Abiding in Blessing

In this episode we delve into what it means to be "blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places." As we go through Ephesians 1 we are focusing on the "in Christ" statements that are speaking of the abiding life of the Christian. This week is Ephesians 1:3. The enemy has done a good job at creating confusion and hesitation when it comes to living in abundance and the blessings of the Lord. Yet God clearly intends for us to live in the blessings He has given us.....maybe we just don't understand what the blessings are intended for.......

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I came across some information this week that there was some research done, and apparently they pretty extensive, but they found that whenever there is a woman who is upset, there's a 98% chance there's a man behind the situation that doesn't know what he did wrong. This joke's called the Golden Phone. A man in Detroit, Michigan decided to write a book about churches around the country. He started by flying to San Francisco and started working east to zigzag across the States from there. He went to a very large church and began taking pictures. He spotted a golden telephone on the wall in one corner. He was intrigued by a sign that read $5,000 a minute. Seeking out the pastor, he asked about the phone and the sign. The pastor answered that this golden phone was, in fact, a direct line to heaven, and if he were to pay the price, he could talk directly to God. He thanked the pastor and continued on his way, visiting churches in Seattle, Boise, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, and other places. He found more phones with the same sign. From each pastor, he received the same answer. Finally, he arrived in the Southeast in Florida. Upon entering a church, lo and behold, he saw the usual golden phone, but this time the sign read calls 35 cents. Fascinated, he asked the pastor, Reverend, I have been in all these cities across the country, and each church I have found this very same golden phone, and I've been told that it's a direct line to heaven, and that I could talk to God. However, in the other churches, the cost was $5,000 a minute. Your sign reads 35 cents per call. Why is that? Pastor Smiling benignly replied, son, you're in Florida. Now it's a local call. Well, just doing a little review of last week. I feel like the Lord starts me on something and we just keep going until the road ends. But it's John 3, or sorry, John chapter 17, verse 3, and Jesus says, This is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. So we've been talking about what is this to know God? What is eternal life? What is it to know God? What is it to know Jesus Christ? And so we talked about John 15, where Jesus is talking about I am the vine and you are the branches, and the purpose of those branches is to bear fruit. And when you bear fruit, he prunes them, so they bear more fruit. And that this abiding is the life of the Christian. This is the centerpiece of what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And so we went back, and you know, this is a marking characteristic of Adam and Eve's existence in the garden. It was unbroken, unhindered union and relationship with God. It talks about that they talked to God, they walked in the garden with him, that Eden was a place that God set man, it was like the best of the best, and he was dependent, he had an identity and a purpose, all within that framework and that relationship with God. And they were one spirit with God. Remember that God breathed life into man, it's the living spirit of God, and now they live by the same spirit. And God said every day after creation that it was good. And the third day ended, and God saw it and it was good. Well, at the end of creating man and all of creation, he said it was very good. So it was full, it was complete, there was nothing lacking, there was nothing missing, and man was fully linked with God and satisfied. But we all know that the fall came, that man rebelled, and we died spiritually. Mankind, the Spirit of God, left man. And now he is wandering about through the Old Testament, bumping into walls, trying to figure out this God that he can now not really know or really understand completely. And Adam and Eve became something other than God. Like they were one with God, they were that close to him, now they've become something completely separated from him. And so the sinful or the carnal nature that now man was living from, I likened to that as cancer, because cancer is a cell that turns rogue. It stops living out of the DNA that it was created with, and it starts living outside of its intended purpose and its original intent. And so cancer starts to think about itself, it doesn't die when it's supposed to, and it keeps replicating and taking up space and energy and resources until it ultimately tries to kill people. And so this is the picture of the carnal nature of man. It thinks about itself, it's only wanting what it wants, not the will of God, it rejects that. But its ultimate purpose is to bring chaos, death, and separation from God. And so then we went to Ephesians chapter 2. Last week, verse, I was just gonna read a couple of verses here. And it says, but God, right? In this frame that man was in, he had really no way of dealing with this cancer. It was kind of like the law came to just chop it off. You know, I got cancer on my finger. Well, let's just chop it off, right? The the law was pretty harsh, it was directed towards keeping man going until Jesus Christ could come, and it just was pretty violent in its response to sin and the fall. And then so we see here in Ephesians, but God. There's a point at which