God Wants to Bless Us

Have you ever thought about the way God relates to us? From the very beginning, in the Book of Genesis, He tells us about the first man, Adam, and Adam’s wife, Eve. Before God created them, He outlines the six days of His masterful work. He created the earth for our habitation, and then He created everything within the earth that humans would ever need. He didn’t keep this a secret but shared His process with us. He wanted us to know Him as our Provider, and He wanted us to know that we’re created beings, mere mortals. God’s intelligence and power is exponentially higher than ours, and we can’t do anything unless He allows us to do it. In less time than a blink of an eye, God could make us and everything we know disappear, and He can do so to such a degree that it would be as if we and the entire universe never existed. We’re fragile in so many ways, and we make tons of mistakes, yet God, in His infinite majesty and humility, wants a relationship with us. It’s an amazing and humbling reality!

In many of the Old Testament records, we see God identifying Himself to those He chose. In Genesis 17:1-2, for instance, God appeared to Abram and said, “I’m El-Shaddai, God Almighty. I want you, Abram, to serve me faithfully. I want you to live a blameless life before Me, because I have great plans for your life. I will make a covenant with you, and I bless you with so many descendants that you won’t be able to count them.” We should overlook the importance of God identifying Himself to Abram and then setting the terms of their relationship. God is God all by Himself. He doesn’t need anything or anyone to be who He is. Our Heavenly Father didn’t have to identify Himself to Abram, nor did He need Abram’s okay to do what He wanted to do. But what we witness in God’s dealing with Abram is that our Heavenly Father constrains Himself for our benefit. This is because He desires a relationship with us, and He values us.

God’s desire was not only to bless Abram but to bless countless others through him. This is another really important gem for our lives. The goodness of God never ceases. He works with, by, in, and through us as we live by His love. God didn’t create us to be robots, nor did He make us automatically obedient and compliant with His Will. He’s given us the gift of free-will, and He will never withdraw, violate, or overstep it. With each passing moment, we make choices that affirm who we are choosing to be, and God allows us to do this.

Our Heavenly Father wants a relationship with us that proves the brilliance and perfection of our creation. Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, is the blueprint of our design. So, God has woven magnificence into each of us. We can have the kind of relationship with Him that includes partnership, commonality, and fellowship. He is continually rooting for us to recognize who we are as His kids so that we live through the authority and power of His love. Again, God constrains Himself by His love. He allows us the tremendous privilege to partner with Him to get things done within the earth. He does this because it pleases Him.

1John 4:9-10(NKJV) tells us, “9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” God invites us to come and live inside His love where His blessings and goodness abound. His way of relating to and working with us is always about the greater good, and when we accept His Word and love by faith, we come into agreement with Him to perform the extraordinary in our lives.

This is what the record of Abram reveals. Genesis 17:3 says that after Abram heard what God said, he fell face down on the ground. This was a show of tremendous reverence and humility. It conveyed Abram’s agreement with a partnership with God, and after this, God changed his name from Abram to Abraham. It’s important that we take notice of the time that God put into His relationship with Abraham. There was a span of 25 years between God making the promise to Abraham and the actual manifestation of this promise. He and Sarah conceived their first child, Isaac, when Abraham was about 100 years old, and his wife, Sarah, was 90.

Abraham’s destiny was to become a man of great faith, and God did not rush him. God walked and fellowshipped with Abraham. He ‘fathered’ Abraham and patiently helped him to become the man he was destined by God to be. It took time for Abram to transition to Abraham, and this allows us to see that we don’t become the men and women we were destined by God to be overnight. Our relationship with God must be walked out over time, and this is all due to His amazing mercy and grace. He doesn’t rush us, nor did He make things in such a way that we automatically become perfectly obedient and humbled before Him. It’s a process and this is the way He orchestrated His relationship with us to flow.

Jude 1:21(KJV) commands us to “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” God is so patient and loving with us because He wants to bless us. He doesn’t ever want to see us fail, regress, or fall. He wants the best for us, and the best for any living being is to live according to God’s Will and plan. It’s to live in His love and allow it to fuel our every move. Everything we do for God’s Kingdom acknowledges our level of reverence for our relationship with our Heavenly Father. As we walk in diligence, patience, and faith in Him, like He did with Abraham, God will bless us as we continue to grow and be the men and women of great faith that He wants us to be. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

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