Blessed?
What does it mean to be blessed?
And what does it mean to be a blessing?
We live in a world that has found a way to hijack these words and make them all about material possessions and temporary things. But the word, “bless,” actually comes from an ancient Hebrew word, “barak,” that is found hundreds of times throughout the scriptures!
And like a lot of Hebrew words, it has a variety of meanings. There’s more than one way to interpret it. And with each one there’s a new depth of understanding of what it means to be blessed and what it means to be a blessing.
To Kneel
For example, did you know that one way to define the word, “bless,” is “to kneel down upon your knees”?
So when you sing the song, “Bless the Lord, O my soul…” what you’re declaring in worship is that you want to kneel down before the Lord, in humility, in worship, in adoration.
When you want to bless another person, how do you do that? However you do that, if you do that through giving them a gift, if you do that by speaking a blessing over their life, or if you do that in some other way… you bless them by humbling yourself before them, kneeling in a sense, lowering yourself so that you can lift them up and bless them.
When you are blessed by another person, how do you experience that blessing? The greatest blessings come from those who were willing in some way to humble themselves before you, in a sense to kneel before you, so that they could lift you up and bless you either with a gift of their time, or from their talent or treasure, or by speaking a blessing over you.
When God Blesses
What’s really interesting is to think about how God blesses us.
Whenever God blesses us, however God blesses us, it always happens as God lowers himself, humbles himself before us. In a sense, God kneels before us in humility and when He does, as He does, we are blessed.
Listen to the way the Apostle Paul talked about this in Philippians 2:5-8:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
The Greatest Blessing
The greatest blessing the world has ever received happened on a cross some 2000 years ago.
How did it happen?
It happened when Jesus, who is God, did not consider equality with God something He would hold on to and chose to humble himself through obedience by sacrificing His life on the cross for you and for me.
We live in a world where people want to be blessed, but so few want to be a blessing.
But happens in your heart when you realize just how blessed you are by God, just how far Jesus lowered himself when He came down from Heaven to Earth, when you realize how he humbled himself because of love, is that you in turn, as a recipient of that blessing, that love, want to find a way to be a blessing to others. To love others with that same kind of sacrificial love. To humble yourself for the benefit of others.
We are truly blessed to be a blessing. And when you understand that the greatest way to bless those around you is through humility, it changes everything.
To be blessed isn’t to acquire and accumulate the things this world has to offer. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. It’s through humility that we are both blessed and that we are able to be a blessing to others.
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