all of a sudden God steps in, is Jesus Christ. It says, who is rich in mercy because of his great love, which with which he loved us, even when we were dead and trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. But God. So this comes into this chaos, into this cancer, and he gives us the antidote. He gives us a new life to live from, not the carnal nature, not this fallen, rebellious nature, but the nature of God. And as we read further on, it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourself, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Alright, so he doesn't just give us a get out of hell free card. He's actually given us new life, divine life. And I was likening this last week to an engineer creating a motor or an engine to run off a certain type of fuel. And if we go to the gas station and we fill up a diesel pickup with gas and try to run it on that, it will not go well for you. In the same way, God has created man, us, to live from the life of God. That was the original intent and the way in which we were engineered and hardwired. So the fuel of the Christian life flows from this connection, this what I just read, the gospel that Jesus Christ has come and died on our behalf and has canceled the sin and separation from God so that we can step into it. So this connection and relationship made through us receiving his love and grace through his sacrifice on the cross is the fuel, is the energy, is that life that's supposed to flow through us. That is, in essence, the center of the Christian existence. And we get that picture with this vine, and then there are branches. And it talks about also in the scriptures that we have been grafted in. We've been cut into this vine. And so I've done a little bit of grafting back in back in the days. And there's a certain layer right under the bark. If you peel back bark on a on a little twig, you'll feel there's a layer that's slippery. And that's a certain layer, that's what you've got to cut down to. Not too deep, not too shallow, and that's the place where you stick the bud or the other the other piece of branch. And when that that particular layer then grows into both the xylem and the phloem, it's it's neither, it's kind of where the cells begin to differentiate. And so that's the point, that's what you can think of. The gospel is that cambium layer, that specific layer, that when you when you are grafted into that, that's where life comes from. That's where everything flows. The other interesting thing about grafting is you have your rootstock, and then you have the piece that you're putting into it, which is called a silum. Now, when you put those together, the expression of both of those is a it's a combination of both of those plants. So there are certain plants you can't you can't graph together. They have to be like in a certain family of trees. But there are some that are very different, but they're still in the same family of trees. So if you if the rootstock can be completely different than the plant, the fruit that the plant is producing, because it's being expressed through both the scion and the rootstock. And why is that like important, or why am I bringing that up? Because each one of us grafted into Jesus Christ is a unique expression not only of who Jesus Christ is, but who he's made us to be. And so the need is for each person to be grafted into this vine to get a holistic picture of who Jesus Christ really is and what he's like and what he wants to do on this earth. It's kind of like if you have a mosaic, right? You take a few tiles and you put them together, it looks like a blob. But if you put a whole, like thousands of these little tiles together, you can create these elaborate pictures, and that's really what this life in Christ is also like. Each one of us being a single expression of God, but as you zoom out, it becomes a more complete and full picture of who he is and who he is on the earth. And we get to be a part of that. That's the neat thing about it. Like Jesus Christ, the vine, doesn't produce fruit. The branches do. And so he has purposed it that way, in that we are an active participant in what Jesus Christ wants to do in the earth, what he wants to express, and being able to expose him now in our world, in our lives. And so that is the that is the place, that the gospel believing that Jesus Christ loved us so much that he came to die, John 3.16. That is the point at which that connection is made. Now I want to begin to talk about what then comes about from that connection. Okay? We're connected by the gospel, by the good news, we believe that. Alright? Now what happens? Now what is that like? So let's go back to Ephesians chapter 1. And we'll just start in verse 1. It says Paul, an apostle Jesus Christ, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Alright, I'm just gonna pray real quick. God, I just thank you for this time. I pray, Lord, that you would just help us to hear what you're saying to us, and that the enemy would not be able to distract or twist or contort anything that you're trying to communicate to us through me in this time, Lord. We just thank you for being here with us and for everyone who is here, and we uh we love you. Amen. Alright, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. His name wasn't always Paul, right? It used to be Saul. He no longer identifies with that old man. I think one thing that we that I would challenge you to is to look at Scripture and see who He does God tell you you are now. And then get rid of, in your mind, your attachment to who you used to be, right? So he calls his sons, beloved, blessed, favored. Keep going down that list, right? He does not call us dirty, broken, sinful, evil, corrupt, nasty, whatever