Seeking His blessing

All of us would quickly say, "Oh, yes, indeed!" if someone were to ask if we wanted the blessings of God. 

But are those blessings automatic?

Not always.

Our Bible makes it abundantly clear that God wants to pour out His blessings upon His people. But it also makes it clear that His "best" (in human terms) blessings are ours when we order our lives correctly, in His will, and we seek Him as our top priority. 

His blessings are the result of His grace.

May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face shine on us (Psalm 67:1)

That sounds just like our prayers, right? We all ask for His blessings on ourselves, our children, our families, our churches . . . We all NEED God's grace and blessing. His grace is one of the most basic concepts to understand - but it's not easy to apply sometimes in our lives.

Why?

Because it just doesn't "jive" with our sense of fairness and justice. We are programmed all through our lives to work hard. To earn what we get. And our pride tells us that we deserve to be rewarded because we have worked diligently. After all, it's only fair.

God's grace, though, humbles our pride. We deserve His judgment, but He gives us His grace. Some folks (including me) have had a difficult time understanding one of the parables . . . let's dig in to Matthew 20, OK?

In that chapter, Jesus tells the story of the man who goes into the marketplace early in the morning, looking for workers. Perhaps his vineyard was ready for an unexpectedly abundant harvest. He needed more workers than he had on staff. So he goes to the equivalent of our "temporary workers" agency, the market, and hires more workers. He agrees to pay them a denarius if they will work a day's labor. 

In the middle of the morning, he realizes he needs more peeps. He hires more. At noon and at mid-afternoon, he does the same, and promises to pay them what's right. Finally, an hour before sundown, he hires more workers.

At sundown, the day's work is ended, and the men line up for their pay. The owner begins with the last group and gives them all a denarius for their hour of work. They leave happily, I expect. When the men came up who had worked all day long, they probably had seen what the others received, and expected more. But each of them also received one denarius. 

The men grumbled at the vineyard owner and said, "That's not fair!"

But he told them that he had paid them what they agreed on. If he wanted to be generous with his money to the other workers, what business was that of theirs? 

Now, if you were one of the workers hired on very early in the morning, wouldn't that bother you, too? "Hey, those guys only worked for one hour, and you pay them just as much as you pay us? We were here all day long, working hard!"  It's pretty basic, right? It's our human sense of fair play: you get compensated for what you do.  "That's no way to run a business."

Bingo.

That was Jesus' point. He's not running a business. He's talking about salvation, and grace, and forgiveness. 

Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:15)

In other words, I'm the Lord. I can do things however I want to. And when it comes to salvation, I will do it My way. 

Our God is generous. People will question His lavish love. They won't "get it." But He won't stop loving. He won't stop giving.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. (Jeremiah 32:40-41)

God will bless us. He will pour out His grace. And He will have fun doing it! He rejoices and delights in doing us good! 

Grace means that we receive blessings we don't deserve. After all, what we earn becomes a payment, a wage that we earn. Instead of judgment for our sins, God gives us a free pardon and eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Savior. 

Grace is not always easy to accept, because our pride makes us think we earned it. Or we deserve it. But to receive God's grace, we must humble ourselves. We need to acknowledge that we are sinners and actually deserve His judgment.

We should admit our helplessness. And ask Him for something we can NEVER earn: His grace and His blessing.