Missed Blessings (Part 1)

I want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. I hope that this year brings prosperity and blessings to each of you. Please take some time this year to draw your heart closer to God. I would like to kick off this year with an article about the blessings that I hope you might enjoy but am afraid that many of us won't!

“Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should have subdued their enemies, and turned y hand against their adversaries.” ~ Psalm 81:13-14

Could you imagine the heartfelt pain that a father would feel when his son makes a life altering mistake? “Oh Son!” he might say, “Why! Oh, Why would you do this?” The father would cry and bemoan the mistake that his beloved son made because he knows and understands the pain that his son must now face. In Psalm 81:13, our Lord seems to play the part of the broken-hearted father. He seems to be painfully mourning the decisions that Israel, His chosen people, had been making.

If you read through the 81st psalm you will find the beautiful story of God’s deliverance of the nation of Israel out of Egypt. God brought them out with a strong arm and revealed unto them His power and presence. And yet, despite all of His marvelous works among His people, God was rejected of them. They turned their back on Him time after time and forced God to withhold his gracious hand of blessing. God wanted to pour out His blessings on them in ways that they could not begin to imagine, but was limited in this regard by their lack of obedience.

According to this chapter, our gracious Heavenly Father wants to bless us in so many ways:

1. He wants to provide the victory in our lives. “I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.” (vs. 14). It was God’s desire to provide a wonderful deliverance from any and all those who would oppose them just as it is currently His desire to provide for us victory today over Satan. We cannot gain any victories in our Christian life by using our own human strengths…we must have the help of God.
   
   
2. He wants to provide the needs in our lives. “He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat…” (vs. 16). It was God’s desire to provide for these people all of their physical needs and He again has the same desires today. When we lack in any of our physical needs, it is not because God desires that of us, but because we have done something to close the conduit of God’s blessings into our lives.
   
   
3. He wants to provide the wants in our lives. “…And with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.” (vs. 16). Honey is in my opinion a fantastic luxury in life. Just last night I was eating it by the spoonful. I understand that I may have been going a little extreme, but I think that most of us will agree that honey is a wonderful food. When I am able to go to Cracker Barrel, the restaurant, I love to take their biscuits and load them with butter and honey! Mmmmmmm. I love it. We don’t need honey for anything in life. It is nothing more than a luxurious desire that we have. And yet, God wants to provide for us the sweet luxuries of life just as He wants to provide anything else.

As Christians, we are missing out on many of these blessings in life because of how we live. I just can’t imagine the blessings that we would see in our churches today if Christians across the nation simply surrendered their lives to Christ and fell in love with God all over again! Quit holding back! God will provide if we will simply yield ourselves to Him!