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Blessed Testimony

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I have spent the last few weeks pondering about my testimony for our small group, how I came to be who I am before and after Christ. It is good to visit your journey at least once every few years. This is not just to remind us where God has brought you, which is important, but it also gives you an overarching view of where God is taking you now. How far has God transformed your life to become more like Christ? Pondering this encourages us in our walk, and sometimes corrects us to better see where we fall short.

Someone, who will remain nameless, once told me when I began my Christian walk that eventually that fire that you have for God will die down, in other words I will start to become less passionate in my faith. I am ashamed to say that this has become true in some areas of my life. I say “ashamed” not because I feel guilt that I should have done better or tried harder, but because I know that Christ desires for us to be more like Him and I am missing out from that opportunity.

The more we are like Christ, the more that we can properly reflect him to this world and to ourselves. Christ has created us and, for those who follow Him, transformed us. Our hearts now yearn for the one that transformed it. But the world wants our heart as well. The world and the flesh are both ruthless and hungry to take more and more of God’s glory for itself. It (or sometimes Satan) wants us to love and follow anything besides Christ.

The battle is to fight for what is due to God, His glory. God does not NEED to be glorified by us, since He will ultimately be glorified apart from human intervention. He DESERVES to be glorified because of who He is and what He has done. He has created life, breath, and purpose in everything. The more we can divert attention from things outside of God, the more we can glorify Him. This, in the Old Testament, means being blessed.

The term “bless” in the Old Testament (Bãrak) literally means “to kneel”. It is a term that indicates that someone is either being humbled or exalted. Definition from Gesenius:
To bend the knees, to kneel down. The primary notion lies in breaking, breaking down…to invoke God, to praise, to celebrate, to adore, to bless God, which is done with bended knees… to be praised (God) with a reverential mind.
If someone in the Old Testament is “blessed”, he has been humbled by God by His presence. In other words, God takes charge. You can see God’s redemptive hand when this happens. For instance, Adam and Eve were blessed, so they had many children. The promised land was blessed, so it was a land flowing of milk and honey. Sometimes (although not often) this includes financial benefits. God brings restoration wherever He goes, even through brokenness.

So, when we say, “May God bless you” this literally means “May God bring you to your knees” in the Old Testament. Interesting thought.

But even those who have been humbled by God fight against God’s desires. This is part of the brokenness of sin. When we take charge and try to stand on our two feet, then we are no longer under God’s blessing. We are no longer submitting to the King of Kings. Ultimately God is the source of all blessings, not us, and can humble someone to Himself. If left to us, we do what is right in our own eyes. We need a new heart!

The ultimate blessing came through the line of David, the redemption of mankind through the death and resurrection of Christ. After repentance, we are brought into the family of God and transformed by the Spirit. As we grow, we receive more blessings by submitting to the Spirit’s lead and forfeiting our needs. He will invade our hearts and transform us, bringing us to our knees. John 3:30 (ESV) says:
"He must increase, but I must decrease."
In the beginning of the Church, those who followed Christ were persecuted, beaten, hated, and put to death for the name of Christ, and they did so with joy in their heart. They loved as Christ did, sacrificially. They did not see the loss of this world as a loss at all, but gain, whether it was freedom, money, family, or life itself. Nothing was more important than Christ. This is hard, but necessary. Philippians 3:7-8 (ESV) says:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.
I am grateful for the path that I took, or I should say God led me. God desires me to become more and more like Christ, first and foremost. God wants us to love Him with our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27). He wants us to see the Spirit of God transform us more and more (heart), which means getting in His Word and studying Him (mind), then reflect that transformation to others through our witness (soul), by going out into the world (strength).

This is not easy. I have fallen short from one or more of these areas. When I first became a Christian, I was full of heart, soul, and strength, but my mind still needed to be developed. I was not studying myself, just followed the teacher of the week. It took time to break free and study for myself to show myself approved unto God (2 Tim 2:15). This is important for all Christians. We all need to make sure that our mind is not being corrupted by this world, which can happen.

But now I have been focusing on my mind so much that the other three areas have faltered. I have been so guarding my heart with “truth” (which is good) that I have been preventing God from working through me to others in this world (which is bad). I truly desire the burning, transformative power of the Spirit. I want to be filled in all areas of my life, then telling others about Him.  I want God to be reflected in both Spirit and Truth to make me more like Him, to God be the glory!

This can only happen through His church, through gathering with the people Christ came to save. I do not mean “a church” but “the church”. The encouragement of believers who have been blessed by God. Those who are not attached to the things of this world, but who are transformed through Christ by humbling themselves and exalting the King through the Word of God, prayer, and the Spirit’s movement.

Pray that we become a blessed people, literally,
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