A New Way To Count Your Blessings

By John Stallings


A man bought a brand new Alpha Romeo & was so proud of it he wanted to celebrate.

So he went to his Catholic priest & asked, “Father, will you bless my new Alpha Romeo?” The priest said, “certainly, but what’s an Alpha Romeo?” “Never mind said the man, you wouldn’t understand.”

Then he went to a United Methodist Church & asked the pastor “Sir, would you bless my Alpha Romeo?” He said, “Certainly I will but what kind of dog is an Alpha Romeo?”

Exasperated, the man saw a Unitarian Church down the block & walked in & asked the pastor, “I just bought a new Alpha Romeo. Would you bless it?”

The Unitarian minister jumped up & exclaimed, “Fantastic! Would you give me a ride in it? Oh, wait, uh, what’s a blessing?”

There are probably others like me who’ve never seen an Alpha Romeo, & certainly have never gone for a ride in one, but we know exactly what a blessing is.

The Hebrew word for “bless” & “blessings” in its various usages is often the form of the word “esher,” which simply means “happiness.” Forms of that word are found more than forty times in scripture, including the statement of David in Psalm 144:15—Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.

But there’s another Hebrew word for “bless” found in the Old Testament about four-hundred times. It’s the word “barak” & it reflects something promised to someone lower in rank. A parent would promise to give his or her estate to a child. A slave-owner would pledge to bless his slave at a point in the future by setting him or her free. Most important for us, it refers to the promise of God, given to those who TRUST in Him.

You’ve probably seen the following article because it’s made the rounds via the internet. If I knew who to give credit for it I would gladly do so. I have somewhat revised & edited it.

“If you live in America & your parents are still alive & still married, you are very rare.

If you have clothes on your back, food in your fridge, a roof over your head & a place to sleep you’re richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank & in your wallet, you’re among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who’ll not survive this week. If you’ve never been to jail, been in a war, been tortured or been so hungry you’d gladly eat from a dumpster, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can go to church without fear of arrest, torture or death you’re more blessed than 3 billion in the world.”

On the average, if you did the math, you’d in all probability count 90 major blessing categories with roughly 10 real problems. That’s—90/10. This is good to know & to keep uppermost in our minds because it shows that our blessings exceed our problems.

As a matter of fact, looking at life with the attitude of counting our blessings, not our problems will change us from negative to positive thinkers in a heartbeat. To put it even more succinctly, the attitude of counting our blessings will cause us to be happier & have enough spiritual victory to constructively face our problems.

ADVERTISING PROMOTES DISCONTENT

We have a whole industry in the U.S devoted to fanning the flames of discontent. Last year in the America, 143.3 billion dollars was spent on advertising. Of the 180 countries for which we have statistics, that’s greater than the entire Gross National Product of all but 35 of them. [Wickipedia.org.]

The whole point of advertising is to make us unhappy with what we have, leaving us with the feeling that it’s outdated & old fashioned. The message we get pounded with is to discard what we have & buy something different. We see prettier houses, newer appliances & more appealing material things of every kind.

A world system encourages us to focus on what we don’t have so we’ll go out & regularly spur the economy. But if we act on this negativity, it will be impossible for us to be happy because we dwell on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. See how that works? So in actuality, we have to learn to live the exact opposite of what our society encourages; always keeping our blessings uppermost in our minds

COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS

I’ve found that when we’re thankful for what we have its hard to be mad at people. There’s just something positive that happens to us when we’re thankful. Angry people are people who feel that somehow life hasn’t been fair to them. But the truth is, they have enough to make them happy if they knew how to appreciate it. If people lost everything they had for a few days & got it back, that would cure them.

Most of us will miss out on life’s big prizes, such as The Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, the Tony’s, & the Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures; A pat on the back, a nine pound bass, a full moon, an empty parking space, a crackling fire, a great meal, a glorious sunset, & hot soup.

Do you thank God each morning for the very fact that He woke you up & you’re alive & kicking? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but every day above ground is a good day.

AMERICA

Let’s talk about how blessed we are to be Americans. I know we’re going through some rough times right now, & we have many challenges but we still live in a blessed country. Many of us make more in one week than some people in other countries make in an entire year.

