Are you blessed? Do you feel blessed?
Those are two separate questions, but we often confuse them. We substitute our feelings for the facts. Here’s what I mean.
God’s Word tells us we are blessed. It gives a rich number of ways in which he blesses us, things we can meditate on, receive in gratitude, believe on in faith.
But the truth is I don’t pay attention (enough). I don’t feel it. I see others’ good fortune and feel like I’m missing out.
I need to pay more attention to the ways God blesses me, recite all the ways that God’s blessings are full and abundant in my life. And as I do that, I become more aware of the fact that I am blessed. It’s a fact. And my feelings will catch on. I’ll feel more blessed as I embrace the fact.
I shared a blessing prayer last week from Ephesians 1:3. But the place I’ve really learned about blessing is the Psalms. We recently started season three of First Fifteen and we’re praying through the Psalms.
The Hebrew word in Psalm 1:1 is ashrei and it means “happy, joyful, blessed”. Also common is the Hebrew verb baruch which means “to bless”.
The first two psalms form an introduction to the collection of Psalms as a whole. Both of them introduce the idea of God’s blessing and the life choices that put us in a place of blessing.
When we pray the Psalms it trains us in paying attention to the fact of God’s blessing and the choices that put us in the path of his blessing. To get a copy of God Help Me Grow: Learning to Pray through the Psalms on Amazon click the link (or you can read it as an ebook).
