Christian Living

UNSOLICITED BLESSINGS

by paul hoffmaster
01/22/17
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So many times Christians exhibit Christmas mentality when presenting their petitional prayers.  Prior to the December Birthday celebration, people are engaged in pursuing what someone wants for Christmas.  Children are eager to share their page-long list of things they would like.  Adults, admittedly less energetic, will drop hints as to what they could use.  Now, maybe the wish lists might find their way under the Christmas tree, but there are also some unexpected gifts that bring a surprise to the recipient.  In fact, the response to the surprise gift might generate more excitement than for the expected gift.  Many of our prayers are requests that basically pertain to our wants and desires.  When we receive our answer, we express our gratitude, and then, almost immediately, begin preparing our next list of requests.  To emphasize our needs/wants, we incorporate others to hook up with our prayers to invoke the reality of Matthew 18:19.  Answered prayer is a shot of spiritual adrenalin.  To receive an answer to prayer is a blessing and stimulus to spiritual growth.

 There is another area of blessings that seems to go unacknowledged, and that is the area of unsolicited blessings.  These are acts of Grace that God gives us everyday, but we fail to recognize them.  For some reason, we tend to see God’s actions as originating only from our prayers.  If we have not asked God for intervention, we assume that whatever happens in our life is just a natural path of coincidental experiences.  When we walk with the Lord, we will see blessings abounding all around us.  When we fail to accompany the Lord during our daily routines, our blessing meters will not register His involvement in our every day activities.  God wants to be active in our lives, and to bless us, yet we fail to recognize his blessings because we are so busy with the sights and sounds of a sinful world.  We need to start being cognoscente of God’s daily activities in our lives.   Look around and see the blessings of God, they are everywhere.  When we stop centering our life on ourselves and start putting God before everything, we will witness so many blessings that we will think we are on the outskirts of Heaven. 

 When I look back over the years, I see more and more of God’s role in my life.  Things that I had previously thought were just coincidences were in reality God-incidences.  During my trucking days, I experienced life-saving situations that I had chocked up to my own initiatives, when, in truth, they had been God’s intervention.  So many of my decisions were, in fact, God directed.  When I began to realize how active God had been in my life, I was overwhelmed.  I remember sitting down and hitting the rewind button in my memory bank and seeing how God had been involved in my life.  All the years I had spent petitioning God, while at the same time failing to witness His blessings, caused me to ask for forgiveness.  Witnessing God’s daily inner action in one’s life is a vital part of the Believers growth pattern, just as prayer is a vital part of the Believer’s faith.  Jesus stated that God knows what we have need of before we even pray. (Matthew6:8)  What will surprise many Believers is that God may have already started answering our prayer before it was even uttered.  He knows what we are going to ask and may have already prepared the answer for our observance.   

 God answers prayer, as well as blessing us, even if we are not cognizant of the fact.  As we continue to petition God, let us also praise Him for what we are experiencing.  Prayer is giving God permission to work in our lives.  It is opening our doors for God to work in a requested area in our life.  Let us also open our eyes and see what God is doing.  Let us not be surprised when we receive an unsolicited blessing, for His blessings are all around us, just waiting for us to discover them.