-
This past Sunday I was struck with one of those “Oh…I get it!” moments while worshipping (if you were at my church you might have seen the smiling but “good grief” look on my face briefly b/c it was there before I remembered I was in front of a few hundred friends as a member of the worship team). Here is what we were singing…“Oh the wonderful cross, oh the wonderful cross. All who gather here, by grace draw near and BLESS your name”.See, for about the first almost 6 years of J’s life once he started using complete sentences, (which, let’s face it, around me the chatterbox, he was doing this pretty early. No choice. Not bragging by any means, it makes me laugh), his little prayers would always have “and bless Jesus” in them. I tried for many years to explain to him that you don’t bless Jesus in a prayer, that’s just funny because Jesus doesn’t need our blessing, because, well…He is GOD.Flash forward 8 years or so to last Sunday. “Bless your name?” Did I really just sing that? Bless Jesus? Bless God? Really? So I went home and looked up a few bible verses to check this out. It makes complete common sense, but to a mere human who is pretty sure God is as blessed as a diety can be (because he is in charge of the blessings, right?), it bowled me over. My ignorance bowled me over truly.Luke 24:53 – And they spent all of their time in the Temple, praising God. (ESV replaces praising with blessing)Luke 1:64 – Instantly Zechariah could speak again, and he began praising God. (ESV again uses blessing)Psalm 103:1-2 – Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. 2Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. (and yes, ESV again uses Bless in place of praise).We bless God when we praise Him. I know…duh! right? But all those years of “correcting” James, what was I thinking? It’s so obvious that praising God blesses Him and my then little boy was completely on track in his sweet prayers.Thursday morning, in our prayer time, we re-instituted his words. We blessed God because He has done SO MUCH for my family. It only took a minute. And you know what? I found myself blessing Him a few more times. Sort of puts things back into perspective and with the already “nuts/losing my sanity” week I’ve had (have you read my three Day in the Life posts? Yea, THAT week), that perspective was sorely needed. He is so good.Bless God.
1 comment:
Ok, I am going to be a bit bigger of a nerd than usual (or maybe show what a nerd I am). I think that we have narrowed the meaning of blessing to gift, especially a tangible one (I.e. I could bless you with a Dr Pepper or Sprite.) It was something that I realized when reading "The Blessing" and "The Gift of the Blessing" By John Trent and Gary Smalley, I would not have defined those Biblical blessings as blessings, maybe as prophecies but not blessings.
I can't help but feel like He desires our praise and that our worship and praise gives Him somewhat of warm fuzzies. Praising Him helps us too, but is isn't all about us.
I dunno, all this is more nebulous in my head and I don't have it figured out (and I may not ever get it figured out).
Post a Comment