you want to say, whatever else you want to put on the negative, right? Paul has stepped into his true identity. He's now grafted into that tree, and now the expression of Christ is flowing through him, he becomes something different. That is why it says, you know, we uh we have gone from death to life. It's because of this connection with God. And now his spirit, his life, is in us. We become something what the Bible calls a new creation, which means something the world has never seen before. Why? Because when you graft yourself into that vine, there's a genetic expression that's never existed before on earth. And that's who you are now. To the saints, the holy ones, who are in Ephesus and faithful, in Christ Jesus. So as we begin to read these scriptures, I'm focusing in on this phrase, in Christ Jesus, meaning those who have made that connection, those who have grafted themselves in by faith in Jesus Christ. Those are the ones he's talking to, the believers. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I love Ephesians and the way that Paul starts it. He kind of does this formal little intro, and then it's kind of like, you know, Star Wars, where it's all of a sudden it's like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and there's this whole like script that starts to come on the screen, you know, and it's like he's kind of like the lead up to it, and it's like dun dun dun dun dun dun.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

He's like, the next verse is Blessed be the God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us before the foundation of the world that we should be holy, that we should be holy and without blame before him.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Like he just starts by like this kind of inundated fire hose of just joy, happy, look at Jesus Christ, look at what he's done. Extravaganza. And this is a guy sitting in a in prison. You know? We forget about like, well, yeah, I think he just had something else figured out. Yeah, it was real to him, right? It's kind of like now, I mean, it's kind of hard to say this kind of like it's probably beneficial to us he got arrested because we wouldn't have a lot of scripture otherwise, right? He's like, what are you gonna do? Sitting around all day long. Well, just I'll start writing letters, right? He slowed down long enough to give us what we now consider the majority of the New Testament. And so this is this is such a great expose, and it's like the first chapter of Ephesians is just this high and lofty view, and uh it's like three sentences, and it's like what, 15, 16, oh no, 22. It's like these huge run-on sentences, and sometimes it's hard to even get your mind around what he's talking about. But I want to focus on verse 3 today. I felt like yesterday that I was just gonna kind of do a quick summary of three, but it just kept expanding in my heart and my mind as I went along. So it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that word can also be praise. Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Here we go. This is the abiding life. This is what we have been talking about. Those of you who have been grafted into Jesus Christ, in that place of the gospel, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. What does that mean? Well, I think it's talking about our sonship. It's and for women, it's not meaning, it's not gender specific, it's just saying a son had like first rights to everything of the father. Right? The inheritance, the land, the property, the things, it was coming to the majority of that was coming to the firstborn son. So all it's saying, whether you're a girl or not, it's just saying you get the first portion, you get the top choice, you get the fat, you get the you get the good stuff. Okay? He's not he's not holding, withholding anything. So we are heirs of Christ, we're forgiven, we're righteous, we're holy, just as Paul's talking to them here, you're saints, holy and set apart. Why? Because they did so much? No, because they're existing in the vine. Because they're attached to Jesus Christ, and the life of God is now flowing to them. Well, what else? Well, I think it also encompasses the gifts of the Spirit, which is like uh talks about in Corinthians that the word of knowledge, word of wisdom, prophecy, gifts of faith, gifts of healing, gifts of tongues, interpretation of tongues. Um and these things haven't ceased according to my Bible or my personal experience. So, well, what else? How can we, what else is this within this blessings and spiritual, you know, and heavenly places, these spiritual things? Well, I would say, you know, as our Western mindset, we want to understand, comprehend, box it, and then put it into our religious library, right? But what this what's so neat about this is I don't even know. Which means it's an exploration that we all get to have with God. What does this mean? What are these, you know, these blessings in the heavenly places in Christ? That is an invitation for conversation from the Lord. There will be times where I sense God saying something, like a thought will come into my mind that I perceive maybe that's God, but it'll be like this statement I know I don't understand what he's saying. I've realized that there are times that God is baiting us so that we have a conversation with him. He only gives us enough information to where we'll say, what did that mean? Because he knows that so oftentimes if we get what we think is the complete answer, we'll just take that and just walk off with it. But when there's this abiding, this relationship with God, he's wanting a continual connection with our heart, with our focus, with our with our