Quit Messing with My Blessing

Welcome to Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. Devotions designed to inspire you on your daily walk with God. Here's your host, Ken Gurley.

Hey, good Tuesday morning to each and all of you. Thank you for being a part of our daily devotion family. Six years strong. This month we began 6 years ago 21 days of prayer just as we're in 21 days of prayer now. And what a great time, what a great time to be with you each and every Monday through Friday 7 a.m. Central and just lift up the name of the Lord. So thank you daily devotion family for being a part of this. You make it all worthwhile and the miracles that we've seen. So, David, Crystal, Janelle, Susan, give yourselves a hand for being a part of this great daily devotion family. Yeah, if I could figure out how I could probably do some applause if I... There it is. I figured it out. I figured it out. Let's bicycle horn. Well, that was not... I like the applause there. That's better. Give yourselves a hand.

So, I'm happy that you're here. What a great subject today. Quit messing with my blessing. Oh, you got to be southern. You got to drop this the G on the end of that. That's right. Quit messing with my blessing. You got to be southern when you say something like that. You just have to be, or at least try to sound southern. I want to direct your attention to one of the greatest stories of the Old Testament. And the characters and lessons from this story are cited in the New Testament. It's a story of a dysfunctional family. Take heart. If you're ever forced to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, supposedly the greatest novel of all time, the first novel of all times, it says, "Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well, the family I'm talking about in scripture was an unhappy family. And ironically, it was led by a man named laughter, or Isaac. Yitzhak. Jacob, with the help of his mother, stole the blessing his father had intended for Esau, his twin brother. And when Esau heard the words of his dad, he cried. When he found out that that love scoundrel Jacob, whom God loved, you figure that one out. When he figured out that Jacob had stolen his blessing, he cried with great and exceeding bitter cry. And he said, "Bless me, even bless me also, my father. Don't you have a blessing reserved for me?" He took my birthright. He took my blessing. Quit messing with my blessing. Wow. We once sang a chorus. We are blessed. We are blessed. We are blessed. We are blessed. Okay. Hey, Paul, Don. Uh, Susan, Delisa, this is poll time. It's poll time. We've got to poll the audience. Is it blessed? I mean, like beatitude blessed. Okay. When it's the beginning word of a sentence, is it blessed? Single syllable. That's hard for any southerner to take one single syllable word and make it sound like one syllable. I mean, we can say yes. I mean, we can take one word and make it multi-syllabic, poly-syllabic. Yeah. So, is it blessed, single syllable, or is it blessed? I don't know. The latter sounds more spiritual than blessed. So, just give me your thoughts here. Is it a single syllable? Just you can say one single syllable, two multi-syllable, blessed. Yeah, that David blessed said. That's right. That's right. And I agree with you, Tisa. Esau didn't protect that blessing. He didn't value it. That's what the Bible calls Esau profane because he didn't protect his blessing. We once sang that chorus. Blessed, we are blessed. We are blessed. And how many of you can say, "I'm blessed. I'm a blessed person." If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you're blessed. You're more blessed than the million or so people who will not survive the week worldwide. If you've never experienced the danger on a battlefield, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pains of great starvation, then you're ahead of about a billion people in this world. If you can express your fear, your beliefs without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, death, you're more blessed than half the world's population. If you got food in your refrigerator, yes, I'm talking about that yogurt. That yogurt that has been expired for a month now, but you know it's yogurt, so you'll just eat it anyway. I mean, if you've got food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, then you're richer than 80% of the world's population. If you got any money in any bank, in your wallet, you got spare change someplace, then you're probably in the top 10% of the world's wealthy. If you can hold your head up with a smile and be truly thankful, then I can tell you, you are blessed. You are more blessed than you can imagine. God is emphatic that you and I should realize our status as blessed people. That we're the apple of his eye. We're the sheep of his blessed pasture. It's his desire to bless us. And we want to live being a blessing. We're commanded to remember how many times he's blessed us. In fact, it's theologically correct to say that the most sin is a result of amnesia, that we forget the blessings of God. Adam and Eve forgot the goodness of God. They were blessed with everything but a single tree. Had a single fence around it. Proverbially, it didn't have a white picket fence around it or barbed wire, but they focused on the one thing. You forget the blessings of God. And the cure to keep the blessing of God is just to keep the blessing of God. Guard it. Guide it. As Delisa said a moment ago, protect it. The 103rd Psalm. "Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Forget not." There's that amnesia. "Forget