I constantly wonder about my mindset. How does it truly line up with Scripture? How does it line up with God’s perspective? It is rather obvious to me that I have a long way to go. But, I love that the Holy Spirit continually helps me mature my spiritual mindset, illuminating Scripture to teach me.
Take Psalm 67, for example.
God be gracious to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us — Selah.
That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your salvation among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy;
For You will judge the peoples with uprightness
And guide the nations on the earth. Selah.
Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
The earth has yielded its produce;
God, our God, blesses us.
God blesses us,
That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.
A thought clicked in my mind recently after reading this Psalm. God does not bless up because He loves us. Bear with me on this.
God does love us.
His love for us exceeds any love our minds can truly comprehend. In fact, in John 15:13, we read, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Yet in Romans 5:8 we find that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God went above and beyond the love that man can lay down when Jesus laid down His life, not for his friends, but for His enemies! There is no denying the love of God.
Now stop and think about that. How could any blessing add to that? How could God show us more love than He already has shown? We can be utterly and completely confident of His love because of that single sacrifice. We do not need blessings to confirm it!
Yet, we still rely on blessings as a show of His love. I am going to go out on a limb here and actually say what I’m thinking: that perspective is unbiblical.
Blessings are not about His love.
All through Scripture, we see God bringing both blessing and testing upon His children. Both are active. Yet, if we search the Bible from cover to cover, do we see that He loves those He tests less than those He blesses? Not in the least!
That is where we come back to Psalm 67. Look at the purpose this song assigns to blessings. According to verse two, blessings are intended to make Him “known on the earth,” His “salvation among all nations.” And verse seven closes out the song, reminding us that God’s blessings for us are given “that all the ends of the earth may fear Him.” When we look at the testing of every saint from beginning to end, we find that God’s glory is the underlying purpose for each of those challenges as well.
This train of thought leads us to a powerful conclusion: The sole purpose of both blessing and testing is the glorification of God.
How much freedom would we discover if we were to choose to live according to this conclusion? How would we react to our blessings if we saw them as avenues for God’s glory instead of signs of His love for us as individuals? How much lighter would the burden of our testing be if we knew, beyond a doubt, that God would be glorified through it whether or not we could see how that would be accomplished? How confidently would we rest in every detail of every day if we simply accepted that He has already shown us the greatest love that can ever be shown?
I am a vessel through which God chooses to glorify Himself in both times of blessing and trial. What a glorious thought!! May I choose to remember it, no matter which one comes upon me.
Not Quite Ordinary 