Blessed to Bless

[God said to Abraham], “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:2)

God chose Abraham not to put others down, but to help lift them up. This is true for the spiritual descendants of Abraham as well. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in Jesus Christ, who came not to condemn the world, but to save it.

In the Spirit of Christ, we too are chosen not to selfishly enjoy benefits, but to sacrificially serve others. John Calvin put it this way –


“All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors”




God has blessed us to be a blessing to others.

Godly Grief

Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. ( 2 Corinthians 7:10)

Grief (or regret) can be good. It can produce in us the desire to change, to turn away from paths of destruction. Regret can also be damaging, when it causes us to merely stew about things beyond our control and do nothing to change our behavior.

John Piper draws two distinctions between “godly” and “worldly” regret –

“Worldly regret is when you feel sorry for something you did because it starts to backfire on you and leads to humiliation or punishment. Godly regret grieves that God's name has come into disrepute. The focus of godly regret is God. Godly regret is owing to God's Word putting its finger on sin in our lives Worldly regret is owing not to God's Word but to the attitudes of men whose praise we don't want to lose.”

When you regret what you’ve done or failed to do, let God turn this regret into repentance that leads to Life in Christ.

Certain Faith

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1)

Some people try to prove the existence of God based on science. Some try to prove the validity of the Resurrection of Christ based on history. As important as it is to present to the world a “reasonable faith”, there is no way we can offer proof that is beyond the shadow of a doubt. Doubt is part of our make-up as limited, flawed creatures.

But God helps us move beyond our doubts. Philosopher Blaise Pascal, who was anything but an orthodox Christian, nevertheless hit on a truth when he wrote –

“Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.”

Believing is Seeing

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

"To have faith is to believe what you can't see and the reward of faith is to see what you believe.” (St. Augustine)

It took not just seeing, but touching the body of the Resurrected Christ to convince Thomas to believe Jesus had been risen from the grave. What does it take us? What motivates us to believe?

In one way or another, our faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit, moving through Scripture, the fellowship of other Christians and worship within the faith community. We can’t often see it coming, but once it does – when the Spirit of Christ enters our heart, everything in life begins to take on more focus.

Seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing. And the ultimate benefit to believing is to see the One who sees us most clearly and has given us the means to believe.

See what I mean? Can you believe it?

Not Now

[Jesus said,] “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)

None of us know when Christ will return. All efforts to try to predict when it will be have failed. The Bible tells us He will come “as a thief in the night.” We know neither the day nor the hour.

In the face of this, we need to busy ourselves getting ready. We need to live out our faith each moment as if it were our last. Martin Luther reminds us of the urgency of this, when he writes:


“How soon not now becomes never.”

It’s not too late to live in faith. Not yet. But you never know when it will be.

The Price of Healing

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. (Luke 17:15)

The healing and wholeness Jesus offered people of his time (and us today) cost nothing but the willingness to be healed. We only need to admit that we are sick, that we are broken and come to him. The best way to pay for the healing touch of Christ is not with money, but with praise.

One of our Puritan ancestors – Thomas Watson – once wrote:


"Christ is the most cheap physician, he takes no fee. He desires us to bring nothing to him but broken hearts; and when he has cured us he desires us to bestow nothing on him but our love."

What Heaven Is Like

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)

There was a man at my last church who genuinely struggled to know what heaven would look like. He was a great outdoorsman and he worried that if heaven were nothing but streets lined in gold with pearly gates surrounding it, full of angels singing the same hymn constantly – he would be put off and bored to tears. This wasn’t his idea of eternal bliss.

What is heaven like? William Barclay sums it up this way --

“For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him.”

Good News and Bad News

“The time has come,” [Jesus] said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

To repent is to completely turn around – to shift from going in one direction (toward worldly sin) to going in the opposite direction (toward God). It requires transformation of our whole selves - hearts, minds, and bodies. This can be very difficult and extremely painful, but to enter God’s presence, it is absolutely necessary.

To receive the good news of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ, we must face the bad news of our sin. We can only be forgiven if we first admit we are sinners. If we try to gloss over the challenge of the gospel, we aren’t really accepting the good news at all.

St. Augustine wrote --

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Do you trust in Christ’s love or in yourself?

True Joy

To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 24-25)

There is nothing we can do to achieve joy in this life. We can only receive it as a gift from our God and Savior. Joy is a rare and precious jewel that is not to be squandered on the ways of the world, but kept securely within the kingdom of heaven where we enjoy fellowship with God and God’s people.

The poet John Donne wrote –

“True joy is the nearest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be kept in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.”

Do you have joy? If so, what are you doing with it?

True Freedom

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Never are we less free than when we freely engage in sin. Sin enslaves us. We have less strength, less courage, less wisdom. Only when God claims us as His own are we truly set free to become who we were created to be. The process requires a surrendering to God’s will, not an exercise of personal freedom. Conversion is not our own doing, but the work of the Holy Spirit.

Evangelist Charles Haddon Spurgeon witnessed many conversions in his ministry. Reflecting on this, he wrote –

“Conversion is not, as some suppose, a violent opening of the heart by grace, in which will, reason and judgment are all ignored or crushed. The reason is not blinded, but enlightened; and the whole man is made to act with a glorious liberty which it never knew till it fell under the restraints of grace.”

Winning Approval

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” (Bill Cosby)