The Blessings You Really Need // God Wants to Bless You, Part 3

Sure, God’s Word talks an awful lot about blessing. And yet when I tell people, ‘God wants to bless you’, most often I get one of two reactions: either, ‘Well, I’m not sure He’s really blessed me much yet’; or ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to ask God to bless me. Isn’t that selfish?’

WHY DON’T I RECEIVE?

Well, if you were able to join me last week on the programme, you’ll know that we chatted about the prayer of Jabez. What an amazing little prayer that some unknown guy, tucked away in the middle of nine chapters of something as boring as genealogy, prayed. Here it is again:

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, ‘O, that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from hurt and harm.’ And God granted him what he asked. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)

It’s quite an astounding little prayer for a couple of reasons: The first is because on the surface of things, it appears to be entirely selfish; and second because despite that, God granted him what he asked for. So, either God is in the business of answering selfish, self-serving prayers, or there’s something else going on here.

As I said at the beginning of the programme, there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus, who haven’t really experienced a whole bunch of blessing in their lives. Well, perhaps that’s not quite true; let me rephrase that … there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus who don’t feel particularly blessed; that’s probably more to the point.

It seems we’re pretty good at ignoring the blessings that God gives us – you know, the basics: our health, the air that we breathe, the food that’s provided for us, the roof over our heads, our family, our friends, our job. Of course, not everybody listening today has all of those things. In fact (as I often say), there are more people listening in to this programme today who live in poverty (many of them in war zones) than there are wealthy people in the western developed nations.

But whoever we are, wherever we are, we all have some blessings to be thankful for. It’s just that we ignore those. And we want this or we want that in our lives, and when we don’t get those, we figure that God mustn’t be in the business of blessing me.

And when I suggest to people that they should ask for God’s blessing, I get this response like, ‘No, no, no! That wouldn’t be right. I can’t impose on God like that.’ Part of that is because we’ve all probably heard the ‘God-wants-to-make-you-rich’ distortion of the Gospel, and we’ve rejected that. Rightly so, I couldn’t agree more.

But let me take you back to Jabez. He (as we’ve read) didn’t have the best sort of start in life, with a name like Jabez, which literally meant pain. But at some point, he decided enough was enough; it was time to ask God for His blessing. And he did and God answered him with a great big fat yes.

Here’s how Jesus put it to His disciples. You can read it in John 16:23-24:

Truly I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in My name, He’ll give it to you. Until now, you haven’t asked for anything in My name. Ask, and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

This isn’t the only time He says that, by the way. Quite a number of times, Jesus says, ‘Ask and you will receive’. Now why is that? Is Jesus promoting selfishness? Let’s stop and think about that.

If a child goes to its mother or father, and asks for help (asks them to do something for them), will the parent grant their request or not? I’m a dad. Let me tell you how it works. I want to bless each of my children. Sometimes though, they ask selfishly, or they’re behaving badly (well, not often these days because they’re all grown-up, but back when they were kids), and on those occasions, I would withhold my blessing. But if they came to me and asked me for something good for the right reason, I couldn’t wait to bless them! It’s just what I wanted to do, ‘cos I love them.

Now, the Bible talks about asking for God’s blessing for the wrong reason. Have a listen. James 4:2-3:

You do not have because you do not ask. You asked and you didn’t receive because you asked wrongly, in order to spend what you gained on your pleasures.

So God’s just like any father! He’ll bless whenever He can, but not when we ask selfishly with the wrong motives. The point is (it’s a point that Jesus made over and over again) that He does want us to ask. And to ask believing that He rewards those who do, because He’s the best Dad in the universe and He wants to bless you; He really does.

Now, you may look at your life at the moment – at the one difficult situation that’s confronting you right now, and doubt deep in your heart that God actually wants to bless you. Let’s say you have a totally, completely and utterly intractable issue going on in your marriage. You and your wife (or your husband, as the case may be) are drifting apart, and you simply can’t see how it’s going to work out for the good. You just can’t seem to get on the same page as each other, even though you’ve tried everything in the book. Ok; you’re not perfect, but you’ve tried everything, EVERYTHING. You’ve prayed over it, and God hasn’t shown up. Well, here’s the answer – Believe that God wants you to ask. Believe that God wants to bless you. Take Jesus absolutely at His word. Claim the Word of God yourself because God means it for you.

Literally, ask and receive, that your joy may be complete. That’s what Jesus is saying to you right now. They are not my words. They are not the empty, hollow promises of a prosperity-doctrine preacher. These are the very Words of Jesus:

Ask and receive, that your joy may be complete.

Into that difficult, intractable situation, ask over and over again. Pray, knowing that God hears you … that God wants to bless you, and that God (in His absolutely perfect time) will answer you … and don’t stop until He does. I wonder, given that difficult situation you’re going through, whether you’ve prayed that way – faithfully and consistently – day after day for God to do what you cannot do.