attention. So I'm not, I don't know. I don't have an exhaustive list, and I hope that we never get to one. Because that would take out the adventure of what it what it means. I want to talk about the blessing. I think we too oftentimes have seen people misuse what they call blessings or the favor of God for their own advancement, selfishness, greed, avarice, whatever you want to call it. Blessings get kind of like a bad name, or we're even scared of them because we've just seen people like misuse that stuff. And so I want to talk to you some of today about what blessing is, what it really means, I believe. So I don't know if I have the scripture, but it's Genesis chapter 12. I don't know if I've got it on the screen, but Genesis 12, 1. This is what I believe is actually the true heart and nature of divine blessing or favor of God. Now the Lord said to Abram, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, and make your name great. And we go.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yep, do that. Yeah. Okay, I receive. Receive, yes, humbly, I receive everything good for me.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

And then, but that's not the end of it. And you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. I don't believe something can truly be defined as divine blessing until it leaves your life to be put upon somebody else. So we have this great picture in the Middle East of the Sea of Capernaum and the Dead Sea. And they're both two bodies of water that are along the Jordan River. The one is teeming and full of life, as we see a lot of the disciples' lives are around the Sea of Capernaum, fishing and their lives, because water flows in and flows out. And then you have the Dead Sea, which nothing flows out of it, and it just continues to evaporate and get saltier and saltier. And so we have two very contrasting images of what it looks like in the spirit to flow and the other to dam up or to stop and to hold. So the idea is that God wants to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heaven places. It actually says he already has done that. So the next question is, well, what have you blessed me with? I think the better question is that a lot of Christians don't ever ask is, how do you want me to be a blessing? How do you what do you want me to pour out of my life as that grafted peace in the Lord to produce fruit? So in a vineyard, who gets the fruit? The owner of the vine, the owner of the vineyard. So who is that? God the Father. Alright? So he is ultimately receiving back that fruit. But I would say, in this life, who eats the fruit, who benefits from the fruit of your life directly?

unknown 26:11

People. Say people.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

People. People, yes. Other people, right? We'll say, well, he's talking about spiritual blessings. He's not talking about physical blessings. No, but what are the blessings that Jesus, the nature of Jesus Christ was, his source was spiritual, but it had physical repercussions. It had physical fruit. Imagine this. Jesus has preached like multiple days, they're out in the wilderness, there's these like 5,000 people, they're all hungry, and he goes, What is there to eat? And this kid brings three loaves and two fish, right? And here's the common, here's the common mindset of man. Brings three loaves and two fish, and Jesus like, he's like, Wow, I'm blessed. Whips open his little packet, he has tartar sauce, spreads it on the fish, and eats the sandwiches. I'm blessed. Oh, oh, you guys can split that last loaf amongst you, you know, but I'm blessed. Like, that is how the world lives. That is how the fallen mindset gets in this cancer, cancer of the soul, starts to say, it's about me, it's about my stuff, God bless me, but then we understand that that's not right. So then we're like, I can't, I can't, it says I'm blessed, but I can't pray for blessing because then it's just all about me. Okay, but what is the nature of God? What is the nature of Christ? What do you have? Wow, we got just a few things. Alright, everybody sit down, everybody's gonna get blessed right now. The miracle happened because he was already in his mind and heart knew it was not up for him, it was for everybody else. And now what happens at the end of it? They pick up seven basketfuls. So it's like it's more than enough. Well, I don't think people should have more than they need. I don't think. I mean, I have friends who are like, I don't think it's right for people to have extra. Okay. Well, how are you supposed to bless someone else if you don't have enough for yourself? And extra. This is what the basis of the blessing is for, for everybody else around you. That is the definition of what God's blessing is on our lives for. Everybody else. So Jesus, so you have Jesus over there in the corner eating his two fish sandwiches, and everybody else is hungry, or you have the Jesus who breaks it and gives it away to everybody, and in the end there's still more than they started with. That's life in the mind. That's the purpose of divine favor and blessing everybody else. Alright, Proverbs 10, 22. The blessings of the Lord make one rich, and he adds no sorrow to it. Your life can be rich. And I'm not just talking money, I think that's the also the other misconception is that the purpose, or we we boil everything down to money. Now, money is a pretty tangible thing that we can quantify that is powerful. I'll just say that, it's powerful, but that's not that's we're not restricting the idea of blessing or favor of prosperity just to money. You can prosper in health, you can prosper in relationships, you can prosper in connection, and even people who are favored to have