We all want to be blessed and happy.

May God be gracious to us and bless us;
may he make his face shine upon us
so that your way may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.

Psalm 67:1-2 (CSB)

I want to be blessed because it makes my life easier or more comfortable. Ease and comfort are the standards that I too often use to assess if I am being blessed. If I am uncomfortable or something is going on in my life which is difficult, I feel like the blessing switch has been turned off.

The verses quoted above remind me that any blessing I receive is not for my comfort or personal benefit. The psalmist reminds us that the purpose of God blessing his people is so that his name will be known and his plan of salvation for all people will be made know.

So then, the blessing is not physical comfort, or at least it is not always physical comfort. My brothers and sisters in the prosperity movement may disagree with this, but it seems consistent with both Scripture and experience.

Jesus himself said that the world will give us trouble (John 16:33). Neither Jesus or the Apostles has given us much reason to suspect that we will get through life without difficulties.

Then there is that whole sheep in the midst of wolves thing. Part of how the world knows that we are different is because we are called to do weird things like love the people that hurt us.

We also know that in many parts of the world, Christians are paying a huge cost to be followers of Jesus. There are places where to claim allegiance to Christ is to invite hostility or death. Are these believers outside of God’s blessing? I think not.

Therefore, the way to evaluate blessing cannot be personal comfort. I have to learn to look beyond the problems to the one that sustains me through the problem.

Jesus hinted at this when he said:

Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28 (CSB)

The Gospel tells me that I don’t have to fear God. Furthermore, my confidence in this truth is not based on my performance. My confidence can only be in the the work that Jesus has done for me.

On my own, I am big a whiner as there ever was. But when I allow these truths to sink deep into me, I am becoming less of a whiner.

Thank God for small victories.

Perhaps one of the more famous stories from the Gospels is the story of the woman caught in adultery found in John 8. I was recently thinking of this story as an example of how to respond to a situation a particular situation. As a result, I want to share some thoughts as I pondered this story.

First, there is no indication in the story that the woman was not guilty of adultery. Multiple witnesses testified that she was caught in the act. The woman herself does not plead innocence. So we can conclude that Jesus did not let her avoid punishment because she was not guilty.

Secondly, many commentators have pointed out that the men who brought her to Jesus were not following Old Testament law. According to the law, both partners in the adultery were to be brought and charged together for the offense. Because of their neglect of the law, the men who brought the woman to Jesus were not without guilt in this matter.

In his wisdom, Jesus confronts the men with their duplicity by saying the famous line, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.” The accusers could not bear up under such scrutiny and they scattered without pursuing the matter further.

The third observation is the order of the statements with which Jesus responded to the woman. After acknowledging that all the accusers had gone, Jesus said to the woman, “neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” Notice that Jesus pronounced his pardon before he commanded her to cease from her sin.

The order of these statements is critical to our understanding of the Gospel. We don’t need to clean ourselves up before coming to Jesus. In fact, a proper understanding of Scripture would teach us that we are unable to clean ourselves up. Only God can do it.

The Apostle Paul uses the analogy of a dead man. Until God makes us alive, we are spiritually dead. Dead people do not respond to verbal commands or any other form of stimulus.

My point in all this is that we are broken people living in a broken culture and we are called to minister to people like us who have made a mess of life. We must invite them into relationship with Jesus without laying on them the impossible task of cleaning themselves up first.

I make this point because large segments of the church, whether from bad theology or just bad practice, do indeed push people to change their behavior as a condition for coming to Jesus.

If you are in a church that does this, please stop. Jesus will have a huge issue with you if you handle “sinners” in a way that goes against his example.

During the trial of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of John, the Jewish leaders said a curious thing. They said, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).

As he often does in his gospel, John highlights the irony in this story.
The Jewish leaders refused to recognize the authority of Rome to occupy and govern the Nation of Israel. They despised the tax collectors who were rightly seen as collaborators with the occupying army. They did not accept Rome as the rightful sovereign over the Nation of Israel. As a result, they longed for the day when Messiah would come and liberate Israel from Roman occupation.

But, because they were so desperate to have Jesus killed, they paid lip service to Caesar as their rightful sovereign. They wanted to use the Roman authorities to aid them in the removal of Jesus from society.

The difference between a compliment and flattery is that when we use the latter, we don’t mean what we say. Flattery is saying what your listener wants to hear while you know what you are saying is not entirely true.

Have you ever been tempted to use flattery to get what you want?

Have you ever told only part of the story to improve your chances of obtaining the desired outcome?

Have you ever used religion or spirituality as a means of appearing superior to someone?

We have these stories in the Bible, and we profit by reading them, so that we come face-to-face with our own sin. Honesty requires us to admit that given the circumstances and without the work of God in our lives, we would likely respond in the same way the religious leaders did.

The good news is that by taking warning and seeking wisdom and power from God, we can avoid such pitfalls. Not because we are better but because Jesus came to pull us out of the muck.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes:

” . . . forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal . . .” (Philippians 3:13b-14a)

Paul starts this chapter by describing his accomplishments as a religious leader within Judaism. He went so far as to claim that he was blameless with regard to how he lived according to the law.

The things he lists are good things. They are things that anyone in his day and in his nation could be proud of. What Paul is putting behind him is not a life of hedonistic pleasure or flagrant sin. He is putting all his “goodness” behind him. He is telling us that none of the good things count toward what really matters.

He is not telling us that how we live doesn’t have consequences or that it is OK to do whatever we want. What Paul is saying is that the one thing that really does matter is having a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The point is that all his religious accomplishment was not able to produce anything of ultimate value. When he came face-to-face with Christ Jesus, he understood that all his achievements totaled up to a pile of rubbish, trash, waste. He is forgetting what lies behind because it is of no value.

But it is in our nature to do stuff. We feel pressured by church leadership to take on responsibilities and make ministry happen. We can fall into the trap of pursuing constant activity without taking a single moment to ask ourselves why we’re doing all this stuff. We can find ourselves feeling guilty if we are not exhausted from serving.

What we should learn from Paul is that all the good things amount to nothing if they are not done in response to a deepening relationship with Jesus. We don’t have to work to please God. He is already pleased.

Keep in mind the goal that Paul was pressing toward. He pursued “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).

Jesus himself is the prize. So take a break from the activity and enjoy him.