Why Does God Bless Us?

The longer I live and the closer I move toward God the more I realize that I am not that good of a son. I do not always tell the truth, live by faith, or hold my tongue when I am angry (just to name a few of my faults). My sin nature sometimes gets the best of me when I am tired or let my guard down. I then agree with the apostle Paul in his climactic plea, "Who will rescue me from this prison of death?" And, yet, somehow God continues to pour out blessing upon blessing on my life. Why?

Sometimes I wonder if God has mistakenly addressed blessings meant for someone else to arrive at my doorstep. It is as if He left out one number or added one and these gracious, merciful blessings land in my life, while some poor saint down the spiritual street is left befuddled by receiving a neatly wrapped package of sackcloth and ashes. (So goes my overactive imagination.) But I do wonder why God continues to bless me when I am at best a crippled son.

Thankfully, God has answered this question of inequity in my life. The answer is both comforting and humbling. You see, God blesses me because I am His. His blessings are based on His merit, His grace, and His mercy. He blesses because He sees Himself in me-even when I can't.

How often do you look back over your day and measure it by what you did or did not do right? Your measuring stick for chalking the day up as "good" or "bad" is whether you performed some standard of acceptable behavior (acceptable in your eyes, anyway). This is human nature to measure "success" in this way. But this isn't the standard by which God measures His children. God measures the days of His children on two levels: faith and obedience.

The Bible says that "the righteous shall live by faith." In other words, those who are declared righteous before God are not declared so by their works, but rather by faith-faith in Jesus Christ alone. There are two "types" of faith: saving faith and sanctifying faith. Saving faith is the simple child-like belief in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. This faith only requires that we look to Jesus alone as our Savior from sin and death. Sanctifying faith is the faith that grows over a lifetime of learning to surrender our will for that of God's will. This faith, though it is vital to reaping peace and satisfaction, never nullifies saving grace. Once saved, always saved. Therefore, when we assess our day through the prism of faith we need not grieve too severely for the moments in which we did not fully surrender to God's desires, because we are, in fact, eternally sealed as His child forever. We assess any mistakes, ask forgiveness (which God promises to grant), and move forward. Grace really is amazing!

Obedience is scary to some Christians. But mainly this is due to those who preach obedience from a legalistic perspective. But Christ came to set us free from the bondage to sin that came through the law. So, obedience as a follower of Christ is an invitation to agree with the truth, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, surrender to God's direction. Obedience also requires faith, thus we are again challenged to look beyond what we can "do" and embrace what we believe.

So, I ask again, Why does God bless us? Because His grace has been poured out on us through Jesus Christ. It is a sort of "residual" benefit of our saving faith in Christ. By virtue of simply being God's child we are within the realm of the merciful prerogative of the Almighty. He chooses to bless whomever He wishes in whatever manner and time He so chooses. God's choice to bless us is not dependent on us behaving in any particular fashion.

I cannot speak for you, but I take great comfort in the fact that God does not rely on me having it all together in order to bless my life. After all, if He waited on me I might never receive a blessing...

Blessed beyond belief,

jonathan