Receiving the Blessing of God // Blessed to Be a Blessing, Part 4

<p>The Bible talks about the land of blessing. Where is that? How do we get there? Is it really for us? Does God want to bless me? Good questions.</p> <p> </p> <h5><span style="color: #ff9900; font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Blessing In, Blessing Out</strong></span></h5> <p>It is great to be with you again this week and this is the last programme in a four part series that I’ve called, “Blessed to be a Blessing”. We’ve been talking about God’s blessing over the last few weeks and it’s easy when you talk about the blessing of God to get it out of balance. My generation, the baby boomers, were called the <em>"me"</em> generation. And it’s easy for my generation and I guess, just about every generation, to think about God’s blessing and then we think "Ah, that’s about filling me up so that I’m happy and I’m fulfilled and I’m full and … ".</p> <p>Over the last few weeks we have been looking throughout the Bible, from the beginning to the end. That’s what we have to do when we look at God’s blessing. We need to look at the whole council of God because if we just take one verse and we create a doctrine of blessing out of that, it’s so easy, in our context, to get that out of whack. Do you know what I mean – to take it to an extreme? Do I think that God is a God of abundant blessing? Absolutely!</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px;"><span style= "font-size: inherit;">Jesus said, “</span><em style= "font-size: inherit;">The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance."</em></p> <p>Now we can take that because we’re brought up in the <em>"me"</em> generation and we’re brought up in materialism and we can immediately reduce that down to a material blessing. After all that’s what the advertising industry tells us we should do. I’ve said it over the last few weeks on the programme, and I’ll say it again today: I spent the greater part of my life trying to feel satisfied with stuff – things and experiences and cars and houses – and it doesn’t work.</p> <p>When I look at