This world is filled with discouraged Christians. They may be praying for something for years and because they haven’t received it they come to the conclusion that God doesn’t want to bless them. I was one of these people.
However, like many, I failed to realize that I wasn’t fully committed to Christ. I was being stubborn. I wanted to either conscientiously or unconsciously do things my way. I didn’t factor God’s will for my life into my decision-making process. You can’t experience success without allowing Him to guide you to the destination.
Christians who are fully committed to Christ can have their blessings happen overnight. Abraham and Sarah are excellent examples of this rule in action. Sarah didn’t believe God when He said that she would have a son. Abraham and Sarah had trust issues. Therefore, it took them 25 years before they received their blessings. The reason why is that it takes time to grow in grace and knowledge. They didn’t need 25 years to get pregnant. Once they learned to trust God, Sarah was able to conceive and had the child God promised them.
Our delay in blessings occurs because we are not fully committed or prepared for our blessings.
We need to make sure that we are prepared to handle the gifts we want to receive from God by making sure we are aligned with Him. God created us to have free will. It is our free will that prevents us from receiving our blessings. Since everyone has free will, we can go at our own pace. This is why people experience success are at various stages in their lives and sadly why some never experience it at all.
You can’t piggyback off of someone else’s work. The level they are at in life can be dramatically different from you. When you hold onto someone else, this can hold you back or cause you to be in a situation that you aren’t prepared to handle. In either case, you’re not where you’re supposed to be in your journey.
What so many of us fail to realize, myself included, is that it doesn’t take God time to deliver the blessing. The delay in receiving the blessing comes from how long it takes for Him to prepare us to handle the blessing He wants us to have. The bottom line is it is our spiritual growth that delays our blessing not God giving us our blessing.
When God sees that you’re able to handle your blessings, you receive your blessings in a matter of seconds. Again, we delay our blessings by not spiritually growing in the areas we want God to bless us in. Once we’ve become the Christian God wants us to be then the blessings will start to flow in our life.
If you become impatient like Abraham and Sarah and try to skip the growth process, your efforts will result in unnecessary pain and destruction. Despite God telling Abraham and Sarah that He was going to bless them with the promised child, it had been a while and they Sarah still wasn’t pregnant. Sarah thought that she would “help” God out. Sarah told Abraham to go sleep with their Egyptian slave, Hagar. Hagar got pregnant and had a child. Sarah got jealous and all sorts of unnecessary issues occurred that didn’t need to happen. Sarah eventually had Issac and the rest as they say is history.
Think of all the unnecessary pain and anguish Abraham and Sarah could have saved themselves. The degree to how much anguish or punishment we can expect to receive is contingent on the amount of knowledge we possess. Were your actions due to being disobedience or were they done out of ignorance?
Many of Abraham and Sarah’s actions were done out of ignorance because they don’t have the Bible the way that we do. Therefore, they didn’t possess the knowledge we have. The Bible places us in a better position to possess the knowledge we need to help us make wise decisions.
James 4:17 says that if anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. This means that you will be severely punished because you’re deliberately choosing to be disobedient. Keep in mind that whenever we try to make our blessings manifest without going through God’s spiritual training process aka spiritual growth our blessings will become cursed.
Again, when you try to skip God’s spiritual training process and go after your blessings and dreams on your own it’s going to end in misery. You won’t be happy in your career, have that successful marriage, the list goes on because you’re carrying baggage that you would not have had if you allowed God to identify and help you remove the attitudes that we’re keeping you from being successful.
By the way, Christ didn’t get to opt-out of the spiritual growth process either. You can read more about this in Luke 2. Luke 2: 52 says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Christ didn’t grow up overnight. It took time for him to grow as well.
Evidence that demonstrates that we have grown in grace means that we are consistent in our actions. In order to be consistent, we don’t let Satan reside in our minds. When negative thoughts enter our mind a strong Christian immediately gets rid of them. You do this by properly applying the word of God in that particular area that you’re weak in that’s causing you to feel negative.
We have to take responsibility that we are the reason why our blessings are delayed. Our inconsistency in focusing on the lessons that God is trying to teach you is the barrier you have to overcome before you can see your blessings manifest. Again, in order to properly and quickly move through the spiritual growth process, you must keep your focus on what God is trying to teach you and not worry about obtaining the blessing you wish to receive.
You can’t grow in grace when you are inconsistent. Like Galatians 5 says you will be able to see how much you have grown by your thoughts and behavior. You do not have to worry about not receiving your blessings. Psalm 84:11 teaches us that God won’t withhold good gifts from those who obey Him.
In case you’re on the lookout for areas in how you can grow in grace you can start by doing the following:
Apply the whole truth
Having half the knowledge of God’s word is worse than having no knowledge at all. Having half-knowledge is worse because it gives us false confidence. It’s very hard to convince someone that they are wrong when their emotions are telling them that they are right. The same applies to half-knowledge of God’s word
Satan traps people by twisting the word of God in their heads. Having half-knowledge makes it harder to separate fact from fiction. False confidence is one of Satan’s biggest scams. False confidence is when you think that you can handle a situation but in reality, you cannot. Satan’s victims are walking around feeling good about their decision or situation not realizing that they are headed directly into a life of pain and suffering. All because they felt good.
