Day 24

What God does through us He must first do in us.

‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.’ (GENESIS 12:2)

The end result of God blessing Israel was not Israel’s blessing. It was that in blessing Israel, they would become a blessing to the world. The focus was not for Israel to be only inward looking at God’s blessing on them, but to be outward looking at the blessing God would bring to the world through them. If you go through the Old Testament narrative, you find that whenever Israel became inward looking – which they frequently did – they lost their purpose and got into trouble. God had to chastise and discipline them, by either sending enemies against them or sweeping them into exile.

It’s equally true of the Christian life and of the Church of Jesus Christ. He has blessed His Church for us to bless the world. He blesses us, not only for the enormous benefit that it is to us personally, but that we might be outward looking and a means of blessing to the world. Being outward looking, evangelistic and missional is not just one of many things the church does, but it is what Christ commissioned us to do. We have been blessed not to make ourselves comfortable, but that we might be the means by which God is going to reach and bless others. In fact, the measure to which we are a blessing to others is the measure to which we ourselves are blest.

Are you keeping the blessing of Christ to yourself, or sharing His life with those around you?