Count your blessings, see what God hath done.
Our small group is meeting in a park this summer. We are trying to spread the word and see the demographic of the area. The series of lessons is on Sermon on the Mount. We are calling it, Sermons in the Park.
I had the honor of doing the lesson last week and I started with the Beatitudes. For those of you who don't know them or want to read what we talked about: http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=5&version=31 Verses 5-11.
With the exception of Shayna, everyone in our small group has gone to church pretty much their entire lives. I always feel intimidated teaching because 2 of the people have master's degrees in bible/divinity. The first question I ask though, seems to not elicit immediate responses (which means it's a poorly worded question, or they don't know how to tell me I'm a moron without hurting my feelings).
If read the passage, each one starts the same way.. blessed is some person. So the question is pretty simple. Each of these people are blessed..but what does blessed mean? Christians use the term all the time. When something happens that's good to us (we got a job or something like that) we say God blessed us.
But is that really being blessed? Verse 4 says blessed are those who mourn. When my grandmother died I sure didn't feel blessed. I felt sorrow. Anyways, we got a large variety of answers. Some ranging from lucky to being right with God to happiness/joy that God is with you regardless of your surroundings.
So what do you say? Are you blessed? What makes you say that? What is your definition?
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I think you're right...we do tend to use 'blessed' when God gives us something good in our lives. And those are blessings...but when you look at the beattiudes, being blessed seems to be something more. We are truly blessed when we are storing our treasures in heaven, not on earth. We are truly blessed when we go against the grain of the world around us.
ReplyDeleteWe were discussing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace last night in small group (Daniel 3). They refused to conform to the world around them, even to the point of dying an excrutiating death. They understood that faith in God is more important than taking the easy path. I would say they were blessed...even before they knew they were saved from death.