Blessings from God???

When blessings come our way do we seek the Lord before we open our hands?

I was watching a rather famous preacher on TV the other day. I was home visiting my parents for the weekend and I decided to take a week off of church attendance, but I turned on the TV to see if I could catch a worship service from the comfort of my parent’s living room. There was a variety to choose from but I stopped on a church that I had been to before in person to see what the pastor had to say.

He was talking about Israel being a chosen people and the blessings that were promised to them if they followed God. The blessings in Deuteronomy are really quite significant. They talk of financial blessing, never getting sick or illness, and a number of other things to add to the prosperity of the chosen, who follow God. The preacher went onto say, when people see these blessings in the lives of the chosen they will be drawn to know the source of the blessing and thus become interested in who God is.

The insinuation in this line of reasoning for me is, if there is a blessing coming our way, if we are about to receive financial blessing or prosperity of any kind for our family it must be from God and we need to receive it with open arms.

Israel, Jacob, challenges this philosophy in Gen 46. He has the invitation from Joseph to bring the family and Joseph will give them the land of Goshen to live in. So the family packs up and gets ready to go. But they make a stop on the way or rather before the way. Israel offers sacrifices and prays to God. God comes in a vision in the night to Israel and tells him it will be OK, it is good for them to go into the land of Egypt and God will bring the family out again. He doesn’t tell Israel it will be after 400 years of slavery, God doesn’t tell him of the plagues or the red sea, he just says go ahead and I will bring them out.

Israel doesn’t ask how either. He comes to God to find out if this blessing of a rich land is meant for he and his family to move to. God tells him it is the right place for them to go and he will bring them out again. Israel does question the gift to make sure it is from God, but he does not question God. This is a more significant trust in God then most of us live our lives with, me included.

When good things come my way, I say thank you God for this blessing for this financial opportunity for the prosperity you are turning my way, no questions asked. But when God has something in mind for my life I often ask him how. I often question what he will do, how this is going to play out, please give me some wisdom or discernment so I might know how this will be accomplished, what I’m suppose to do for the desired outcome, and what the result will be.

This isn’t trust in God; this is trust in circumstances and the way in which I can best control the situation. Israel has all the reasons in the world to make sure things are going to work out. He has 70 members of his immediate family to think about. He brings the blessing to God, he surrenders himself to God through sacrifice, and when God gives him the answer he acts! He doesn’t stay around to talk about it, he acts, he moves his entire family to Goshen.

May we learn to trust God like this. Before we accept the obvious blessing or gain being handed to us on a silver platter, may we surrender it to God and seek his will. Then without question move forward with the answer we are given.

May we question the blessings but not the God who may or may not be giving them.