How Is God Blessing You?

This morning as I hiked up a trail, looking around at God's handiwork and enjoying the solitude, my nostrils were assaulted by the smell of smoke. Not new smoke. It was the smell you get when you go out to a fire pit the next day and stir the coals a little to make sure it's really out. It's the smell you get just from grilling. This was a smell from a couple of weeks ago - the Waldo Canyon fire. I didn't realize just how close it was. I stood on the ridge overlooking a canyon on my left with hills on my right scarred from burning.

God is in the business of blessing us but not in the simple way of saying: "I feel so blessed" when something good has happened to us. God's definition of blessing goes far deeper, to the outcome, the desired result of His work in our lives. Sometimes that means using the bad stuff, like the houses over the ridge that were not spared by the fire.

I brought another Henry Cloud book with me, 9 Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love & Life. It's his observations about what successful people do that others don't. His 4th principle for success is "Do Something."

To psychologists, philosophers, and theologians, who is at fault, is not the big issue. That is a legal question. What is an issue is being responsible in terms of ownership. To own my life means that it is mind and no other person's. I can blame no one for what I do with it. I can blame them for what they do to me, but I cannot blame them for what I do with what they do to me. I am responsible for how I respond. (p. 102-103)

Blessings come in many forms, we just prefer them in the nice, kind, helpful, good feeling form. The difference for a Christ-follower is keeping our eye on the end goal God has for our lives. I've said it a hundred times and caught myself having difficulty living it out 101 times: "God is not interested in our comfort but rather in building our character to be like Christ."

As I stared at the burned hillside I wondered how I would be if I were on the other side. Could I be ok with my house being "on the other side?" Would I be? To use Cloud's phrase, could I do something with what has been handed to me?

It's the marriage vows, isn't it? "For better or worse - in sickness and in health." That's not multiple choice. God can use marriage to shape and mold our hearts to be like His. If we can learn to love our mate then we will be closer to having His heart for the world. Because sometimes, we humans are hard to love. It's in the furnace of marriage that we can be purified if we'll deal with the hand we've been dealt 25, 30, 40 years down the road.

Blessings come in all shapes and sizes but we must see through God's eyes to catch them all.

I was reminded of Laura Story's song, Blessings, as I stood on the ridge:

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

What will you do with God's blessings today? Do you see them? What if every opportunity, big or small, we had His eyes to say: "This can make me more like Jesus today?" That's God's goal for us. Is it your goal for you?