Be The Blessing

Prayer is a heart revealer. What I choose to discuss with God reveals what matters most to me. What I ask God for reveals what I feel like I am lacking. What I spend the majority of my time in prayer doing (giving thanks, making requests, worshiping, listening, and so on) reveals how I view God. It is easy to settle into predictable patterns of prayer and to experience a familiarity with God that can diminish the beauty, power, and magnitude of connecting with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

It is important to think about how we pray. A little prayer audit from time to time can be a useful practice for refocused relational growth. Are the ways that I am praying deepening relational intimacy with God or possibly reinforcing a false narrative about lordship? If the majority of my time in prayer is focused on telling God what to, then I have probably lost the plot.

I noticed a pattern in the way that I was praying where I was asking God to bless things. It was a lot of bless this relationship, bless this activity, bless this person, bless this plan that I have, bless this new initiative, bless this decision, and bless me. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with seeking God’s blessing. The problem is that seeking God’s blessing is merely the surface. I realized that the way in which I was praying was problematic for me because I was basically telling God what I was going to do and then asking Him to bless it. That is dangerously close to reversing the lordship dynamic and it revealed my personal lack of mindfulness regarding God’s blessings.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3 NIV) 

I love the use of the past tense in that verse. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ! I realized that my constant asking for God to bless things was a symptom of forgetting that I am blessed. I was neglecting my identity of already being blessed and was finding myself in a perpetual state of “want.”

I spent some time praying about why I was feeling needy for God’s blessings and the phrase “in the heavenly realms” from Ephesians 1:3 really jumped out at me. I am blessed in the heavenly realms, but what about here on earth? Jesus taught us to pray some pretty cool words regarding this issue. “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is what I truly wanted. My “bless this” prayers were about the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realm being experienced here on earth.

Then it hit me. I am the blessing. If I am blessed and I am here on earth, then God’s kingdom is in me, and His will can be done. I am not looking for more blessing…I am looking to actively be the blessing.