Again, Satan assured them that they were correct. Therefore, they did not take the time to look at the big picture. They just kept focusing on whatever thoughts that Satan implanted into the mind that caused them to feel good.
Satan gets us to focus on what we think we can handle and we cosign onto the thought by daydreaming about it until it becomes difficult to determine the truth from a lie. God will always provide us the resources whether it be people, books, whatever we need to break free from Satan’s trap but it’s up to us to decide if we want God to guide us toward an escape route.
Control my mind
Our mind dictates whether or not we are going to win our battles. If you stay dressed in your spiritual armor (Eph 6) you will always be ready for battle.
God’s word is the only way you can protect yourself. Satan may get in some punches as he did with Job, but he will not win the battle. This is why it is important to rely on the word of God for guidance. Not our distorted emotions. We can always trust what we feel.
We need to take comfort in the fact that Satan can’t take away your blessings without our permission. In order to win our battle, we need to protect our mind from negative thoughts. That’s why we need to control our mind. Satan wants to fill us with negativity. A negative mind is letting Satan know that we are easy prey for him.
If Satan sees that you are afraid or ignorant of how a situation may harm you he is going to bring the fight to you. This is when people try to verbally, spiritually or even physically attack you. Have you ever been in a situation where someone arrogantly confronts you and you’re left wondering where in the world did this come from? It came from Satan.
Now, on the other hand, have you ever noticed that when you’re prepared to fight back nothing happens? This is because Satan called off the fight. This is because you won the battle in your mind. Satan knows that since you won the battle against him mentally you will also win the battle against his workers physically. Therefore, he just calls off the fight.
Again when Satan sees that you’re willing to fight back or resist him he will run away (James 4:7). Satan will look for another area where you’re weak or vulnerable and then attempt to bring you down that way. Satan will test your strength by placing you in different scenarios and observe how you handle them. Based on your response, he’ll decide if and when the fight between you and one of his demons will begin. Satan cannot defeat us physically when we win the battle spiritually in our mind.
As you know life and death are in the power of the tongue. If you have control of your thought life then you’ll speak positive words. Negative words give Satan power over you, which is why you shouldn’t speak them.
Whenever you speak negativity to your circumstances this is evidence that you do not know or trust Christ. Christians aren’t supposed to walk around with a defeated mindset. Christians are members of the royal priesthood. When you put Christ first, you have no reason to be fearful or speak negative words. Christ is in charge and the only person you need to please.
When trouble comes our way the only thing we need to do is go to Christ and He will provide us with the solution to our problems. Christ coming to our aid is contingent on you not being in sin. If you disobey wise counseling then you must endure the consequences of your actions.
When we stay in faith we will grow in grace and lead the extraordinary life God came to give us. The life of Joseph and Daniel are excellent examples of how things can change when you keep your focus on God and not your circumstances.
Be a blessing
When you grow in grace your blessings are meant to be shared. Share how God has blessed you because giving Him the credit can help lead others to Christ. If you’re afraid of doing so it’s because you don’t trust Christ and are underestimating Christ’s power to protect you and your blessings, which demonstrates your lack of spiritual maturity.
Again no one can take anything away from Christ’s people. We have to give our blessings away. This typically happens through fear. We can protect ourselves from Satan tricking us into giving away our blessings by asking the Holy Spirit to help us.
For example, let’s say that you’re looking for a house and you find your dream house. Someone may try to use a variety of scare tactics to get you to walk away from purchasing your dream home so they can purchase it themselves.
All of these things this person was telling you were lies and deceptions that Satan wanted to instill in your mind. Satan was trying to steal your blessing so that you could give it up to one of his demons. Regardless of whether it be through fear or ignorance if you go along in believing the lies that this person told you you are allowing Satan to steal your blessing.
Satan didn’t steal it from you, you gave it to him out of fear and ignorance. Once Christ gives us something no one can take it away from us. We have to give away our blessings through fear and ignorance.
Once we give up our blessings Satan will pick them up. There’s a scene in the movie The Lion King where Simba sees his dad die. He thought he killed his dad when it was really Scar. Simba runs away from his blessing of reigning over the Pridelands for a good chunk of his life. Thereby allowing Scar to take over Simba’s blessings until he was ready to fight back for it.
One of the ways, I’ve seen this happen is by helping someone us. Whenever I’ve helped someone else, I always end up being blessed in return. Honestly, that is how I ended up getting this condo. I was helping someone else look for a house and I ended up finding this beautiful condo for myself.
We need to keep in mind that God is a father. God is not just concerned with blessing us. His focus is on us growing in grace so we can become like Him. God wants to teach us valuable lessons such as trust and obedience while simultaneously allowing His blessings to flow to others. Elijah and the Widow (1 Kings 17: 7-16) is an excellent example of how God’s blessings flow. She was willing to share with Elijah and was dramatically blessed in the process.
When we focus on being a blessing, we’re going to naturally obtain the attributes of Christ and inadvertently share them as well. Compassion towards others builds trust in God.
If there’s one thing that we’ve seen is that this world needs more grace. The only way that this can happen is if Christians are willing to step up to the plate and focus on applying God’s truth to their lives so that they can win the spiritual battles in their minds to place them in a position to be a blessing to others. Now that’s a dream I’d love to see become a reality.
How about you?
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