The Best Is Yet To Come...

Well another year has come and gone and I’m still here.... which I guess is a good thing. I am so privileged to be able to just put out my thoughts and let GOD use them to bless or challenge or encourage you guys as you read. It is an amazing blessing to me.
Talking about thoughts and blessing I think ill make my last post for the year a slight challenge for you.

!!rorrim a ni ti daer ot evah uoy os sdrawkcab ti etirw ll'i :D

No seriously, just thinking about blessing and being blessed reminds me of a thought that I was challenged with 2 or 3 years ago, and it has to do with being blessed to be a blessing. It’s a strange thought. To think that I will be blessed just by blessing you, is not something that comes easy to us but when you think about it, it makes a LOT of sense! You know that feeling that you get when you go out of your way to help someone?? You walk away felling uplifted and encouraged and BLESSED!! You don’t do it so that you'll be blessed, you don't do it because you think you'll get something out of it, but you do!! This is being blessed to be a blessing!!

Now, think about what would happen if the person you tried to help, to bless, didn’t accept your blessing! How would you feel? Would you get that feeling of upliftedness? Would you get the feeling that you had actually been useful and been used by GOD?
No.
You would most likely feel a little disappointed and confused. Why wouldn't they want me to bless them with this? What’s wrong with what I have to give? I was only trying to help!!

Can you see what the phrase blessed to be a blessing means? It means that sometimes, if you are the subject of the initial blessing, accepting that blessing is more important than you think! It could be that GOD will use the return blessing to speak to the person doing the initial blessing than he will to you!
Take this for an example.... say I wanted to bless my best mate, Shane. Now I’m not feeling the best about myself, but I’m thinking of him and how it will be such an encouragement to him for me to bless him in some way... so I do. I go out of my way to make him feel good, loved, encouraged at some cost to myself. And he accepts that blessing and thanks me for it. I walk away feeling good because I’ve just done 'a GOOD deed.' and then GOD begins to bless me. Where I once was feeling a little down and discouraged, GOD speaks. Where I was being attacked, GOD defends. Where I was sinking I am uplifted, simply because I was ready to be used by him to bless someone else!

This relates so well to what GOD did for is through Christ’s death on the cross.... THE ULTIMATE BLESSING!!GOD saw that we were sinking, that we were a little down (actually so far down that we couldn’t get back up by ourselves) and he thought, "These are my children, my FRIENDS, I want to bless them! I want to help them out of the pit, out of their trouble. I want them to feel the same way about themselves as I feel towards them! So at Great personal cost to himself, he sent the son to help us he put the son IN the pit so he could give us a boost up and out! (Now if you think about this, if Jesus is lifting everyone out of the pit, then who is going to lift him?! herein lies the cost.) Jesus chose the pit so that we could get out of it!
GOD is blessed when we accept his blessing on us! IMAGINE NOT accepting this blessing!!! imagine that you said to yourself, "no thanks Jesus, I’ll just keep jumping and hope that one day I’ll be able to jump high enough." you've forgotten that with every jump you get more and more tired, and your feet start to make impressions in the dirt, both of which make your goal harder to achieve! If you take Jesus' hand, then he will lift you out of that pit. Just like that. Just say to him, "hey, I, uh, I, I need you. I can’t do it. I’m trying, you can see that, I’m trying REALLY hard; I’m jumping as high as I can but... I just can’t. Will you help me? I need to apologise for not accepting your offer sooner, but something told me I could do it! Thanks for being here to help me out, I know that it means that you'll die here, but thanks. It means so much to Me." that's all you need to do! Have you done it? Why not? What are you waiting for? Are you looking for another way? There isn’t one. Are you thinking to yourself "he's wrong I’m just going to keep jumping and I’ll get out, I’ll work harder?" IT WON’T WORK! Just accept the blessing that GOD has offered you and let your life, the very fact that you ARE alive, bless him!!

For those of you who have taken up God’s offer of life, who will you bless? This coming year? Who will you allow to bless you by blessing them?

Take the challenge and see what happens (or maybe you wont see) when you accept the blessing that a friend (GOD included) bestows upon you!!

I’m glad that GOD ahs used me through this blogspot this year. There have been times when I have felt like what I have to offer is of no use and not important, but GOD is faithful to his promises. And I have been available to be used by him....

The best is yet to come!! A scary thought!
I pray GOD bless your new year!
Servant.

P.S. The bit you could'nt read near the top needs a mirror. Have fun! :D