If you’ve ever traveled outside the U.S you know there’s just no place on earth like this land. Because of my experience in overseas travel, I can’t help but be upset when I hear people criticizing America. Every time I’ve visited a foreign country I’ve felt like kissing the ground when I got home. Don’t misunderstand me; It wasn’t because I didn’t have a great time or that I wasn’t with some wonderful people, it’s just that outside America there are so many things you have to be aware of.

I’m not running down other countries; however I truly believe that if everyone in the U.S would travel abroad for a few weeks, we’d have a lot more folk loving & respecting this great nation in which we live.

This is going to get a little “nitty-gritty” but there are a few things we need to be reminded of. Most everywhere you go outside America you have to watch the food you eat & the water you drink. When we stop at a rest stop here in the States we just assume there’ll be a fairly clean bathroom & certainly there’ll be some toilet paper. Am I right? But in many countries I’ve visited, the bathroom will be a hole in the ground. Forget the paper. Even if it’s available you have to pay extra for it. I could tell you stories.

We just take the good things for granted in our great country don’t we? When we go to the store the produce is sparklingly clean & abundant. There are several varieties of apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes & we can be almost certain the produce has been handled in a sanitary way. I learn about a new fruit or vegetable almost every time I go to the store.

In other countries; -- not so fast; you have to be careful what you eat. You pick up a piece of fruit in Mexico & eat it & you’ll probably get “Montezuma’s revenge.” You drink the water & you’ll get so sick that you’ll pray to die for about two weeks until its run its course—no pun intended. You may be safe in foreign countries if you go to certain upscale hotels to eat but I’ve seen my family all get sick overseas eating in carefully selected places. That’s just the way it is.

If you go to the Middle East, you’ll get Pharaoh’s revenge if you’re not careful. I’ve traveled with large groups when everyone in the group had diarrhea. I can tell you for sure, in most third world countries, all you have to do is smell the air & you know they’re not doing things just right when it comes to waste disposal.

In many foreign countries you have to watch to keep from stepping in filth on the streets. I don’t live in a rich community but in our neighborhood it’s illegal for a person to walk their dog & allow it to foul up the streets or other people’s yards. And dogs are not allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. I’m amazed at how clean the streets are kept & often find myself giving thanks that I live in a country with such high standards & so many resources.

I’m not for a moment going to suggest that America hasn’t made its mistakes. But you & I know-- this country doesn’t try to take over other countries, even when we win a war with them. A lot of folk got all bent out of shape over America liberating 50 million people in Iraq & Afghanistan, as if we committed a crime in doing so.

But look what Sadam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What do you think he’d have done if he had the power America has? Its been said that if a nation wants to be rebuilt, all they have to do is attack us & when we finish kicking their posterior, we’ll go in & rebuild their country. You may remember, that’s what the Marshall plan was all about after World War 11.


FREEDOM!!!

We live in a land of freedom. Think about this; if you were found with a Bible in Saudi Arabia you could & probably would be decapitated. As you well know we have freedom of religion in this country. Do you think for a moment that people are this free everywhere?

I repeat, we are truly a free people. Have you ever had anyone to question your comings & goings? No one monitors when we go, where we go & how we go. It’s not that way in many parts of the world. In moving around in other countries, I’ve had the people at customs read every scrap of paper I had in my briefcase. We can ask questions in America & we can criticize the leadership. We can even run down our leaders without being shot or hanged. Try that in Iran. Cuba’s Castro pulls people out of bed in the middle of the night & throws them in jail for writing a poem he didn’t like.

We’ve grown up with these freedoms & we just take them for granted, but folks if we’re not vigilant we could very well lose what we have. Your pastor can stand in the pulpit & preach the gospel without the fear of going to jail for it, now that’s freedom much of the world doesn’t have.

I know there are corrupt cops but don’t we have relatively good law enforcement in this country? In some countries where I’ve been, if you have a “fender-bender,” you could be pulled from your car & beaten by the onlookers. You might have a wreck & call the law & a few hours later two cops show up, then stand around & discuss it between themselves. Also, bribery in law enforcement is huge in many foreign countries.

In one Caribbean country, Juda & I had our music CDs impounded at customs & we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee to get them into the country. The local pastor who’d invited us for meetings had a brother who was returning from New York & he was on our flight. When he saw what was happening he paid the fees & got us through customs. We later paid him back.

