Time With Christ: 16 January 2015 Friday daily devotion - Enjoying Divine Blessings?

Topic: Enjoying Divine Blessings? (Friday, January 16, 2015)

Memorize: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God. - Deuteronomy 28:2

Read: Malachi 3:10-12

10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.

MESSAGE:

God can decide to bless an individual beyond the wildest imagination of men (Deuteronomy 28:1). However, He can later change His mind concerning this decision. Why?

“Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.” - 1 Samuel 2:3

Enjoying divine blessings is conditional. You must be ready to honour God with your life and all it contains if you want to enjoy divine blessings (Deuteronomy 28:2). If you claim to belong to God and yet you are flouting His commandments, you must be deceiving yourself because God is not a magician. God’s blessings can only be enjoyed on the condition that you obey Him.

In Malachi 3:10-12, God commanded His children to bring all the tithes into His storehouse, with a promise of opening the windows of heaven and pouring out a blessing which there shall be no room to contain. This was an instruction that took me a while to live comfortably with. My background as a mathematician did not help me in this regard. In those horrible days of ignorance, before the middle of the month, I used to borrow money to fuel my car from my driver. I thought to myself, “Who are these people deceiving?” I thought that if 100% was not enough, as indeed, it was not enough for me back then, how could 90% be enough? I thank God for winning this argument in my heart and for making me surrender to His will concerning tithes and offering.

Are you really enjoying divine blessings? The promise of these blessings is for you and your children, as Peter said in Acts 2:39. Therefore, if you are not enjoying the blessings from above, something must be fundamentally wrong with your relationship with God. I encourage you to reconsider your attitude towards God’s conditions for His blessings. Remember that He does not need you or your substance; He created you and whatever you think you have. The truth is: the Almighty acts on His divine principles. One of such principles is found in Proverbs 11:24:

“There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”

Your life will change for good if you start to live by the principles that govern divine blessings.

Action Point: Locate areas where you have fallen short of the principles of divine blessings and repent.

Bible in one Year: Isaiah 45-47; Acts 9:23-43