Austin Gardner | 5 Biblical Ways to Speak Life Over Your World

What is the difference between a contract and a covenant? And why does it matter for your spiritual life? Today, Austin Gardner takes us through a deep dive into the types of blessings found in the Bible.

Austin shares honestly about his 71 years of life, his battle with cancer, and the unwavering support of his wife, Betty. He moves beyond "sins of omission" and performance-based religion to show how God has woven blessing into the very fabric of our relationship with Him. If you want to learn how to bless your children, your spouse, and your church according to who God is (rather than what they’ve done), this episode is a must-listen.

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Transcript

hy Blessing Matters

Austin Gardner 0:28

There are five biblical forms of blessing. And so I just, you know, we've been talking about blessings. I want you to work through how blessings work in the Bible with me, if you would. When we read the Bible carefully, we notice something fascinating. Blessing does not appear in only one form. God has worked it out, spent it through the Bible, and showed us what it's like. There are several different types of blessings. And there's blessing language. It is true that in all forms, God is communicating life and favor to his people. I think it's wonderful. I think it's just not something I was used to hearing. I didn't, I don't know. It was always more like what I ought not be doing or what I ought to be doing. Fact is, uh, we had uh you know we had uh sins that we did wrong, committed sins, and there was even a word for sins that we didn't commit, you know, but we didn't do the right thing. I I I'll come up with that in just a minute. That's 71 years of age just hit me pretty hard right there, uh, trying to consider what that word was. And you're probably already thinking of it because you're smart and young and you're still listening. But let's go through the types of blessings right quick. Uh, there's the calling on God to bless someone in the Bible. That's the most recognized form of blessing. It's the one that I'd love. And it's the one that we found in Numbers 6.24. The Lord blessed thee. Now, I do need to remind you that it was God who told his people. I want that prayed. I want that said. It was God who was making it clear. I want my people to be blessed, and I want you to communicate not your blessing, but my blessing. And that word blessing there means speaking favor. It means invoking divine goodness. And it originated with God. It was never just a polite phrase. It's not just something that you say. It's not, how are you doing? I'm fine. How about you? It wasn't that at all. It was a genuine, heartfelt from God, believing that God heard it. It was a calling from heaven and calling on heaven's favor into someone else's life. In Jewish homes today, parents still bless their children on Friday evenings just before Sabbath. The father will place his hands on his child and speak priestly blessings. For thousands of years, families have continued this biblical tradition. It's not very common among us Gentiles, but the Jews still do it. So it is a prayer spoken out loud over someone else's life. And what I love about number six is it was commanded by God to the priests. You pray that prayer, I'm going to bless them. Just go ahead and pray the prayer. And then there's another kind of blessing where it's a declarative. It's where God says, These are the people who are blessed. Like in Psalm 111, which we've already seen, he said, Blessed is the man that walks on the counts of the ungodly. You're not asking for God's blessing there, but he's just telling you that this is the kind of life that uh that man leads and he's a happy life. It's a good life. It's talking about deeply happy, flourishing under God's blessing. It's a life of God's favor, God working in their life. And so it's described right there in that psalm as a tree planted by the rivers of water. Its roots near life-giving water. We are rooted in the love of Christ. We are rooted in God. And uh God made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in him. That was stated by Saint Augustine, or Augustine is I would call him, but he's our brother in Christ if he trusted Christ. And then there's covenant blessings in the Bible. God promises through covenant relationships. Now, on my blog on WAusergardner.com, I have a whole series. You should really go, I think it's seven articles. I bet it's 10,000 words, and it's going to be coming out in a free e-book that you can download. But you should understand the covenants a little more. I didn't understand covenants. In Deuteronomy chapter 28 and verse 2, it says, All these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord. So the blessings were related to our relationship with our Father and our obedience. Now, covenant, we don't really know what a covenant is in our day and time. We are very familiar with contracts. We just don't do much with covenants. The closest maybe is a marriage covenant, where we say, I take you for good or bad. In our today's society, you ditch your wife. My wife and I have been married 52 years, but today, marriage covenant isn't kept very much. But those promises then shape the relationship. Imagine what Betty has gone through. She took that promise and she's loved me, and now I've got all this cancer. I take all this medicine, and she's doing all that to help me. And God's blessings over us don't ebb and flow. He just continues on loving us. They are rich, they are sure, they're beyond measure. That's what God's doing for us. Then there were kingdom blessings. When Jesus began his ministry, he started out by saying, Blessed are, blessed are, blessed are, and what we call the Beatitudes. And it's about being spiritually fulfilled, favored by God, living in divine joy. Jesus is showing us that true happiness, true blessing comes through humility and righteousness and mercy. Not what we work to get, it's what that produces in us. The world says, Blessed are the powerful, and Jesus said, Blessed are the humble. The kingdom of God is not something that comes later, it's something already among us. That's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said. So as we are in our churches and in your family, I just want to challenge you to consider, let's be speaking words of blessing. And there's a power of life and death in our tongue. So bless God's people. Bless your children. Don't bless them according to what they've done, bless them according to who you are. That's what God has done in our lives. In 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the Bible said, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. Those blessings come at the end of the letters and they come in gatherings and they come in prayers, and you're sending out God's people, strengthened by God's presence. I don't know that we're doing that today. I want to challenge you to think about it. For 2,000 years, Christian service has ended with a benediction. We have a close in prayer nowadays, but the benediction was God's blessing over the people. We are preaching Jesus. We're preaching Him to them, that they can know how to be saved, they can go out and enjoy life. We are to remind people that Jesus is going with them wherever they go. I just want you to take it to heart right here, just a moment, that we live in the day of blessing. God is a blessing God. And so I want to challenge you to consider that and bring that to play. God bless you. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, God loves you, and he wants his blessings declared on you, and you let the world suck you into this thought that God's not blessing. That's not true. So live in his blessings today. Know that the Holy Spirit of God has moved into you and taken up presence. You're never alone. He never forgets you. He always hears you. He loves you. He is there for you. Thank you very much. God bless you. Tell us somebody else about this podcast if you would.