The Blessing God wants for You

If God tells you to do it, He is going to bless you through it!

That was the repeating mantra in my message yesterday. I think that the story of Joshua is a fantastic illustration of this reality, but there are many others, too.  (You can watch yesterday's service at PCC here.)  

"Blessing" can come in many forms.  But I believe there is one kind of blessing that God wants for every single devoted follower of His.

Take, for instance, the priests who carried the Ark into the middle of the Jordan River.  Their blessing was being able to stand in the middle of the miracle and know that God used them and their faith to make the miracle happen.  They did not make the miracle, but they were God's catalysts for the miracle.  

Think about it like this:  When we sit around and talk with our friends, we often recount our experiences, don't we?  The size of the monster fish we caught last week; the vacation we took to a new place; a great speaker, musician, band or comedian we got to see; something we saw our kid do; a date we went on; a special day with our spouse or our parents.  

Many of those events are 'average', but some of those experiences become Epic...Experiences of a Lifetime.  They are the pictures that hang on the walls in our homes, the memories that we will never forget, and the stories we tell over and over again.

Often, the blessing God wants to give you is an experience like that!  

After the 2 million+ Israelites entered the Promised Land, they would celebrate the land that God gave to them, and they would be thankful for it.

But those few men who took that one step into the perilous, unrestrained river, trusting God to do His part, believing that He had spoken and told them to move on faith - when those men talked about the 'blessing', the story they told wasn't about the promised land, it was about their experience crossing the River.  Their story was about taking a stand in the middle of the River, on dry ground - the evidence of the miracle as real as a visible, tsunami-sized wall of water behind an invisible barrier, held back by the hand of God Himself.   The story they would tell would be about the one step they took into danger, and how God followed their step of faith by stretching the laws of physics. 

God wants YOU to have experiences like this.  It's part of his Blessing Matrix that I believe God wants every follower of Jesus Christ to have.  To KNOW that you were a part of a miracle!  All it takes is one step of faith - not of your choosing - but of God's.

Perhaps God wants you to go somewhere - like on a mission to a far away place.  Or maybe He's telling you to stretch and get involved - working with a cause like feeding the hungry or helping the homeless.  It could be that God is telling you to actually ditch some things on your calendar and serve at PCC somewhere - like really give serious time.  Or God may be calling you to give some serious money.  Or take a risk and tell someone about your relationship with Jesus and how He has changed your life.

All of these things require that you risk something...give up something...take a real step of faith.

But you can be sure of this:  If God tells you to do it, He is going to bless you through it!

So why not pray a lot, swallow hard, and step out on the water.  Go for it!  And be a part of an incredible miracle of God that comes out of your single step of faith!