Journal 3 - Living The Blessing

Today I ate lunch with my little nephew Reid. He is 2 years old, and we were having Chick-Fil-A so we asked Reid to say the blessing before lunch! Here's what he said...

"Thank you Jesus for our food, and for mommy and daddy...and for ketchup...and for sprite...amen."

Simple as that! A simple blessing, but one from the heart. I thought I would use this journal entry to share with you some of what I've been learning lately. A few weeks ago I spent the weekend with a group of people from Clemson University. They were on a fall retreat, and I had the priviledge of leading them in worship, and a wonderful woman named Terry Blakely was our speaker. She talked all weekend about Living The Blessing.

We use the term blessing so much in our lives. We say the "blessing" before meals, we say "God bless you" when someone sneezes, and we are constantly asking God to "bless" us and keep us safe. But what does blessing really mean? Aren't we already blessed?
Terry has a wonderful way with people, and she really helped us see how we are blessed and how we can be a blessing to others. She helped us see how we can find blessing when there seems to be none, which can be a hard thing sometimes. It's hard to see the blessing in situations where we are hurting so bad, or feel like God has certainly abandoned us.

Terry told us that "to Hurt is to Heal! We must allow the Healer, Jesus, to touch us in our sore places so that we can begin to heal from all our woundedness. Our challenge then becomes to embrace or welcome healing instead of holding onto our hurt and pain. To embrace healing is one way we can live in the blessing."

I'm very good at holding onto my hurt and pain, what about you? After spending the weekend with Terry I realized that so many times I look at my circumstances in a pessimistic way. If I begin to see how blessed I am, and begin to live in the blessing of God's love...then I can pass that blessing on to others. My hope for my ministry is to be a blessing to others through music. But I can't be a blessing to others until I realize how blessed I am. I have to be vulnerable to Jesus and allow Him to touch me where it hurts the most. Then, I can overflow and pass those blessings on to others.

Where are you hurting the most? And are you brave enough to let Jesus touch you there? I challenge you to allow Jesus to heal you, so that you can experience the joy of living the blessings of Christ. Then you can experience the beauty of passing that joy to others...Cause isn't that what being a follower of Christ is all about?

Brad