I wonder whether you’ve dived into your relationship with God in this real, practical way, and spent times asking Him over and over again because if you haven’t, that’s what He’s waiting for! If you haven’t, that’s exactly what the Bible tells you to do, because God wants to bless you. 

THE BLESSING IS A DONE DEAL

I want to share with you right now the biggest turnaround in thinking about God’s blessing that we can ever experience. It’s changing our understanding completely about what God is on about when He talks about His blessing.

I want to go back to another parable about persistence in prayer, because I think we can get the wrong impression about God’s blessing if we read these parables from Jesus incorrectly. We’re going to Luke 11:5-8:

Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go them at midnight, and you say to them, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for another friend of mine has just arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’

“And this guy answers from within, ‘Don’t bother me. The door’s already been locked. My children are already in bed with me. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you anything because he is your friend, at least because of your persistence, he will get up and give you what you need.

It’s an odd parable that one, like the parable of the unjust judge. In this one, God is compared to a neighbour who’s unwilling to get out of bed and help you in the middle of the night, which is really weird because God never sleeps; He never doesn’t want to help you; He is never short on bread to give you.

Soo what’s this parable saying? Is it saying that we have to drag a blessing out of God? No. It’s saying that God wants us to be persistent; to keep on asking, because He wants to build a healthy dependence on Him in us. How do I know that? Because immediately what follows on from this parable is this familiar passage, Luke 11:9-13:

So I say to you, ask, and it’ll be given to you. Search, and you’ll find. Knock, and the door will be opened. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you, if their child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if their child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

So God’s saying here that He totally gets it that we need a blessing when we ask Him, even more so than an earthly parent. Our heavenly Father will give us every good thing, but here’s the turnaround I want to share with you today. It’s not a case of having to drag the blessing out of God, because God has already purposed the blessing for us. Listen very carefully to these words written by the apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus – very, very carefully. Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

What does that verse say? It says that God has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, so what’s a spiritual blessing? Well, the word spiritual here relates to the human spirit or the rational soul, that part of us which is akin to God. It belongs to God, but it’s part of us. That’s what the word spiritual is referring to, and blessing.

What does that word actually mean? Well it’s the Greek word eulogia, which means to praise – to speak well of. You know the word eulogy, when someone gets up at a person’s funeral and says nice things about that person. That’s where we get the word eulogy from. So if we put those two words together – spiritual and blessing, God is already, He has already, He continues to speak His good words, His praise for us, His good things for our lives into our spirit in the heavenly places.

Now, at first blush that may not be so encouraging. ‘Okay, so God’s saying nice things about me.’ But let me ask you, how did God create the universe? Do you remember? Back there in Genesis chapter 1:

Then God said, ‘let there be light and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

And each part of creation, God spoke into existence. Why? How? Well, Paul tells us in Romans 4:17: He says that:

God gives life to the dead, and calls into existence things that do not yet exist.

So God is speaking blessings into existence, just in the way that He spoke creation into existence. In fact, it’s past tense. He’s already done it. It’s a done deal. Not just a few blessings, but every spiritual blessing. They’re already on their way because God has already spoken them into existence. Let’s read that verse from Ephesians again with a brand-new understanding. Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

He has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And those blessings are already on their way, a steady flow right when God purposes them into your spirit … into your life.

So not only is God a fantastic Father who wants to bless you, not only does God have the power to bless you but He already has! He’s already spoken every blessing for your whole life into existence, and they will each come to pass on the very day that God purposes them.

Has that just blown your understanding of God’s blessing completely out of the water? Has that just given your understanding of God’s blessing a complete one hundred and eighty-degree turnaround? Because now, when you’re going to God over and over again asking for His blessing, you don’t have to go to Him with this hangdog kind of attitude – that you have to drag a blessing out of a stingy God, who really can’t be bothered getting up out of bed for you.

Now you can go to God forearmed with the truth knowing that He wants to bless you … knowing that He has the power to bless you, and knowing that He has already spoken every spiritual blessing into existence. Now you can go to Him day after day, asking for His blessing and knowing that it’s really on its way; because by knowing the truth, God has set you free to receive His blessing.

Listen to me very carefully … God wants to bless you.

EVERY NEED FULLY SUPPLIED

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Gaither band. But I absolutely love them, love their music and what they’re on about. They sing a song called One Good Song. It’s all about cutting back all the stuff we have in our lives – all the clutter, all the things we buy and we think is so necessary to our lives. The chorus of that song goes something like this. I’ll just say it, I can’t sing it. It says:

I’m learning how to separate the wants from the needs,
A good life now comes with just a few simple thing.
Jesus in my heart, a place to belong,
A few good friends and one good song.
Oh my latest list, well, it ain’t too long,
Just a Godly love and one good song. 

