BLESSINGS (for Sunday, 11/13/11)

What do you count as your blessings from God? - children? family? friends? home? job? When we ask God to bless us, we usually think of things like good health, prosperity, relief from problems. etc. Do we also consider storms a blessing? Perhaps we would if we lived in a drought-stricken area engulfed in flames if that storm promised lots of quenching rain.

While we would never pray for adversity, our difficulties can also become blessings. We may undergo unbelievable problems or pain, but once on the other side may become something we see as having made us stronger and may allow us to minister to others. Think of Paul and Silas, locked up in prison, yet praying and singing to God and ending up witnessing to other prisoners and the jailer, who became a believer along with his whole family.

There is a young woman named Gianna Jessen that is a great example of this. Gianna should not be alive, and even having lived she should not be able to walk and talk let alone run and sing. She was in her mother's womb when her mother decided to abort her. Chemicals were used to cause the abortion, burning Gianna and causing Cerebral Palsy. She survived, and now has a most powerful witness to share, and share it she does! She states that having CP is a blessing. Mother Teresa even said, "God is using Gianna to remind the world that each human being is precious to Him."

There is a song called "Blessings" sung by Laura Story that says it so well:

We pray for blessings; We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

CHORUS:
'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom; Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

(CHORUS)

When friends betray us; When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It's not our home

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOOFAaUGfRE

by Jan Andersen