not all his benefits. He forgives iniquity. He heals sin. He redeemed your life from destruction. Crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercy. Satisfies your mouth with good things and renews your youth like an eagle." We are blessed. We are blessed. The word blessed, its root word bless, its noun form blessing, found over 400 times in scripture. God is a blessing God. Blessing God. Not that we consume it upon ourselves, but we're a channel of his blessing to others. Let me just tell you real quick. Barbara, Deborah, Tony, God is in the blessing business. We may say it after someone sneezes, "God bless you." God wants to bless you more than when we sneeze. Yes. Genesis 1. You were created in the image of God. Then look at verse 20, end of 27. And God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful, multiply, replenish." The first thing God ever said to man, the first thing he spoke to man was, "Be blessed. Be blessed. I bless you with fruitfulness. I bless you with multiplication. I bless you with replenishment." The book opens in Genesis 1 with God blessing man. And the book closes in Revelation 22. And twice we read, "Blessed, blessed, blessed are they that keep the sayings. Blessed are they that keep the commandments." From the beginning of the book to the end of the book, God is in the blessing, not blasting. He is in the blessing business. And if you're going to be like God, you're going to be more blessing than blasting. Yeah. I'm talking about your prayers. When we say, "Bless me. Bless me. Bless me." And bless those too. "Bless me. Bless me. Bless me. Bless them. Bless them." We need to be in the blessing business more than the blasting business. Wow. When God came to earth, the first sermon he preached, Matthew 5, seeing the multitudes, goes up in the mountain, sits down, opens his mouth, and says, "Blessed." A nine-fold blessing follows. He picks up a child, sets him in the midst. Blessed. Blesses he. He blesses five loaves and two fishes. And you know what happens there? The blessings of God go a long way. He said, "If you earthly parents know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts?" He blesses those who are watching for his return. Oh yes, he does. God's in the blessing business. God wants you blessed. When you please God, he blesses your way. Abraham's servant looking for Rebecca said, "God has blessed my way." He blesses your family. When Obed-edom opened himself up to the presence of the Lord, this is the essence of the book. Blessed. "The Lord blessed the house of Obed-edom and all that he had." He blesses all of our efforts. Nehemiah shouted, "The God of heaven, he'll prosper us." They built a wall. He spoke to Moses saying, "Exit the wilderness. The Lord will prosper the work of your hands." He blesses our finances. The Bible says if we put him first, if we bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, he promises to open up the floodgates of heaven and pour out on us a blessing so that we don't have enough silos. We don't have enough barns. We don't have enough room to receive the potential of God's blessings. I'm telling you, God's in the blessing business. If you think his arm is short, if you think the reservoirs of heaven, if you think that he only owns 0.19% of the cattle on a thousand hills, if you think that he is, he suddenly, he's suddenly lost all of the gold and silver in the Fort Knox of this world, then you don't know our God. I'm telling you, he's the God that can put a piece of gold in a fish's mouth. He's the God that can create where there is nothing. He speaks things that are not, and they become, they become reality. And then more importantly, he tells Abraham, "Thou shalt be a blessing." In other words, you're blessed to bless others. When you turn to the New Testament, was that disciple of love? Oh, that's just one of those, one of those verses that's either a blessing or a curse. That's it. It's either a blessing or a curse. He said here, here we go. "Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers." Wow. In other words, I, I, I John's saying, I want there to be a direct connection with your spiritual prosperity and your physical prosperity, that as you are prospering in your prayer life, as you are prospering in your development of spiritual disciplines, as you are prospering, being conformed to the image and taking on the love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, faith, meekness, goodness, temperance, as that's happening to you, I, I want it to be reflected in everything you do. What a prayer. I want you to prosper. I don't think John was saying, "I want you to drive a Lamborghini." Although if you have a Lamborghini, I would drive it. Yeah. I believe he's saying God wants you to prosper mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. He wants you blessed. Ephesians 1. How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to him. Long before this world was ever made, God loved you. That's what, that's what Paul said. He saw you. He loved you. He chose you to be holy and without fault. And his unchanging plan was to adopt you into his family and to bring you to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great blessing. God wants to bless you with every spiritual blessing. He wants to shower on you. We go back to that story. Isaac knew that before Esau and his twin brother Jacob were born, that God intended for the elder to serve the younger. Isaac was the one that thought he would bypass God's plan. He called Esau and he said, "I want to bless you before I die." Now, Isaac