My good friend Penny made a profound statement yesterday. She said, "Every morning as I’m getting up I say, ‘Lord, I want to bless you today. What can I do to bless YOU?’." What an absolutely novel concept! How very refreshing too in a day when everyone seems to have joined a ‘Bless ME, God’ club and have developed a self-centered ‘this is what I want FROM YOU, God’ mentality.
Just imagine a world where people are focused on being a blessing rather than looking to BE blessed. I’m certain God would be thrilled. Probably very shocked too.
I remember one particular day when I did do that. It looked like I was actually going to have a day off. I didn’t have any phone calls to make or e-mail to answer. No articles to write or sermons to prepare. My house was dusted. My garden was weeded. All our clothes were laundered. My bills were paid and filed away and even my windows were washed. For once it seemed my life was completely on track but that posed a very unique problem because I was not accustomed to taking a day off. I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know what to do next. I wondered if I should even bother to get dressed or brush my teeth or should I just continue to sit in my kitchen sipping my coffee staring off into space? Finally I said, "Please God, don’t let me just waste this day. Let me be a blessing to someone today."
It amazes me how lickety split God answered that prayer because it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning when my doorbell rang. The woman standing on my front porch was looking for the people who had at one time negotiated to buy our house. I explained that they had changed their mind about purchasing this property but I could very easily contact their real estate agent and find out where they had moved. When she replied, "No, it’s all right, I was so upset that I just wanted to go for a long drive in the country but when I saw this place I realized I knew who bought this house so I stopped. I don’t even know what I am doing here because I hardly even know those people", I remembered my prayer so I asked her to come in and have a coffee with me. She tearfully declined the offer saying, "No thank you, because I really don’t know what I’m doing here and I need to go and sort out my life."
I knew exactly what she was doing there and I knew that God had set the whole thing up so I persisted, explaining that I did a lot of counseling and that I was certain that I could help her. Upon hearing this she raced by me so fast that it made me spin and then standing in the middle of my kitchen started to list the tragic and heartbreaking circumstances that were plaguing her life. She was in the middle of a divorce. Her children were on a plane heading to Winnipeg even as we spoke. Her home was going into foreclosure and she was not going to have a place to live. She didn’t know what to do. She poured out her heart for hours thinking her life was over. I knew it was not!
By four o’clock in the afternoon I had convinced her that I knew someone who not only had all the answers but loved her to the point that He laid down His life for her and would help her get her life in order the moment she asked for His help. She was more than willing to pray with me and ask for that help. She left my house with a bible under one arm and a copy of the book I wrote under the other. My book is about how God has miraculously changed my life and His book is about how He was going to change hers. She also left with renewed hope in her heart and the assurance that God not only loved her, but that He was there for her any time she needed help and that this was the first day of the rest of her life and it was going to be filled with peace and joy and love and all good things because God was now at the center of it.
I feel so honored and I consider it such a privilege to be a part of God transforming someone’s life like that. A life that is so very precious to Him. At the same time it is very humbling to realize what God can do with one simple prayer.
In Matthew 25 Jesus called His servants ‘blessed of My Father’ and stated that they were going to inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world because of all the righteous deeds they had performed unto Him and then He started listing them. They were perplexed and asked, ‘ Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? And the King will answer and say to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me".’ (NKJV)
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