everyone around them. Hello! Are we getting this?

You and I need the blessing of God in our lives. And God is a God who wants to bless us abundantly.

Let me say it to you again, so that this time it’ll sink in once and for all. God is a God who wants to bless you abundantly! For it is to His glory, that you get out there and you bear much fruit.

NO BLESSING, NO FRUIT

Before the break, we were talking about the impact of your life on other people. And that’s a theme I want to continue to explore some more right now, because when we talk about the blessing of God in our lives, the whole point of that blessing isn’t just that it should be a blessing to us. But that it should flow out through us and be an abundant blessing to the people around us.

I am here with you today because some people who had experienced God’s blessing in their lives, shared that blessing with me amidst of some of the most difficult circumstances I’d ever experienced. God’s blessing to them overflowed into my life.

I think of an elderly woman, well into her seventies she was at the time, with whom I boarded for several months (this is about 20 years ago now), when I was going through a tough time and I was in the throes of giving my life to Jesus. Her name was Norma. And she gave me a place to stay when I didn’t have anywhere to live. Each night after dinner, Norma and I would sit down over a cup of our favourite Twinings Russian Caravan tea. And she would share with me the abundant joy that she had in her relationship with Jesus. Her husband had died eighteen years before from a massive heart attack walking back from the letterbox on their front lawn.

So here she was a widow, lonely often. And yet when she told me about Jesus and her relationship with Him, and what that meant, and how He blessed her (on and on, night after night) I could see it in her eyes and I could hear it in her voice. It was infectious. And that ‘it’ (I now look back and), I can give that ‘it’ a name. It was the blessing of God in her life. It was so real.

And so the blessing of God in Norma, overflowed into my life. And since then; as I do what I do now, sharing the love of Jesus with you and many other people through this program; the blessing of God that first came to me through Norma and a handful of other people (just like her) now overflows into so many more lives.

That’s God’s plan. That’s how it works in God’s economy. His blessing fills us to overflowing and then multiplies to feed countless more people. Have a listen to this beautiful, powerful story of the multiplication of God’s blessing:

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they had seen the signs that he was doing on the sick. So Jesus went up on a mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.’

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’ Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, when he had blessed them, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’ Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew to the mountain by himself. (John 6: 1-15)

The disciples thought they had nothing with which to feed the thousands. But Jesus knew that He had more than enough, more than enough! So He took the little that they did have, and what did He do? He blessed it! He gave thanks for it! And when He’d done that, there was more than enough blessing to go around for five thousand.

Watchman Nee was a Chinese Evangelist who was martyred for his faith and Gospel work in the 1970s. This is what he wrote about this perspective, this expectation issue, in relation to this sign – the feeding of the five thousand. In a little booklet that he published called Twelve Baskets Full, here is what he said:

What do we mean when we talk of God’s blessing? We mean divine activity that is not based on human activity. We mean a working of God that is not based on our work. The blessing of God is not something that we can earn by our efforts. It is not something that we can buy with our money.

One penny should always procure one penny’s worth; but if with our one penny God gives us ten thousand penny’s worth, that is His blessing. His blessing makes our calculations futile because it leaves us without any basis on which to calculate. When five small loaves provide nourishment for five thousand people and leave a surplus that fills twelve baskets, that is God’s blessing.

So many of us, instead of looking to our Lord to bless the loaves, are looking at the loaves in our hands. Our one hope in the face of today’s immense need is that He will perform a miracle and that He will do it by taking the bread into His hands and blessing it.

When the Lord in His goodness brings us to a totally new position where we recognise the paramount importance of His blessing, then the way will be open for Him to work.

I’ve shared this story on the program before. But I’m sharing it again as we come to the close of this series about God’s amazing blessings because I deliberately want to blow your mind with the power of expecting God to bless you. I want my calculations and your calculations to be absolutely futile when it comes to sharing the blessing of God around, because I want God to bless more people through you and me than we can possibly ever imagine.

Now, in my case, I don’t say that arrogantly because what God does through me and what He does through you is completely up to Him. But when we desire His blessing, when we expect His blessing and we see it happening through us, it’s just the most amazing thing that we can ever experience. It’s like being there and having a small part to play. But really, at the end of the day, you feel like a privileged spectator.