would live another 40 years, but he thought he could hasten God. But Rebecca overheard him and knew that the promises of God rested with the younger and not the elder. She concocts this scheme for Jacob to get the blessing, and you know the ruse. Just a lot of cheating going on in that family. And all of it was about the blessing. The blessing was not the birthright, the order of inheritance. The blessing was the vision of the future. The blessing was the messianic line that, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and fill in the blank." Esau cried out. He took my birth. He cried out. He took my birthright. Now he's taking my blessing. Well, in this case, that's not exactly the way it was. This was God's preferential order. But in your case, and in my case, we do have an enemy out there. He, he can't take away our birthright, but he wants to take the hand of God's blessing away from our life. When Adam and Eve grew blind to all the goodness of God and they focused on the single thing they couldn't have. When, when Achan focused on that Babylonish garment, that wedge of gold, what are they thinking? It's a self-defeating form of thinking. They think, they think, "Yeah, but yeah, the old yabotss, uh, yeah, yeah, I know that, but yeah, I know. Uh, he's a crippler of dreams. It's a cheater of blessing." When the enemy comes in and says, "We can't receive what God has for us. We need to finish." Mr. Yahut sits, but when I hear God has for me, a voice says, "Yeah, but yeah, but what? But, but, but no, you need to say, it might as well be me. I am blessed." And then there's Miser's. "If only Ida," she shows up with a self-defeating form of regret. "If only I'd done this. If only Ida done that." This is stinking thinking that will rob you of the blessings of God. "If only Ida" will rob you of your present and future. You can't drive a car looking through a rearview mirror. Got to lift your eyes to the future. "If only Ida." Oh, and then you got Mr. Yabet. You've got Miss Only I. "If only Ida." And then they got their kids. Um, "I wish I had." Yeah, "I wish I had done this and I wish I had done that." You can't live in the valley of shame and regret and condemnation. You need to tell the enemy, "Quit messing with my blessing. I'm not going to get into that way of stinking thinking. I'm a child of God. I'm the apple of his eye. God cares about me. He knows how I feel. He is touched with the feelings of my infirmity. He has great pity and mercy on me. He knows I'm just dust, that I'm not perfect, and he shows himself strong to them that believe." That belief. Enemy, quit messing with my blessing. Just not going to get in that way of thinking.

Here's another thing that can do it. Unbelief will mess with your blessing. I mean, does anybody know the names of Shimua, Shephatiah, Igal, Othniel, Palti, Gadi, Gaddi, Ammiel, Saphath, Nahbi, Gaddi? Do you know those names? Those are the names of the 10 unbelieving spies who went into the promised land. Their names are lost to our memory and consciousness. But we remember two, Joshua and Caleb. Those were the two of the 12 that believed. Caleb said, "Let's go right now. We're going to get it. We're going to get it. It's going to happen." But the majority believed the majority report. In whose report will you believe? Makes all the difference in the world. We're not going to let unbelief mess with our blessing. Do you believe that God is good all the time and God does good things? Or has someone been messing with your blessing? Have you joined the "Back to Egypt" committee? Unbelief has gripped your heart. You're ready to turn around from your blessing. You... Here's what you need to do. And I, I, I hate to be so adamant here, but I'm about to underscore this. I'm about to put a, some punctuation. I'm about to put an exclamation point on this. You, you need to get this. You ready? Here we go. I'm going to set up an equation for you. A equals B. Here we go. Unbelief equals death. That's it. Joshua and Caleb lived another 40 years beyond that, but the rest of them died in the wilderness. Unbelief equals death. Faith says, "God promised it. It shall be. I'm going to believe. I will believe. I choose belief." Stinking thinking, unbelief, disobedience will mess with your blessing. Yes. You know, Deuteronomy 28. Oh, wow. They're standing on Gerizim and Ebal, pronouncing the blessings and the cursings before they entered the promised land. Deuteronomy 28. "All these blessings will come down upon you and spread out beyond you because you obeyed. You responded to the voice of God. You're going to have God's blessing in the city. God's blessing in the country. God's blessing on your children, the crops of your land, the youth, the young of your livestock, the calves, the lambs. God's blessing on your basket and bread bowl. God's blessing when you come in. God's blessing when you go out. God will defeat your enemy that will attack you. They'll come in on one road. They're going to leave out on seven roads. God will order a blessing on your barns, your workplaces. He'll bless you in the land that God, your God, has given you. And God will form you as a holy people to himself just as he promised you if you obey, if you keep the commandments of God and live the way he's shown you to live." But if you live, if you skip down a few verses, you're going to hear, you're going to hear the chants of what happens if you disobey from the opposing mountain. And once there was a blessing, now there's a curse. It's a serious thing. Obedience equals life. Disobedience and unbelief equal death.