influence to move people, to sway people, whether for good or for bad. Now it's interesting that these blessings, they they they can overtake us, but no, this that's the wrong one. So blessings of the Lord make one rich and he adds no sorrow to it. Sorrow also means like toil and striving. And again, I'm not just talking money, I'm talking relationships, I'm talking health, I'm talking like wholeness of your soul and your mind. Because we've had the wrong idea of what blessing is really in our lives for. It's for everybody else. So I believe that the start to stepping into or experiencing, I should say, more of the blessing of God in your life is to ask the question, God, how do you want me to be a blessing? That's the start. That's the start of the siphoning process. Lord, how do you want me to bless those around me? Now all of a sudden you've gone from I'm gonna eat my two fish sandwiches to how can I feed everybody else around me? Okay, let's go to uh 1 Corinthians 9. Oh, sorry, second. Whatever's on there. Okay. And God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for every good work. Okay, you always having all sufficiency, that you may have an abundance for every good work. Abundance, more than enough. What do you do with more than enough? You bless others. Maybe you're in a season though where I've been there, I know what it's like to not just trying to make it like financially or time-wise, energy-wise. Like you're just trying to hold on. Having twins? Joel's cousin, a few years after we had the boys, said she had she was pregnant with twins, and she said, What advice do you have for me? I said, just keep going.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

And she was like, Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Three years later, she's like, I know what you mean. Some days you just gotta get through the day. Yeah. What has God placed in your life as a source of pouring out blessing? Maybe you're in a place in your life where you have little kids and you don't have much bandwidth for anything else. Guess what? You're blessing your children by pouring into them. That's a place you can pour into. Maybe you have more time. You're in a place in your life you have more time. God, why do you want me to do more with my time? Maybe it's calling somebody who's down. You know? Like it's not like to have this father. Aaron is like an anomaly. Like there are tons of people who are just lonely, who don't have people, who don't even know if people care. You know, if you have time, maybe. God, what should I do with my time? Well, I want to do crafts, I want to watch TV, I want to get online and surf YouTube. What about like calling a friend who's maybe had a hard season? Or pouring into a younger person who you see is trying to learn things or make it in life, or just encouraging a younger generation of, hey, you can do this. You know, God's faithful. You see what I mean? We all have something in our life to give away. Just to begin this process of this siphoning process of seeing more of the blessings of God coming through our life. Not just to our life, but through our life. To bless others, to bring others up. That we may have all sufficient, that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for what? For you, for every good work, for work, for ideas, for blessing others. Okay? Next verse. As it is written, he is dispersed abroad, he is given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Next. Now may he, God, who supplied seed to the sower and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness. Well, you are you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. So he's saying you are being enriched in everything, so that what? You can give that away for liberality. Are we talking about socialism? No. I mean, no, not me. We're talking about vibrant generosity that blows the mind of the world, that creates a siphoning process that God pours into because it's flowing out of us, and we don't even consider ourselves because it's all about the end goal of that blessing, not receiving it. So, what do we need in circle? We need more kids, so those of you who can, no, circle needs a lot of stuff, right? Our community can benefit from a lot of things. Our church community, your home, your family. What is it that God has placed inside of you? What asset do you have? Whether it's time or wisdom, energy, maybe finances, but what does God want to release in the world through you? Because He wants to do that in each one of our lives. We're attached to that vine. And we're trying to grow, some of us are trying to grow fruit and then eat it. You know, like a tree over there is like. That is not blessing. That is not that is not what blessing and favor really are. It's all for giving it away. It says that Jesus Christ became poor so that we might become rich. Well, guess what? Now we have the heart of Christ. I want to make everyone else rich in Jesus Christ. So, what are some other things you can do? Well, maybe you see like a young couple around you that just needs encouragement. Or maybe you bring them a meal a week or something to bless somebody. Like these are the little things that can make a big difference in somebody's life. But if we never ask the question, what how do you want me to bless those around us? We will never step into that. That life will never flow through us. We become a dead sea. Now all of a sudden stuff doesn't flow. Now all of a sudden our lives really don't feel like they have much purpose behind them. Because we haven't stepped into that stream of Lord, give me more so I can give it away. Whatever that might be, again, it might be time, it might be energy. Let's go back to the verse above this. Now may He who gives seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, the fruits of what you've sown. Here's the thing God will provide bread for you. God will provide your bread. And if you're just always about yourself and what you need, you're gonna be taken care of. Right? But until you have seed, you can't sow. And if God gives you seed and you sow it, he gives you not only bread, but he'll give you seed to sow. I had a semester in college where I took the equivalent of 21 credits. 