Making Life Work
Read: Psalm 67
Focus: Psalm 67:1-2

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.

I never feel selfish for asking God to bless my family, my church and me! In fact, I think it is a highly spiritual thing to do. How is that? The second verse of this psalm provides the key: I want Divine blessing so that people will look at me and see God’s hand. I want them to see God’s favor in my life and be attracted to the God of my salvation.

Now if that is going to happen, then I cannot ask for selfish blessings. I cannot misspend God’s graces in foolish ways. I cannot ask for stuff that I will spend on my own humanistic desires. My motives, plans, hopes and dreams need to be sanctified, which means that I need to delight myself in the Lord first if I am to expect that he will grant me the desires of my heart. (Psalm 37:4)

That really puts the onus on me, doesn’t it, to clean up my desires. But if I can live with the purest of intentions—if I can live with a kingdom-mindset—then I can expect God’s extraordinary grace, his undeserved blessing, and the favor of his face shining down upon me every day of my life.

Now that’s the way I want to live. I want to be living proof to this lost world of a loving God. So I am going to pray this prayer today: “God, bless me a lot! May I know your grace in new ways. Let the bright glory of your favor cause my life to shine so much that others will see me and be attracted to you!”

And I am audacious enough to expect that God will do that for me!

By the way, there was another Old Testament character who dared to pray that way: Jabez. You can find his short story in I Chronicles 4:9-10. He dared to ask God for the moon, so to speak, and guess what? He got it. I love the profound simplicity of the last line of that story: “And God granted his request.”

Ask God for the moon…and the earth, too! Perhaps God will grant your request and you’ll be the next Jabez story—unless I beat you to it!

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“Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.” (A.B. Simpson)

Making Life Work: You want to be blessed. So do I. But why? What is your motive? I would suggest that before a prayer for blessing, you first offer God a prayer of repentance. Ask him to cleanse your heart, to transform your mind, and to give you a vision for his kingdom. In fact, you may just want to pray the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. Let God set your life straight, then ask away!