To open the message, look around you. Without a doubt you could name five blessings God has given you in the past year. Our God loves us and blesses us.
However, consider why God chooses to bless us. Certainly because of his love for us. However, there is another reason he showers his abundance upon his children.
He wants us to pay it forward. Today let’s look at three ways we can pay God’s blessings forward.
The first of these is to treat those around us fairly.
The nature of the human experience is that we will have misunderstandings with those around us. Every human comes from a different set of rules and expectations, and it’s not always easy to make allowances for others.
However, in Job 31:13, God tells us that if we deny justice to those we are in daily contact with, what will we do when God calls us to account for our sins?
When we admit our shortcomings against others, God will forgive our sins against him.
Second, when God blesses us financially, it is an opportunity to bless others.
Jewish law provided that all Hebrew bondsmen be freed every seven years.
For us, this is like walking away from our home after investing in it for seven years, or accumulating a bank account, and after seven years of saving, watching it evaporate into nothing.
Not so easy, is it?
Jeremiah 34:9-10 speaks of a covenant made by Zedekiah, king of Judah, to reinstate this practice. Every man in Judah agreed and set his bondsmen free.
Then they reneged.
Of course, we no longer own bondsmen. Or do we? Loans we make, favors we can call in, family obligations... When God blesses us with material goods, he wants us to share our increase with those who have less. Maybe it’s time to let some of our bondsmen go.
The inhabitants of Judah? God said that because they did not fulfill the covenant they made, he would deliver them into the hands of the Babylonians.
Ouch!
Finally, God wants us to give of ourselves.
This is the hardest of the three ways to pay God’s blessings forward. It takes something very precious to all of us, and that is our time.
In Deuteronomy, God repeatedly tells us to include all people in our celebrations, even those who are strangers in our midst.
In 5:14, when we take time off work, we are also to allow our hired hands to take a break from their duties.
In 12:17-18, when we throw a party to celebrate God’s blessings, we are to welcome everyone we know, including our children, our hired hands, and those visiting from other countries.
In 16:10-15, if we visit God’s house with our friends and neighbors, and we include our children as well as strangers, he will shower his blessings of increase upon our household.
God does love his children, and he wants us to have the bounty of the land. However, if we gather his blessings into storehouses, then what use is it to us or to him? He wants us to use our increase to pay his blessings forward to others.
When we pay God’s blessings forward, he will shower his increase upon us, for we will have shown him we can be trusted with the bounty of his love.
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