Let’s say in your life, that you impact just ten people, ten, with the amazing blessing of God. And those ten people impact another ten, and those ten, another ten. That’s not an unreasonable expectation. Then, in just those three generations of blessing (if I can call them that), a thousand people will have been blessed by God, because you were God’s entry point of blessing into this world, in your little corner of the vineyard.

And those thousand people are going to go on and have children, and their children will have children, and their children will have more children – and the blessing of God as it came into this world can ripple down through countless generations – the blessing of God that came through you.

There are people in this world that need you to be the entry point of God’s blessing into their lives. Just like Norma was into my life. There’s something about you that’s absolutely unique.

And I know, you kind of look at yourself and think, ‘Well, I’m nothing special and I don’t have a lot to give’. Welcome to the club! When I was sitting around that Laminex kitchen table with Norma all those years ago, I knew absolutely that I was nothing special, I had way less than you to give. But as Norma’s blessing flowed into my life, something happened to me. I can’t put it into words, I just knew that I had to take the little I had, and start sharing it with other people, using the abilities that God had given to me

And here we are today (twenty years on), you and I, and I’m privileged to share the blessing of God with you. I can tell you beyond any shadow of doubt that God wants to bless you and it’s time for you to get out there and for you to multiply that blessing.

A DAILY PRAYER FOR BLESSING

Well, as we come to the close of another series of messages (don’t the weeks fly by?), I’d like to take us back to where we began, with the prayer of Jabez. It was such an audacious prayer of a Mister Nobody, buried deep in the Bible amidst nine chapters of genealogy of all things, that prayer that audaciously asked God for His blessings.

Let’s listen to it again because there’s something that I’m going to challenge you with as our time together in this series God Wants to Bless You draws to a close. 1 Chronicles 4: 9-10:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers; and his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my borders, and that your hand would be upon me, and that you would keep me from evil that I may cause no pain.’ And God granted what he asked.

If there’s one thing that we’ve discovered throughout this series, it’s that God wants to bless us and that He wants us to ask for and depend on His blessing just as Jabez did.

As you know, I’m not into prosperity doctrine at all and I’m not into name it and claim it style of faith. That’s not what the Bible teaches. But what the Bible does teach, as the very living Word of the one true living God, is that God wants us to ask for and rely on His blessing.

Jesus commanded His disciples to ask for God’s blessing. Jesus taught His disciples how to live in the power of God’s blessing to feed the thousands with just a few fishes and loaves.

And so my challenge to you over the next thirty days, every morning, is to faithfully spend just a few minutes praying this prayer of Jabez. Not a meaningless rote type of prayer. But from the depths of your heart, believing what God’s Word says, taking God at His Word that He does want to bless you and that He wants you to ask for His blessing.

If, at the end of thirty days of this faithful (simple way of praying), God hasn’t shown up with such power and might that you will want to keep on praying this way for the rest of your life, I will be completely and totally gob-smacked.

Don’t expect every wrinkle in your life to be ironed out in thirty days. Don’t expect your coffers to be full at the end of thirty days. But please, do expect that you will be filled to the brim, to overflowing, with the blessings from God that you couldn’t have dreamed of or imagined. Because God wants to bless you!

There are many times when we hear someone talk about God’s blessing and we kind of relate to it but from a distance, or in small doses, or as a theory lesson. Well I’m not here to entertain you or to tickle your ears with stuff you want to hear. I’m not here to give you a theory lesson.

I’m here to challenge you to believe that God wants to bless you beyond measure and challenge you to take the steps that the Bible teaches us to take hold of His mighty blessing. And be prepared for such great blessing to flow into your life that you simply won’t be able to contain it.

I believe that if you start praying this prayer with me each day, you’ll be imploring God to fill you with blessing, to expand your territory, because you have so much blessing to pour out and share around. And you’ll be imploring God for His mighty hand to be upon you, because you will know that you will be in desperate need of His help to share that much blessing around.

Will you step up to the plate and take the challenge or not? Are you ready to be overwhelmed by God’s blessing or not? Are you ready to get out there and start sharing His abundant blessing around with others or not?

Look at Jesus’ life on this earth. Despite the difficulties – the persecutions, the afflictions, the lack of a steady income, the lack of even a place to rest His head on a regular basis – He spent His whole time sharing the amazing blessings of God His Father flowing out through Him. Will you do the same? Will you be Christ to a lost and hurting world? Will you?