Monday, July 14, 2014

burdened or blessed?

It's been a month since we returned home from the beautiful country of Honduras. Hard to believe!


While we were there, our group witnessed some of the most extreme living conditions that I personally have ever seen. It left me with a hurting heart and some perspective about my own standard of living, but by the end of the week I was questioning even that perspective.

I came across this blog post titled The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying, written by Scott Dannemiller from The Accidental Missionary, and even shared a good portion of it with our group on the last morning we were there. This post spoke to me in a way that has stayed with me and I wanted to share some of my own thoughts with you about it.

According to Dannemiller, the phrase we should stop saying is how "blessed" we are. Saying we are blessed may seem harmless, even grateful on the surface, but what does the Bible say about being blessed?

"First, when I say that my material fortune is the result of God's blessing, it reduces The Almighty to some sort of sky-bound, wish-granting fairy who spends his days randomly bestowing cars and cash upon his followers.....Second, and more importantly, calling myself blessed because of material good fortune is just plain wrong."

- Scott Dannemiller

I have written on this subject before in my Christian Mythbuster's series about how God doesn't want you to be happy. Instead, He wants us to be blessed. However, material items and circumstantial "happiness" are not the kind of blessings promised to us in the Bible. Matthew 5:1-12 clearly defines what God sees as blessings- when we come last, when we need comfort, when we are peacemakers, when we are persecuted, when we are pure, when we seek Him, when we show mercy, and when we are poor in spirit, or in other words, in desperate need of God. The Bible doesn't say we are blessed when we are comfortable or when we own a home and get a new car. As Dannemiller says, we hijack the word "blessed" to fit our American ideals. 

We all do this. I did this while in Honduras. Comments were made about how lucky we all were to have all of the "things" we have. But that's not truly being "blessed." Our American mindset has this all backwards. We associate the word "blessed" with good fortune and material possessions. The word "blessed" Jesus uses in Matthew 5:1-12 is from the Greek word makarios, which means to be happy or blissful, but it is referring to a self-contained happiness. That means that regardless of our outward circumstances we can have an internal happiness because of the hope we have in  knowing Christ as our Savior. We are blessed if we can find our purpose and fulfillment from God.

"The truth is, I have no idea why I was born where I was or why I have the opportunity I have. It's beyond comprehension. But I certainly don't believe God has chosen me above others because of the veracity of my prayers or the depth of my faith. Still, if I take advantage of the opportunities set before me, a comfortable life may come my way. It's not guaranteed. But if it does happen, I don't believe Jesus will call me blessed.
He will call me "burdened."

-Scott Dannemiller

No, instead of being blessed, we are burdened. We are burdened with material possessions and financial resources and the responsibility of what we will do with them. Will we use for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom of self? 

I pray that my response to this burden will be, like Dannemiller, to say, "Lord use me." And I also pray that I will continue to seek the true blessings in this life. 

And as far as Honduras goes .. the saying "I have left my heart in so many places .." was never more true!



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