“BLESSED IN ADVANCE” It is understandable under some contractual agreement, when provision is made for advance payment (either partly or fully). It becomes necessary in specific circumstances to get a party mobilized for the given task. But issuing a blessing in advance seems an unrecognized phenomenon. One thing, however, that advance payment (or blessing) does is that it obligates you. It intensifies your culpability, if any breach or infraction occurs. The same account of the 5th chapter of the gospel according to Saint John comes handy. After the Lord healed the man that had been sick for 38years; the Jews accosted and began to quiz him, ‘“…who is the man who…” healed you?’ (V.12). After a long 38years of affliction, rather being happy for him, they still were indignant he got well? That is just the truth about life. Many prefer you linger in your affliction than to see you becoming free and getting blessed as much as they are. But in spite of all the drilling and interrogation about who helped him out, “…the one who was healed did not know it was…”Jesus who healed him. (V. 13). My goodness! So this man was healed by the Lord he did not even know or recognize! That turns reasoning and more especially, theology on its head! Blessed by the Lord you never knew? Protected, prospered, kept, liberated, promoted and enlarged by the Lord you do not know? It sounds strange, but that is what I refer to as being “blessed in advance”. And we have so many people like that around; people enjoying the magnanimity of the Lord they do not really know. Attributing your blessings to luck, hard work, smartness or intelligence is a fundamental gaffe. Though you may not have known Him as much as expected, but God does it for you all the same. And the reason He ‘mobilizes’ you with “advance blessing” is to obligate you! “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, ‘see, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing comes upon you.” (V.14). That implies the man was still living in sin when the Lord healed him! But to make him realize that his sinful life style was not being validated, Jesus had to warn him to sin no more! Dear friends and readers, taking the “advance blessing” of the Lord in your life as a validation of your ungodly life style is a tragic error. The fact that we still enjoy His protection, provisions, favor and kindness should not be a justification for remaining defiant. The Lord unequivocally warns him of the devastations his continuing in sin would bring: “…lest a worse thing come upon you.” There is no amount of affluence, happiness, tranquility or success that sin cannot devastate. Sin will take anyone from good to worse! No wise hearted will underestimate the extent to which sin destroys. We must not take lightly any of the “advance blessings” the Lord does generously bestow on us. We should see it as an obligation to give our life to him in return. That way, we’ll keep the blessings. Prayer: Benevolent Father, I thank You for every single way You have blessed me in advance of really knowing You. In return, I give you my life in total surrender. I declare through your grace that I‘ll do everything possible to sin no more; and I pray that none of the good thing You’ve done for me shall decline in Jesus name. Amen. (Kindly share the daily Empowerment Devotional)
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:26:22 +0000
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