Blessed to Bless

Genesis 12:1-5 (Abram's blessing)

Psalm 15

Matthew 4:12-23 (Fishers of People)

Do you know how blessed you are? When you think about blessing, you might think about all the stuff you have, your wealth, the food, the entertainment, but I think that is barely scratching the surface. What about all the people God has brought into your life? All you have to do is look around you in this place to realize that you have this great big community and family that loves and supports you. These people would do more for you than you might realize. You might think your talents, capacity, or giftings. Each of you has been given by God a particular set of skills, interests, talents, and passions that make you special and wonderful. You might think about health. Just like stuff, this can be a real blessing as it brings with it a certain kind of freedom, but even if you don’t have your health, there are ways that God blesses you in the midst of suffering and often through it: giving you strength, courage and a chance to witness in faith.

The thing is I believe these blessings are only secondary, or side effects of our greatest blessing. Our greatest blessing is a relationship with God, where we might experience from the source what it is to be blessed, what it is to have joy, what it is to feel and share love, and what it is to have a purpose. What’s more, the stronger our relationship with God, the more we will see all these other things in our life for the blessings they are.

In our two passages today, Abram is called out of his family to follow God in a foreign land and these four fishermen Simon, Andrew, John, and James are all called to follow Jesus into a new way of life. In the midst of being called out, of leaving much of what they had and were to follow God, these men find that they are even more blessed for having done it. Yet, that seems a little contradictory to a modern hearer. How can you leave all these blessings, the stuff, family, friends, and purpose, and find yourself more blessed? It’s because they were turning to the true source of the blessing and so they found even more.

I have experienced this in a fairly drastic way myself. Most of you know that before I was a minister, I was an actor and singer. At one point in my career, God reminded me, through a dream and a film, that because of an accident at the age of 6, I was once deaf. Then through a conversation with my parents, God showed me how he had miraculously healed me. This began for me a time of reflection where I slowly saw how much of a blessing my hearing and healing had been. I saw how my whole life, my joy of music, storytelling, singing, and performing depended on my hearing. I saw this thing that I had taken for granted in a whole new way. Because of the healing, it also began to show me that I had taken God for granted as well. And a question kept persisting in my heart: if God had done so much for me by giving me my whole life and joy, why wasn’t I willing to give even a little back?

I found myself more and more wanting to give back, serve, and follow God. Eventually, though this is a bigger story, this lead me to stop acting and pursue ministry. Yet, the interesting thing was that the more I served, even at the expense of the music and performance that I loved, the more I actually found how much of a blessing my hearing and voice could be to me and others. I believe this is because I was coming closer to the source of the blessing and because I was coming closer to God’s purpose in my life.

It took a healing to remind me of what God has given me, but it shouldn’t have. Everything we have and are was a gift from God. My hearing was a gift from God, even if there wasn’t a miraculous healing. So is every part of your life, experience, and purpose. It is truly a gift from God as well. What had Abram done to deserve God’s blessing? What had these fishermen done to deserve a new purpose and gifting? What had I done to deserve my hearing? What have any of us done to deserve this life? No math that I know of can balance the scales on that.

So why does God bless us with so much then? If we haven’t or can’t deserve it and often have done the opposite of deserving it, why would God do so much for us? I think the answer is really simple because he wants to. It is part of his character and identity that he loves us so much that he continually wants to have us experience blessings and he continually wants to make us into more, God wants to transform us through these blessings.

Did you notice? Both of our passages are about God calling people to follow him, but they are also both foundation stories. Abram’s story is the beginning of the family of Israel and the fishermen story is the beginning of the family of Jesus’ disciples. As we said, they both began with people moving towards God and experiencing more blessings for it. They both lead to a community of 12, which then become a community of 70 and then grow almost exponentially. This should remind us of what we talked about last week, how we are meant to be a great growing family of God.

Yet something else is interesting about this story. Notice both of their blessings. Abram was blessed to become a blessing to all nations and the fishermen were blessed to become fishers of men. What God is showing us in both of these stories is that these people were blessed to bless. They experienced a blessing so that they could share that blessing. But because both of these stories are foundational stories for Israel and the church this is more overarching than just that. God is trying to show us all, that the reason we are blessed is so that we too might bring others into his blessing and so that we might show others the blessings of a closeness with God.

That’s exactly what I experienced too. Acting can be a fairly self-involved, and isolating profession, but the more I used my voice, the more I listened, the more I served, but especially the more I helped others see and know God’s blessing the more and more I would know my own blessing. The more I would see blessings take shape. The more I would see the purpose behind my blessings. Even while I was acting I began to see it.

We are blessed to bless. We are given the revelation of God’s love, mercy, and grace so that we might also share it. God’s love for us is great, but it doesn’t stop at us, it is meant to reach beyond us through us. We already have so much. God has already given to us beyond our deserving and yet he still wants to give us more. The only thing is that we have to follow him, we have be close to him, the source, and we have to live out his blessing. It is through that closeness with that God and sharing in his work and purpose that we might both find greater blessing, but also become a blessing to those around us. AMEN

How do you feel or know you are blessed?

What does this tell you about God?

How do Abram and the fishermen experience God’s blessing?

Were they blessed before? What is different?

Why does God bless Abram?

Why does God bless these fishermen?

How does God bless them?

Why does God bless us with so much?

What are these stories the beginning of? What does this tell us about these blessings?