On my list of blessings is the medical care we have in this country. In the last couple of months we’ve had to avail ourselves of local ER facilities because of blood pressure issues Juda experienced. Thankfully she’s fine now but I can’t say enough positive things about the intense care she received. What a blessing it is to know when we need help in the middle of the night there is at our disposal a bevy of medically trained young men & women whose sole aim it is to make us comfortable while, irregardless of our rank in society they do all possible to save our lives & extend their length.

A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS

As a rule, when we think of our blessings we automatically think of things God has added to our lives. But we should also be thankful for the things we no longer have to have. What if you sat down & made a list of things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now know you can? It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy but God has taken it from you & you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.”

It may be a new job you just had to have or a new account you set your hopes on. It may be a person around whom you built your life but now that person is gone. It was difficult for you to let go but you did, & now you’re stronger for it. It may be something you fought for, strived for, lived for, worked for & when you got it you found it wasn’t as important as you once thought.

Your list may contain things that were quite proper in themselves. Most of the things on your list will not be bad or evil or sinful. It’s anything that has happened in your life in the last year about which you can say, “God has shown me that I don’t have to have that in order to be happy.”

And what about times of pain & suffering which seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise? That too should be on your list of blessings.

Have you ever thought about how important it is to have hope in this life? Do you know how many people don’t have any hope in life at all? There may be someone reading this piece that only has a slight glimmer of hope for their future.

SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS

In Ephesians 1:3 Paul wrote; Blessed be the God & father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ….

In order to have these blessings we must accept & obey Christ. This means believing in Him as the Son of God & confessing faith in His name before men, after which He adds us to His church. If you aren’t a Christian let me urge you to trust Christ right now for your salvation.

Paul also said, ---We aren’t like those who have no hope?

1 Peter 1:3 says,--Blessed be God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundance has begotten us again to a lively HOPE by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

THE BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH

What about the church itself? Do you thank God for the blessing of the church? Do you thank God for your brothers & sisters? Many times I think about the great gospel workers who went before us. Many of them risked their lives & are now on the ropes financially because of all the years they spent beating the bushes to see folk saved & blessed.

Do we thank God for each other? Do we pray for each other? Are we thankful that we have places we can come together & hear beautiful music & sing songs of worship? God’s people are a blessing, don’t you agree?

Some time ago I came across a letter written by a woman named Lois Kaufman after the death of her husband & her two subsequent tumor operations. [The letter was published in the Biblical Bulletin, a publication of the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield Pennsylvania.] She says;

Dear Jesus,

I’ve written a lot of “Thank yous” lately but this is my first one to you. Until now I didn’t appreciate your gifts to me these past several months.

Thank you for taking Don home to be with you. Now I’ll never be concerned with what the future holds for him. His days are guaranteed. Thank you for giving him such a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for making his last birthday last Sunday his very best.

Thank you for putting me in the hospital three weeks after he died & showing me the way you could use his death in my life. I wasn’t always sure how to approach others with the Gospel, but now you have given me so many openings I can hardly handle them all.

Thank you for my recent surgery & for the lessons it taught me. Especially for showing me how much I needed you. Thanks for letting me see what it’s like to face surgery & suffering without you as I watched the difference in the lives of my roommates.

Thank you for the lessons Becky & Lori [her daughters] have learned from this. I could never have taught them the way you did. That’s because of the great Teacher you are. I can’t wait to see what you give them on their heavenly report cards.

You know Jesus; I wouldn’t have planned my life this way. In fact, I would have planned it just the opposite. I would have sought to avoid death’s knocks. I would have ducked out on the surgeries & tried to pretend Christians were kept well by you all the time. But I would have missed out on so much.

The kids are sorry they couldn’t be with their daddy on father’s day but we were glad he could be with both his earthly & heavenly Father this year.

Oh, I could go on with this letter, but I could never cover everything I have to thank you for. So I’ll send more, but for now please accept this as a beginning.

GRATEFULLY YOURS,

LOIS

A song was written in 1897 called “Count your blessings.” The words were written by Johnson Oatman Jr. & the music was written by Edwin Excell. I remember singing it in church as a kid.

It seemed like just another song to me at the time but I’ve begun to understand its importance. Here’s the chorus;

Count your blessings name them one by one,
Count your blessings see what God has done.
Count your blessings; name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.


Blessings,


John