A little wrap-up:
Blessing the Lord is a kneeling of my soul to acknowledge God, fixing my soul on who He is as God, praising Him even when I don't feel like it, when life is hard, and when I'm waiting on Him for some kind of blessing.
To summarize: blessing the Lord with all that is within me is continually living a life of praise and worship to God out of my belief in Him and love for Him.
"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name" (Hebrews 13:15).
But I think there's something else. I think blessing the Lord is not just my sacrifice of praise to Him, I think it's also me living a life of obedience to Him.
The greatest command given to God's people:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
That phrase, 'all your soul' is used again. Blessing and loving with all of my soul.
And what did Jesus say about loving Him?
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments," (John 14:15).
Love for God and obedience to God are inseparable.
I can bless God, or praise Him, in every circumstance, but if I'm not obeying Him I don't think my whole soul is really involved.
For me, this is the harder part. It's easy to praise God, speaking back to Him what I know is true, even when life gets hard. But to constantly and completely obey God in every way is much more challenging. And it becomes more difficult for me when I have to obey Him as it relates to my interactions with others.
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"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39)
"Made to Pour" is what I titled this series. The first part was about pouring blessing on the Lord. For the remainder of this series I'm going to shift gears and talk about pouring blessing on others, or as Jesus labeled it: loving others.
One of the reasons I chose this topic is because it's something I'm currently learning. I fail all the time to truly love those around me, blessing them. But it's something I want to keep working on.
For the next 15 days I hope to flesh out some of the lessons God has been teaching me. I'll be honest, I have nothing written, just a lot of thoughts floating around in my head. I pray, though, that as I write out what I've been learning God will impress these things more and more in my heart and my life will truly be one that pours out to Him and to others.
This is Day 16 of a series: Made to Pour, Living a life of blessing
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