The Gifts Of God

God wants to bless you for delighting in him.

This is part 1 of Chapter 6 of Friends With God: The Gifts Of God. In this chapter we will explore the blessings that God wants to give to those who delight in his way of life.

Riches and honour are with me; yes, durable riches and righteousness.
My fruit is better than gold, yes, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.
I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment:
That I may cause those that love me to inherit riches; and I will fill their treasures.
(Prov 8:18-21)

God Delights In You!

Would you like God to bless you? To give you good health, lots of money, peace and safety, a loving family, and interesting purposeful work to do? Sounds good! Yet, as God is the all-powerful creator of the entire world, and he lives forever and owns everything, if you are his friend, wouldn’t he really want to give you just a few million dollars to tide you over till next week?

Obviously this is a mercenary approach to God, and not what friendship with him should be based on! Yet God tells us:

Delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart”. (Psalm 37:4)

So, our hearts’ desires are ok to have, if we delight in the Lord.

How therefore do we delight in God?

We see that God is very rich and powerful, and he desires to share some of that power and wealth with you, both now and in the future Kingdom of God:

Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
(Luke 12:32)

God also delights in you, if you delight in him, and live a good and righteous life with godly desires, then your affections and interests will be aligned with Gods heart:

• The steps of a good (valiant, courageous) man are ordered (guided) by the Lord: and he (God) delights in his way. (Psalm 37:23)

• Similarly, those that are upright in their way are his (God’s) delight. (Prov 11:20)

• Also: they that deal truthfully are his delight. (Prov 12:22)

• the prayer of the upright is his delight. (Prov 15:8)

So, when we follow God’s guidance in his laws then he delights in us.

If we delight in God by walking in his ways, he will delight in us, and give us the desires of our heart!

As we have seen in Chapter 2, God created life and delighted in everything he made, including us - because he made it all very good. (Prov 8:30-31, Gen 1:31)

God also clearly indicates that he wants to give good gifts to you, if you love his way of life.

• Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asks, receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened. …how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (Matt 7:7-11)

• And all things, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. (Matt 21:22)

• And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. (1John 3:22)

• You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knows not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
  You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. (John 15:14-16)

• The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfils the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. (Psalm 145:18-20)

God, as our friend, wants to give us many blessings now, and also eternal life in the future! Surprisingly, most of Christianity has ignored and dismissed many of God’s gifts! Yet they are there, all we need to do is to ask, seek and knock… (Matt 7:7-8)

The Way Is Not Easy…

Yet, if God were to bless us with everything we want now, how does this relate to the fact that we are also frequently told that we need to be willing to lay down our physical life, in order to inherit eternal life? (Matt 10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, 17:33, John 12:25)

Similarly, we are also told that it is only through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God. (Act 14:22)

Also, the gate to eternal life is not an easy road with many blessings, but it’s narrow and difficult to walk on and hard to find. (Matt 7:13-14)

• So, we must wonder, when do we actually get these desires of our heart?

As Christians, are we expected to live a life of pain and suffering before we die, waiting till the resurrection before things actually get better?

Christians have not been promised great riches, or perfect health in this life.

What we have been promised, however, is something much more important:

No temptation (trial or test) has taken you but what is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted (tested) above what you are able, but with the temptation (trial) also will make a way to escape, so that you may be able to bear it. (1Cor 10:13)

It’s not unusual to hear of lottery winners who say it was actually the worst thing that ever happened to them; their new wealth just caused them to lose family and friends, and end up unhappy, alone and often with less money than they had before!

We need God’s help to not fall into either the ditch of too much wealth, or the generally less comfortable ditch of poverty:

give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”,
or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain. (Prov 30:7-9)

The Blessing From God For All Mankind

Yet, there is one very clear blessing that God has promised to give you, if you obey him, and it is one of the first and most enduring of gifts that God has given to all mankind.

Jesus tells us that while most of the work of creation was done on the first six days, the seventh day was specifically made as a gift for mankind:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:28)

The word Sabbath means ‘rest’. God created a day of rest for us, and we all know how valuable a blessing rest is. So, when we obey God by keeping his day of rest, we are automatically blessed in doing so.

Yet how can God actually create a time for rest? Simply by showing us how it was done:

God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he had rest (sabbath) from all His work… (Gen 2:3)

So, God created the day of rest by resting on it!

The word sanctified, can also be translated holy, and means to set something apart. But why did he bless it and designate it as a time set apart for rest? The reason is that in this day of rest God was actually refreshed:

…for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. (Exo 31:17)

We don’t think of God as getting tired, but nonetheless we are told he was refreshed by resting. As we are made in his image, it seems that God thought it would be a good idea if we too had a day of rest, so we could also be refreshed every week, as he was.

God Wants To Bless You!

We are not forced to keep the Sabbath, but we are encouraged to do so by being blessed if we rest on it, in the same way that God did:

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath (this is your choice), from doing your pleasure (your work) on my Holy Day and call the Sabbath a delight, the Holy Day of the Lord, honourable, and shall honour Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words; Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father:
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. (Isa 58:13-14)

This last statement “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it” is a statement indicating that God is adamant about what he said.

• Those who delight in his Sabbath, and thereby delight in him and his way of life, God will delight in them, and will pour out his blessings upon them!

Also, this blessing of I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth for delighting in the Lord regarding his Sabbath in Isaiah 58:14, parallels with God’s giving you the desires of your heart in Psalm 37:4. Both are blessing for people who delight in the Lord. They are two similar blessings for those keeping his law with delight.

• While God may not give us a few million dollars, he has given us what we all need - time to be refreshed every week. And with it he adds an extra blessing, just because we delight to rest when he tells us to!

By God resting on the seventh day, he was setting it apart so that it became a day of rest for all mankind. In doing so God also created a seven-day cycle of work and rest.

The Sabbath is an integral part of our friendship with God, as we spend time with him for this one day each week, and don’t do our own thing, but remember the day which he created for us to rest upon.

• The seventh day is therefore actually a spiritual day of creation. It’s the time when God first began to help us to grow to be like him, by sharing with Adam and Eve the very day of God’s rest and rejuvenation.

While God requires us to keep the Sabbath by not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, what is it that we actually do?

In the next post we will explore how God wants us to spend our time every seventh day to show we delight in him.