Are you fighting against the will of God? God wants us to be a blessing to others in the world. To do so, we must accept the blessings that we receive from the Lord. Are you accepting of the blessings that come from God or are you to busy paying attention at the blessing that others are receiving? I want to take a look at what James says for my key verse today.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
James 1:17 NKJV
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Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father (God). These gifts we refer to as blessings. God, being supernatural, therefore is the only who can provide us with a supernatural gift (blessing). We, mankind, have a great deal of power and are certainly able to do many things but the one thing that we cannot do is give ourselves or anybody else a supernatural blessing. All supernatural blessings comes from God.
I preach and teach the gospel of Christ. To me, that is an absolutely wonderful blessing that has been given to me by the Lord. Man did not make me a preacher nor did I make myself a preacher – this gift came from above. Thankfully, I was able to recognize my gift and put this gift to use. This is certainly not the only thing that the Lord has blessed me with; He’s poured many more blessings on to me and I am very thankful for those blessings.
How about you, are you able to recognize the blessings in your life? I want you to take a moment to count your blessings. I also want you to take a moment to ponder the desires of your heart, and consider the future blessings that you have prayed about to the Lord. One thing that I feel has become lost in my generation is that we don’t often take time to realize the blessings that God has poured out onto us. We are too busy focused on what God is not doing or how much God is blessings somebody else.
That’s a very dangerous spirit to have inside – a covetousness spirit. The covetousness spirit works against the will of God, and so I want to take a focus on it today. Coveting what others have, may not seem like a terrible thing at first glance, but what we miss is that it often takes us away from receiving the blessings that God has for us, and therefore takes us away from His will of being a blessing to others.
God’s will can be very confusing at first glance without any study. God says (Jer. 1:5), “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; I sanctified and ordained you.” For context purposes, God says this to Jeremiah when telling Jeremiah he had ordained him to be a prophet before conception. I believe the same still holds true today because God is unchanging in His ways.
What does this mean for us? Are we predestined to do a certain thing or be a certain person? Does God will
Such a thought bothers many people greatly. The thought that we are potentially destined to be something either good or bad troubles people. Why? Because many people feel the ability to choose who they are have been robbed of them. For many who do not understand the Lord, they feel that rebellion is the key. Rebellion by being able to “choose” who they are. There’s one major problem with such form of rebellion.
God allows us to choose the directions we will take in our life. You have probably heard of the permissive will of God. God’s “permissive will” is based on a concept that God allows us to do things. Some people like to liken these things to sin, but in all honesty, God has always allowed mankind to have choice. We choose to believe or not believe in Him and the Lord allows us to live regardless of the choice that we make. Jesus spoke of how the sun rises and sets and both the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45).
Jesus tells the disciples, and us believers, that is we abide in Him, we will ask what we desire and it will be done (given to us). We like to say that God will give us the “desires of our hear” and this is very much true. However, we must take caution to what the actual desires are that lay in our heart. Consider for a moment, again, what do you actually desire from the Lord in your heart at this very exact moment.
The problem that many of us face is that the things we desire
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
James 1:14 KJV
You will notice that I used that King James Version for this scripture. The reason why is because the word lust feels more proper for what James was describing. We are tempted to be drawn away from what God has for us when we begin to have our very own lusts (desires). Again, God has desires for us to do His will which we will touch on in a moment. However, our own desires (lusts) are now pulling us away from God and causing us to be in a fight with the Lord.
When we often think of lusting, we typically think this deals with the flesh – lusting after the flesh. While there is certainly lusting of the flesh that goes on, I tell you that it is certainly possible for us to lust after more than the flesh. We see what others have – money, cars, clothes, house, etc. – and we start to lust after what they have. We pray to the Lord, “I want what he/she has”. I want you to see how little we begin to value our life or the blessings that the Lord has already provided us when we start to take this course of action.
We truly believe that because we have prayed on it, and that is the desire of our heart, that God is going to give us just that. If you believe that God is going to provide to you what you are lusting after (coveting), I advise you to re-check the scriptures. Covetousness encourages greed. What I mean by this is that we ultimately end up desiring to be better or have more than others – greed.
Again, this begs me to ask the question: when what we lust after works against the Lord’s desires for us, should we really receive His blessings?
The Lord is certainly not going to provide to our lusts. The only thing we manage to do is keep ourselves from receiving the blessings that God already have for us. Stop comparing what you have been given by God to something that God may have given to somebody else! Also, stop coveting (lusting) after the blessings that God has given to somebody else. We say, “God keeps on blessing them but He is not blessing me,” all because we feel our blessings are inferior to another person’s blessings. See against what James said about the Lord’s gifts (blessings).
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above (James 1:17).” Let’s notice against that Jame does not call these gifts inferior, terrible, or awful. The gifts that come from the Lord are both good and perfect – there’s no difference of good and bad when it comes to God’s blessings. You see, the problem is our perception because God is not thinking, when He gives us a blessing, “this one isn’t as God as the one I’m going to give to somebody else”.
Our perception is the biggest of problems. For example, God gives us both sunshine and the rain, right? Many of us prefer the sunshine over the rain because we see the rain as a big nuisance. However, the sun is a blessing and the rain is a blessing as well. The sunshine provides its nutrients to the world and without it, life would not be able to succeed. At the very same time, rain provides its nutrients to the world and without it, life would not be able to succeed. You see, both are good and perfect gifts that come from God that we have managed to categorize as either a good thing or a bad thing.
Our perception is what creates our coveting of what others have. We have no idea what others deal with in their lives, outside of what they allow us to see, but somehow we feel that they are “more blessed” than we are. We decide that we have the power to rank God’s blessings on a scale from 1-10. That is a terrible thing for us to do. We do this and we end up fighting against the Lord’s will all because we want a blessing that simply may not be meant for us because it works against the Lord’s desires for us.
The Lord’s will for us is to ultimately be a blessing to somebody in the world. To often we end up missing out on being a blessing to somebody else because we’re being too stubborn and won’t let go of old man and his coveting ways. You see, coveting is of the old man and not the new man that is of God.
Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
James 1:15 NKJV
Lusting truly can lead to spiritual death, solely because the individual becomes obsessed with his/her own lusts instead of the Lord.
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
James 1:18 NKJV
However, we, the believer, should become a kind of firstfruit of His creatures. We, when we choose to follow and trust the Lord’s desires for us, can become creatures that are a blessing to others. Why we don’t have the power to bring forth supernatural blessings, we do have the power to be of good to others in this world. The Lord will certainly provide us with the gifts, His blessings, so that we can better be a blessing to others.
Let us stop fighting against the will (desires) of the Lord for us. The goal for us in this life we live is to be a blessing to somebody. Nothing better can be said of your legacy than that you were a blessing in this world today. We certainly need more people who will be a blessing to others in this world today.