Let me mention one more, and I've got to move on. Fear will mess with your blessing. The Philistines attacked in 2 Samuel 23. Nearly everybody runs away. Gave the enemy the harvest. You don't remember the name of Shimua, one of the unbelieving spies. But oh, you remember the name of Shammah. Shammah said, "Tired of running. It's harvest time. I need this harvest. This harvest is going to provide for my family. This harvest is going to pay the debt. This harvest, there's some seed corn in this harvest that's going to be next year's harvest." It was a blessing that would go on and on. And Shammah said, "I, I'm not running anymore. I'm holding my ground. Come what may, I'm not going to be afraid. I'm not going to let that amygdala portion of my brain, that fight or flight mode, the paralysis of anxiety grip me." Satan attacks when you sow the seed. Satan attacks just before the harvest. Shammah said, "Not this time, enemy. I already defeated you once. I got the seed into the ground, and you're not going to get the you're not going to get the blessing of the harvest." I wish you'd, I wish your spirit would open up and grasp this right now that God wants to give you your harvest. You need to eject, evict fear, and you need to invite trust and confidence and courage into your heart. The Bible says, "Put on the whole armor of God and you'll withstand in the evil day." Here, hey, remember this, Anna, Linda, here, hear me carefully. The devil can only take the ground that you surrendered. Pull down the white flag. Pull out the sword of the Spirit. Lift up the shield of faith. Quit messing with my blessing. I'm not going to let go. Not going to surrender. Hold to it. Esau said, "Jacob took my birthright. He took my blessing." Here's the, here's the principle. If you let go of one thing, birthright, you're going to let go of another thing, blessing. But the opposite is true. If you hold out for one, then another is sure to follow. That blessing upon blessing rains down from the open windows of heaven. There's another one on the way. Noah, you found grace. Hold on to it. A greater blessing is coming. Daniel, you passed the test. A greater blessing is sure to come. Joseph, you stood true. A greater blessing is on its way. Mary, you are righteous in God's sight and a greater blessing is coming. There's a poem. It's called "Catch Your Blessing." Did you ever notice that each day has blessings to catch? Will you grasp tightly to each passing moment? Or are you consumed with all of life's struggles, missing all those precious blessings as each day is spent? It's time to catch your blessings. I believe that receiving the blessings is largely a matter of believing, holding, waiting, and saying, "God is going to come through. He's coming through for me." Sandra, I believe it. Yolanda, I believe it. I believe it's going to happen. Quit messing. Come on, say it like a Southerner. Quit messing with my blessing. That's it. We don't, don't say it proper. You can't say that proper. You got to say it. You've got to, I mean, that ain't no way to say it to pronounce the G's. You got to quit messing with my blessing. Amen. And I declare that with you. And in the mouth of two or three, let every word be established. It's going to happen, and God's going to give you the desires of your heart.

What a great day. Great day on Daily Devotion, family. Thank you for being with us. 21 days of prayer. We're on our sixth anniversary here of Daily Devotion. Check out kengurley.com and all the resources. Thank you for your support there. Share with us with others. Share this with others. There are blessings to be had today. Go out and catch them. Go out and receive them. Go out and believe that God has something good in store for you today. Like and follow on Facebook. Subscribe on X and YouTube. Share, share, share, share, share, share, share. Share with everyone. And God bless you. Go have an amazing day. And I believe it's going to be just that way. Thank you for sharing in Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. We pray this ministry has been a source of encouragement and strength to you. Please be mindful that support enables us to meet with you each day. To give a donation or connect with us, visit our website at kengurley.com. There you will also find the latest books, podcasts, and resources. "Blessed 90 Days to Change Your World." It's Pastor Gurley's latest book. You can get your copy of this life-changing book at kengurley.com. May God's favor rest on you in every way until we meet again.