12 credits is full time, 21 credits is nuts. So I had a class where I had to read a lot. And there was this little chapel on campus nine. I'd try to go there now and then and like read my Bible and just kind of be quiet for a minute. And I said, I didn't have any more time for this. And I felt like, God say, if you keep coming here, I'll multiply your time. I'm like, how does that even happen? So I'm like, alright, let's put this to the test, right? So I started trying to come there like every other day or every day. And this one class I had, I had to read all these legal documents, it's ag law, and it's really dry. And I kind of uh Cherry was like showing me how to speed read. Like, I've never tried this. So I started, I kind of was trying it, and I was I started speed reading, and all of a sudden, like the reading time went from this to down to here, and I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Like God multiplied my time. Like I made it through that semester, I got it all done, I got good grades, and it was like, wow, I don't, I feel like God multiplied my time. Since then, I've kind of lost, I guess I need to practice, but I've kind of lost my ability to speed read. God like plopped that down in that time in my life, and then now it's kind of probably something I should practice at. But it was really interesting. Um another story I want to just um I felt like sharing. I know somebody, and they were starting a company. Their real heart was I want to bring certain medical medications and kind of advanced medical options to people who are low-class, like low income, like potential that they could get some really cutting-edge medication. That was part of their reasoning behind starting this business. So, fast forward a few years, work like crazy, they're worth a decent amount of money, and then COVID hits. Now, during COVID, I know it didn't exist here, but in the cities, there was uh the delta variant was actually pretty nasty. And so there were some people who were winding up really sick, couldn't hardly breathe, and they had this monocolonial antibodies that worked really effectively with that. The problem was that corporate medical world couldn't make money off of it, so they didn't provide it. Took too many resources and too much money. Well, this person took it upon themselves to, although they took a hit, provide it because people were coming in with 80, 85% oxygen saturation, and in 24 hours they were much, much better. So they said, I lose money every time I do this, but I can't stop because I know it's actually saving people's lives, like helping people. Alright, so they're taking a hit, and the big, bigger hospitals are giving them their antibodies because they're like, we're not gonna do it, we don't make money out of this. Okay, fast forward a few years later, that company is worth ten times what it was before that. And because of that, they're very they continue to be very generous. Now you may look at their cars and their lifestyle and be like, oh, that's opulent. But I know that without them, whoever's been blessed by first love, Joel's ministry that she does, directly or indirectly, that person sowed the original seed that made that happen. So if anyone's been blessed by either of what we have to share or do, came in part from that person. Because they had the question of how can I actually better other people's lives rather than my own. And they continue to be generous and affect people's lives in a positive way because they choose to make it about somebody else or other themselves. So the question, how am I to be a blessing to those around me, is an exciting question because that's the nature of Christ and the Holy Spirit. And one, it assumes God has placed things in you He wants you to express. Truly asking that question of God is coming with the presupposition that you've actually placed things in me and in my life that you want to flow out of me. Two, it gets our focus off of ourselves and onto those around us. Three, it can change lives for an eternity. We can take physical, temporal things and use it to change people's lives forever. That's an honor only bestowed to Christians. God, and then four, God is glorified and put on display through our active life-giving existence. So when I ever talk about like prosperity or blessing or favor, it is under this definition that I don't believe it's truly favor or truly blessing until it flows out of your life. That's when it actually becomes life-giving water and not the Dead Sea. And I believe that is the life the Christian is meant to live. Alright. Thank you, God, for this time together. Thank you that you desire to bless us and cause us to be a blessing to everyone around us. And Lord, I pray that you would stir within our hearts to desire to release what you have placed inside of us to those around us, that we might become a fountain rather than a drain, a life-giving source rather than one that tapes and is self-centered. And Lord, I thank you that you've placed within us this ability, privilege to show you through this abundant life to those around us. And Lord, bring us into the fullness of what you have for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.