“We’re forever asking God to bless us, but how about finding out what Gods doing and bless that instead?”

I heard a talk recently by a guy who posed this question. Safe to say, it raised a few eyebrows. But it got me thinking, what would our lives, and ultimately the world look like if we did intentionally and actively start seeking what God is doing and investing prayer into that. Pretty good.

There is a prayer that we always say together at my church back home and part of it says ‘bless me so that I may be a blessing to others around me’. This to me, sums up what the man who said “We’re forever asking God to bless us, but how about finding out what Gods doing and bless that instead?” was suggesting. When we actively go out and bless others in a way in which we would want to be treated, God sees that and likes it. And when I'm saying all of this I don’t mean that asking God to bless us is the wrong thing to do, there is definitely a time and place for that. This is just a new way of approaching it, blessings through blessing others. To make this a part of our daily life would be a pretty cool thing to do. Through this, others will see our faith being lived out in our lives. Faith in action. It’s when stuff like this happens that people really start understanding what this whole ‘Christian’ thing is about. It isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, it can be really tough but God is there to support us every step of the way.

2 Corinthians 9 vs 8-11 (The Message) says “God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done”. This is the encouragement we need if we ever needed it before! Through God we are ready to face any challenge that meets us.

So therefore I want to challenge you and ask how can you be a blessing to where God has put you? Are you waiting to go to uni and just applied for accommodation? Have you just started taking you’re a-levels and slogging through coursework? Wherever you are, you are there for a reason. How can you make the most of being there? Helping your house mate to put away their food shop, taking in cookies for your class mates, buying a homeless guy a coffee on the way home from work or helping the woman in front of you pack her shopping bags, wherever you are, when you start blessing other people, God will bless abundantly.