BLESSED TO BE A BLESSING
As we embark on another year with all the hopes and dreams a New Year brings. I am praying that we will align ourselves with God’s heart for our church and the wider community for 2025.
I am aware that whilst we see time zones of 365 days a year and with clearly defined hours (8,760 hours a year) God sees seasons. I am still grateful that God honours our calendar and engages with us within the framework of our time zone and works with us.
As I have waited on God for a theme for the year which we can use as a focal point for all that God does among us, I believe God wants our theme to be ‘Blessed to be a Blessing’
We are already blessed in so many different way, especially our relationship with Jesus but I believe God wants to open our eyes to see his blessings in three distinct ways
- He wants us to see the depth of his blessings presently in our lives
- He wants to increase his blessing upon our lives
- He wants to encourage us to pursue his blessings so that we can be a blessing to those God has placed in our lives and those we are going to encounter as we travel through the year.
There is so much we can learn from the timeless story of Abraham. He was a man blessed abundantly by God. He was blessed not merely for his own sake or that of his immediate family, God poured his blessing on him so that he could become a blessing to countless generations. God’s intention was not merely to enrich Abraham, but to empower him to enrich others.
This year, I want to challenge all of us to be proactive recipients of God’s blessings. We can so easily fall into the trap of a passive engagement, i.e. “God if you want to bless me then let me know” mindset. I am praying more for a Jabez like mindset. He prayed “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory! Please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all trouble and pain!” And God granted him his request.” 1 Chronicles 4:10
I believe as we actively engage with God’s desire and create an expectancy around what God wants to do we will see and experience his heart for us.
Here are three things I believe we can do to engage
IDENTIFY YOUR BLESSING
I am praying for the grace of healing. I come across many people inside and outside the church who need a touch of God’s healing physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I am therefore making myself available to God and asking for his blessing with the grace for healing so I can serve his people and community more effectively.
What are the one or two specific blessings you long to receive this year?
- Is it a deeper relationship with God
- Financial wellbeing
- Relationship breakthrough
- Improved health
- or a breakthrough in a particular area of your life?
Take the bold step and ask God to bless you and work with you in that area.
EMBRACE GOD’S BLESSING FOR OTHERS
As you receive these blessings, remember that they are not merely for your personal enjoyment or a badge of honour. They are tools to empower you to bless others. Just as God blessed Abraham to be a blessing, He wants to bless us to be a blessing. Actively seek God for where and how you can become a blessing as you are blessed. In fact I believe sometimes we’ll never discover the extent of our blessing until we start blessing others.
BE A PROACTIVE BLESSER
Don’t wait for others to come to you. Be intentional about seeking opportunities to bless those around you. Give generously of your time, talents, and resources.
Let’s step into this new year with faith and expectancy. Let’s embrace the privilege of being blessed to bless. As we do, we will not only experience the fullness of God’s blessings in our own lives but also become conduits of His grace to others.
Here was God’s promise to Abraham “I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.” – Genesis 12:2
In the New Testament Jesus highlighted the blessings that come from blessing others “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.’ Luke 6:38
So, in 2025 God wants to bless us so we can be a blessing
He wants us to actively pursue his blessing rather than passively expect it
He also wants us to bless others as we ourselves are blessed
I am looking forward to all the blessings God has for us in 2025
COMMUNITY ACTION
God wants to bless and reach the community of Worthing.
That is why God wants to pour his blessing upon the church.
People say ‘the fruit of a tree is not for the tree’ this is a metaphor used to say ‘we should live our lives not for our own benefit, but to serve others and make a positive impact on the world’.
From a biological standpoint that statement is not entirely accurate. Trees produce fruits for a reproductive strategy. The seeds within the fruit are essential for the tree’s survival and propagation. This also means for us the fruit we produce leaves a lasting legacy not just during our lifetime but for generations to come.
WORKING COLLABORATIVELY
One of the journeys I believe we need to embark on as we journey through 2025 is ‘see a need meet a need’. We want to encourage each other and the church to see a need and believe that God can bring his blessing upon that need to meet it.
Mary did that at the wedding in Cana in Galilee. She observed that the wedding wine had run out (saw the need) and she told Jesus about it (meet the need) she then actively encourage others to help with the need being met when she said to the servants in the house ‘do whatever he tells you to do’ (collaboration)
We are going to explore projects we can work on collectively as a church community like we did for ‘charity water’ in 2024. If there is something God has laid on your heart and you passionately want us to engage with, please get it ready for the leaders meeting in January so we can explore it together.
TIME WITH GOD (PRAYER)
Jesus said “I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. One of my desires as we journey through the year is this, ‘Lord make us wise and effective builders in your Kingdom and of your kingdom’
We know spending time with God is a sign of where we put our trust. This is not something we can hide, when we consult God and factor heaven into our decision making we are making a statement that we trust heaven’s wisdom and want to lean on it and the opposite is equally true.
So we want to cultivate this attitude in everything we do, the whole church, special seasons, men and women’s, personal time with God and collective Sunday morning encounter. We are still going to use Tuesdays as our days of collectively meeting with God together.
I feel we have somehow fallen into this mindset that spending time together with God doesn’t matter, what matters is that we are praying. It would be true to say eating together wouldn’t keep you more alive than eating on your own but we all know that eating together with others does a lot more for your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical well being than eating on your own.
Here are five important reasons to spend time with God together
- It creates unity of heart and purpose
- It is encouraging and deepens relationships
- It increases our faith. God uses others faith to inspire us
- It expands our perspective beyond self and enables gratitude to develop
- It creates a greater impact
You matter – your absence matters and I want to encourage everyone to see this truth. I will never state how many prayer meetings you need to attend in person to be right with God. My desire is that we would allow God to be a part of our prayer narrative and let the Holy Spirit challenge us.
LOVE
How can we make people feel loved, know they are loved and experience God’s love for them. This is a blessing I want us to explore in 2025. I know if this would ever become a reality then it needs to start inside the church before it can move outside the church to the wider community God has placed us in.
I want you to imagine a really dysfunctional family where chaos and abuse and negativity reigns supreme and yet that family applies to look after children in foster care and social services place vulnerable children into the care of that family. At a human level we would be appalled.
I believe the same is equally true spiritually. God loves people. The whole essence of Jesus coming into the world was because of God’s love. I believe any church community that loves people and wants God’s best for others becomes a community that God can trust with souls. My prayer is that in 2025 we will continue to grow in this grace.
We know love is not an imposition. It is not about getting our own way. It is not also about declaring truth from our own perspective. Love is about wanting another human being to encounter God, in the way God wants to reach them and how He wants to work in their life.
My prayer in 2025 is that we would continue to grow in the grace to love and make people feel loved.
May God continue to guide us so we grow in our collaboration, prayer and love.
WORD FROM PRAYER MEETING 19th NOVEMBER 2024
At the prayer meeting on Tuesday we had a picture of a pilot light in a boiler that was functioning. it was stable and ready, then suddenly there was a ‘wooosh’ as the pilot light ignited and soon there were flames burning.
It felt like God was saying we are coming into a ‘wooosh’ season. There will be a thawing of hearts and a new warmth and aliveness coming into our community. As that flame burns God was saying things that had become bearable will become unbearable and they will be shed so that more freedom of movement and heart will arise.
When we sense God is saying something I believe the starting point should be ‘Lord how does this apply to me’
Give this word some thoughts and let God encourage you.