I first heard that song quite a few years back now, and the line that really convicted me was the one about learning to separate my wants from my needs. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I’d started to believe that a whole bunch of my wants were in fact my needs, that all these optional extras were necessary to my well-being and happiness, necessary to life itself.

It’s easy to do because the more the basics in our lives are met; things like food and shelter and our basic health, a job, an income, enough to go around; the more God has those bases covered for us, the more we start looking into the optional extras – a bigger income, a bigger house, a nicer car, a great holiday, oh and this and that and maybe this and that, wow look at that. And when we can’t have them straight away, we imagine that somehow our existence is impaired.

I say all this by way of qualifying what I’m going to be talking about today because we’re checking out what God’s Word has to say on the important, the vital subject of His blessing in our lives. And I want to make something very, very clear, right now, we’re going to be talking about our needs not our wants, our needs.

Everything I’m going to say about God’s blessing in your life today is focused on what you need, not necessarily on your wants above and beyond your basic needs.

Okay, so let’s get into them. As I said at the outset, not everybody in this world has their basic needs met. There have been times in my life (in the life of the ministry in which I work), where there wasn’t enough income to support the ministry and in fact, to support putting food on the table for our family, that’s a need.

And I know that there are people listening today who are desperately lonely, people who are looking for the right marriage-partner and he or she hasn’t come along. Perhaps, you’re elderly and your family is all gone and you find yourself desperately alone. I know that there are people listening today (many of them in fact) who live in war zones around the world, in parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East.

We have lots of people listening to this program today on stations all around the world from dangerous places and you don’t even know you’re going to be safe, right? And here Berni comes on the radio and he’s yabbering on about ‘God wanting to bless me’ again. Doesn’t this joker realise how desperate my situation is? Doesn’t he get it?

As things turn out, I do and so does God and that’s what I want to share with you right now. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say on having his needs met. And by the way, before I read it to you, let me tell you what the context is. When Paul wrote this, he was on death row chained to a Roman soldier in a Roman dungeon, just so you realise that he wasn’t writing this sitting back on the French Riviera sipping sauvignon blanc, right? This is what he said:

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned for me but you had no opportunity to show it. Not that I’m referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share in my distress. You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the Gospel, when I left Macedonia, no Church shared with me in the manner of giving and receiving except you alone.

For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek a gift but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in the glory in Jesus Christ.

To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen. (Philippians 4:14-20.)

So Paul is out there doing ministry. He’s preaching Christ across the known world. That takes finances, that takes resources. And while we know that along the way he worked as a tent maker to support himself, sometimes he also relied on the generous support of the Churches which he planted and helped to grow, like the Church here in Philippi that he was writing to.

And he especially needed the help right now when he was in prison because when you’re in prison (back in those days), you couldn’t earn money. And they didn’t provide for you very well, you essentially had to provide for yourself. So Paul needed prayer support. He needed financial support. He needed friendship. But it seems that for a while, his beloved friends in Philippi had forgotten him. But now he tells them (and he tells us) he’s so thankful for their gifts which no doubt came in just in the nick of time.

Paul talks a lot about being content (however), whether in need or fully supplied, whether with a full belly or with an empty one, because he’s discovered the secret that no matter what the world throws at him, good or bad, he can do all things … he can get through all things … he can be content through all things through Christ who strengthens him. There’s a huge lesson in that for anyone whose basic needs aren’t covered right now – Christ is the answer.

Notice how boldly Paul says that he’s not a victim here cowering in defeat. He’s confident because Jesus is in that place with him. Just as well, because none of the other Churches that he’d served helped support him other than the Philippians. He could have become quite bitter and twisted over that, but no, his faith is in Jesus. Christ is his provision – come what may.

And that’s the first point I want to make to you. When you’re in that place where your needs aren’t being met and Paul’s needs, I think you will agree were pretty desperate there on death row, Jesus is your provision. You can get through it all. You can get through all things through Christ who strengthens you, even though, like Paul you find yourself in a time of distress.

When the days are black draw close to Jesus in prayer. Pull up and rest in Him and rely on Him and ask Him to bless you. And trust Him to bless you because here’s the bottom line, and this is my second point to you today, He will always supply your needs.

Did you notice how Paul, this death row prisoner, finishes his letter to the Philippians? Have another listen:

I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I’ve received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen.

Paul’s not writing a theological textbook here. It’s a letter to friends and out of his own real-world experience sitting there on death row, not knowing if he’ll live or die. He’s able to say to them that his God, the God whom he has come to know intimately in these dark days in the dungeon, that God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Notice Paul makes a sharp distinction here between wants and needs. He’s talking about our needs only and based on his first-hand experience of the faithfulness of God. He is able to tell his friends in Philippi (and indeed you and me) that God will supply all your needs.