Saturday, March 2, 2013

Blessings

Does God bless you?

                 Do your parents bless you with the blessings of God?  

                                  Do you bless your friends with the blessings of God?

Theses are three things that I want to look at this morning.  

The first one...does God bless you.  Every morning that you get out of bed, you have been blessed by God.   Every breathe that you take is a blessing from God.  When I came to know God as  my Savior and I asked Jesus to reside within me.  I was totally washed over by an amazing sense of peace and calm.  Now you may say that I am being redundant by using these two words to describe the way I felt and to this day still feel.
The peace that I felt was a gift from God, it was a comfort and stillness within me, within my soul, knowing that even if I made mistakes that I would always have this presence and knowledge that God was with me.... if I would just be still for a moment and listen for Jesus to speak.
The calm that I felt was as a result of the peace that I had received for Jesus.

Yesterday I wrote about "buttons" those nasty little rascals...I have to say for the most part, during my day, as I go thru my days, I am a calm person.  I spend time in the word, I listen to Christian music...I sing Christian music, I hum Christian music, I whistle Christian music.  As long as I keep my eye on Jesus I seem to be able to keep those button pushing rascals away...when I do not...oh boy...I just open myself up for those buttons to be pushed.
The Bible says: 

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

New King James Version (NKJV)
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

This is one of my absolutely favorite verses and one that I want to live by every moment of every waking part of my day.

Now let's move on to the next part for today.  Do your parents bless you with the blessings of God?  This brings to mind something I have almost always said to my children when they went out the door each day and sometimes a couple times a day.  I would tell my children, "be careful."  I could have been saying God bless you because that is essentially what I meant...hmmm..now thinking back I should have said,"God Bless you!" Do you know where that saying came from when someone sneezed?  It was thought that evil spirits could enter the body when someone sneezed.  Hence, God bless you!  My children when they first learned to drive would get upset with me when I would tell them this...I think they thought that I was doubting their abilities behind the wheel.  What they didn't realize, was that I doubted the abilities of other drivers out there, and that I wanted them to be careful of those others. So if you are a parent don't make my mistake, tell your children God bless you, when they go out the door, if this is what you mean, rather than, be careful.  
What other ways do our parents bless us?  If your parents are believers then they are blessing their children by walking with God. And by constantly showing their children their walk.  For this the Bible says:
Proverbs 22:6

New King James Version (NKJV)
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Children learn by emulating there elders.  So be a good model.  This is probably the greatest blessing you can bestow on your children from God.

The last thought to examine for today is do you bless your friends...and maybe we should expand on this a bit to include the people with whom you are generally in contact with through out your days.  Like your boss, your coworkers...the people at Rutter's or Sheetz's, these are some of our local gas stations/convenience stores.  Pastor Lori (Pastor's Don Wolabaugh's wife)will occasionally pay for someone else's gas or she might pay for someone else's order when in line at Wendy's or Micky D's...people are just so blessed by this.  This is truly being a blessing...we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus and this is surely one way to bless those with whom we are in contact.

Do you jog?  If you do, how about praying for the people that you pass along the way...or for the people within the homes that you pass.

This may seem a little odd to some of you...and I didn't really have the best relationship with my mother, but I would frequently come home from school as a child and my mother would either be on her way to the hospital or in the process of leaving the house to then go to the hospital or at the hospital already.
So as my response to this I pray for whoever may be involved when I hear a siren...doesn't matter if it's a police siren, or an ambulance, or a fire truck.  They immediately jump to the front of my prayer line.

Anyway back to blessing your friends...if my daughter where to read this today she might have some different thoughts about this....but that is her story.  I have a very dear friend who is dealing with a very sever situation.  Her husband is slowly passing away.  He is in the end stages of a very nasty cancer, that was only just recently diagnosed.  This is a tough situation.  And I am trying to be the best friend to her, and to him, as I can be.  She has been an amazing blessing to me and I doubt that she even knows it.  So how can I bless her more? I don't know right off the top of my head but I am sure of one thing, I well continue to try.
I have another friend that lives over in the Reading area, this women I have kind of lost track of but she is very busy as am I, and if you want to maintain a friendship you will have to work at it.  It won't just happen.  So if you have someone in your life...a really good and true friend, cultivate it because really good and quality friendships are really hard to come by.  And remember, just because your friend doesn't agree with you all the time, this doesn't mean they aren't a good friend, perhaps they are just being really honest with you, and the fact of the matter may be that you are wrong...hmmm...something to consider.

Well I hope that I may have conveyed a small portion of wisdom today.  If I have let me know, I would really like to get to know, who the people are out there that are taking the time to read my ramblings...and don't forget...Be a blessing!

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