Blessings and Miracles

I've been listening to some interesting teaching recently on God's delivery methods to His Children. Studying around it has led me to the conclusion that He basically has 2 ways of delivering His supply to us, be it health, finances, food or whatever the need is we're coming to Him with.

God wants to give us the very best - it's His nature. He demonstrated that as John so eloquently puts it in John 3:16 when describing the gift of Jesus to the World to deliver Salvation.

Salvation is a Blessing. Once we have it it's very difficult to move out of it (although I believe not impossible) and it is a continuous supply received by us through His Grace.

Living in a Blessing is God's desire for us. It's the very Best He can supply us with. Imagine being so financially Blessed that if the car breaks down and needs replacing we don't have to become a slave to the bank to replace it, rather that we are so abundantly receiving God's Best in the form of a Blessing lifestyle that we can simply go and replace or repair with the funds He has given us for our storehouse - that's a savings account in modern talk.

Living for miracles is a way God can get things to us, but before we receive a miracle we have to have a crisis.

In the last five years, my wife and I have lived from miracle to miracle with much time spent in deep distress seeking where the provision will come from. It's far from God's Best, and mercifully we seem to finally be moving out of that and into a longer term situation where stability can be re-established.

We all need miracles from time to time. A sudden loss of health or a devastating accident involving loss of property can cause an immediate need that only a miracle can supply, but in the greater pattern of our life, we should be seeking God's Blessing rather than miracles.

Living from crisis to crisis and depending on God for miracles to bail us out is an incredibly stressful way to exist. It impacts all areas of your life. Personally when I've been in financial need for a miracle the stress has been overwhelming. The stress impacts my health, my sleep pattern, my relationships with everyone - especially my wife - and in particular my creditors, most of whom have no concept of how hard it is to receive a miracle on their timetable instead of God's.

Health is another issue for me. I take regular medication to treat diabetes. When I'm stressed my ability to simply control things goes away and my sugar in my blood either drops or rises dramatically giving me very unpleasant symptoms.

There's a big "BUT" when it comes to my health though.

Around fourteen years ago now I first began to hear teaching about living in Divine Health and that it is always God's Will for us to be healthy. The problem is that we limit God - a topic I'll cover another time - and His ability to give us what He wants us to have. Since I've learned more about living in the Blessing of healing my eyesight has not deteriorated, where before I needed a stronger prescription at least once a year to be able to see. Diabetes is classified as a "progressive" illness, meaning over time it gets worse. In my body with the exceptions of a few times I've needed a miracle because something extraordinary has happened the progress of the disease has halted. It should affect my kidneys but there is no kidney damage. It should affect my eyesight, but as of last week when I went for my most recent forced checkup I was told I have the eyes of a non-diabetic.

In short, I am gradually moving into living in the Blessing of Health rather than looking for a miracle of healing regularly. And it's something that I only realised looking back over the last few years and seeing when the changes stopped.

Financially we move from crisis to crisis as Christians because somewhere we got it into our teaching that having more than we need is ungodly and that being permanently broke makes us closer to God.

Utter nonsense.

God's plan for us is to have enough of His supply to handle His work. If we only have enough to put food on our own table, how can we be a Blessing to someone destitute? We need to break the poverty mindset that has wormed its way into the church over the last few years.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that the "Prosperity Gospel" was over-emphasised in a big way by some well known speakers who talked about private jets and cadillacs and this resulted in a terrible time where people entered a "Greed Gospel" reinforcing of the concept that God was all about money. It also led to the counter message of poverty being Godly.

I've never met anyone with a cheap vision. Not one.

I've met plenty of people too afraid to step into the vision God gave them because of the financial costs involved, in fact I spent many years being one of them before I began working on EWM.

But God's plans for us are lavish. Look at the description of Heaven. Streets paved of gold, not tarmac. Mansions for His children, not corrugated-iron shacks.

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,” Says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” Says the Lord of hosts;
“And all nations will call you blessed, For you will be a delightful land,” Says the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 3:10-12

 This description in Malachi's book clearly shows God's heart is to give us a Blessing so great we can't store it all, but so often I hear of Christians being put down for buying a new car instead of second-hand or repairing the old one with the hole in the floor - by other believers!

We should be a light to the World of what God will do and what His nature is. He even names Himself "God Will Provide", so why do we shun those who have been able to receive this promise and try to make ourselves believe it's holy to be in lack?

I've been wealthy financially. At one point I owned two cars and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I lived at that point in the Blessing of Prosperity. I've also been so broke that in the middle of an English winter I had to choose between food and heat. At that time I relied on miracles to stay alive.

Living Blessed is better. It's less stressful for one thing. You are able to be more free with your giving because the enemy doesn't get the chance to whisper doom and gloom in your ear when the offering tray comes round or you meet someone in need.

We need to seek Jesus first in all we do. Place God at the very center of our heart and allow Him to guide us in what we do.

There will always be instances where we need a miracle, but it is possible to live so focussed on God that we live in His Blessing.

That's exactly where He wants us.