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Blocking God’s blessings

Bill D. Hallsted

It was a heavy conversation. The two ladies who usually chatted endlessly about everything, were leaning toward each other across a small table in the fast food place. They had just prayed over the sandwiches that lay, forgotten, between them.

LaDonna’s voice was defensive. “I just said I really don’t think that part of your prayer makes any sense, that’s all.”

Sheila was unusually serious. “What doesn’t make any sense?”

“Asking God for stuff. You’re always asking God to bless you, to provide this, to make that turn out right, and all that stuff. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You don’t think we need God?”

“Oh, yeah. We need Him. We’re pretty helpless, after all. It just doesn’t make any sense because I can’t figure out any reason why God would bless us.”

“Why wouldn’t He?”

LaDonna shook her head. “You’re looking at it wrong. Look at it from His side. Why would He?”

Her companion frowned. “Well, so we can tell Him ‘Thank You,’ and praise Him.”

LaDonna shook her head again. “He doesn’t need that! We don’t even remember to say it, a lot of the time. Besides, He’s got millions of angels to praise Him and thank Him – to do anything we could possibly do, and do it better. He doesn’t need our praise.”

Sheila’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Well, maybe it’s just so we won’t be mad at Him.”

LaDonna smiled. “Yeah, right. That’s it. He’s scared to death of us if we get mad. Do you remember when we were kids and we kicked dirt into ant hills, then watched the ants race around like crazy? We could tell they were really mad, and we thought it was funny.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“That’s gotta be how much God is afraid that we might get mad at Him. We can’t even climb up His leg and bite Him, like that one ant did to you.”

Sheila thought in silence for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose. But we know He does bless us, so there’s gotta be a reason, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think I just figured it out.”

“Then what’s the reason?”

Sheila giggled. “Okay. Are you ready for this? He blesses us because He wants to.”

There was a long moment of silence. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. We don’t have anything He wants at all. I was just reading Psalm 50 the other day, and then when you said what you did, it hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s the Psalm where God says, ‘I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pen, for every animal of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. . . . If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all that is in it.’”

“In other words, God says we don’t have anything He needs.”

“Right.”

“Including our praise?”

“Including our praise. He wants it, He takes pleasure in it, but He doesn’t need it.”

“So He just blesses us because He wants to.”

“Exactly. He loves us. Since He loves us, He wants to bless us. So He does.”

“Okay, why doesn’t He just bless all of us, all the time, so much that we can’t possibly think of anything more to ask for?”

“That’s what I couldn’t figure out,” Sheila admitted, “but I think maybe it’s because we block the blessings sometimes.”

“How do we do that?”

“Sin. Sins like greed, laziness, lust, putting other things ahead of God, using the tithe that belongs to God for our own uses; any kind of sin. If we hang onto sin, it doesn’t matter how much God wants to bless us, He can’t. Our sin works like a barrier that His blessings can’t get through.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“That would make sense of what it says about tithing in Malachi – bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and God will open the windows of heaven and bless us more than we can receive. I don’t think that means our tithe buys God’s blessings. I think it means that withholding the tithe is a sin and that sin blocks God’s blessings from us. If we stop withholding it, quit sinning, then the windows of heaven are opened up again, and God’s blessings come pouring down.”

“Then I had better get rid of the sin in my life. I can’t afford it.”

“Nobody can.”

Bill D. Hallsted is a freelance writer from Griffith, Ind.

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Last modified December 11, 2000.

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