Dear Heavenly Father,
Your Son said in John 15:7(NLT), “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” You have promised that if we stay close to You and do the things that You have commanded us to do, then we can ask You for the desires of our hearts, and You will give them to us. This is a conditional promise, meaning that the promise is fulfilled when the condition is met. Many of Your blessed daughters forget this aspect of Your blessings. They forget that Your goal for every believer is that we use this earth experience to grow more and more like Christ. Becoming more like him will cause us to continually remain in a blessed state, but we must never ignore that there is an accountability and responsibility component to being a disciple of Christ.
Your Son tells us in John 10:10 that he came to the earth so that we would have access not just to an abundant life, most of us would be satisfied if that was all to it; but Jesus Christ came to make a MORE than abundant life available. You are a God who deals in the exceedingly abundantly, but we are responsible for demonstrating that we are prepared and able to steward the blessings we’re asking to receive. We shouldn’t expect that You’ll give us a brand-new car out of the blue, when we have no place to put it, no money to purchase gas, and don’t know how to drive. We need to learn to drive first, and then secure a job to make the payments and put gas in the tank.
One of the mistakes we make is to put the importance of our desires before the importance of maintaining our relationship with You. Many of us are at a point where we spend more time on social media than we do reading and studying Your Word. We spend more time on our hairstyle than we do in prayer. Overly indulging in these things are a distraction. And these distractions are what the devil uses to get us to take our focus off our relationship with You.
Instead of worshipping You, we worship the thing we believe will bring us pleasure or get us what we want, and this is a very dangerous practice. It is such a subtle maneuvering by the enemy that we don’t even notice that we’re making an idol of these things. This is exactly how the devil tricks us out of our blessings.
You tell us in 1Corinithans 10:14(NLT), ‘So, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.” It’s not just the statues and monuments You are talking about here. You are talking about our placing the importance of anything over and above our relationship with You. Any time we do this we’re dabbling in idolatry. Father God, please open our eyes to this sin so that we can correct ourselves and get in alignment with Your Will. So many of us are begging You for the blessing of a husband, but we have not dedicated ourselves to being a bride of Christ. We have not taken our responsibility to You as serious as we should. Please forgive us and help us to be better.
Your Son, Jesus Christ, said in Luke 12:48 that to whom much is given, much is required. You have already blessed us abundantly. Ephesians 1:3 says that You have given us all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. You have blessed us beyond what we can ask or think, and we must show our gratitude by being obedient to Your Word. We must understand with crystal clarity that our first responsibility is to You, and we cannot please You if we seek other things before Your Kingdom and righteousness. Please help us to get this right.
Thank You for Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Please let Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the precious and powerful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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.
“Don’t Put the Blessing before the Relationship”, written by K. Lizzie, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2018. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.