A Few Minutes with God

Blessings In Our Life
The blessings we receive in our lives are a total gift. Are you ready for more blessings? This podcast discusses how we can be open to God’s grace.
Blessings In Our Life ~ Episode 340
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our entire lives were filled with blessings? One blessing after another. Take a moment to imagine what that would look like.
Thanks to NOW Programs. Check out this amazing personalized program
What came to mind? I can imagine incredible blessings, but the ones that truly matter are a faith-filled, happy, healthy home and family. The material blessings in this life are wonderful. For many of you listening to this podcast, even if you are not in the USA, you enjoy clean water, a home where you live, food to eat, electricity, and the internet. These things make our lives easier, and we often take them for granted over those less fortunate.
Yet none of the things I mentioned are forever. They are temporary gifts in our lives.
What is a true blessing? Let me read a favorite Psalm of many of us: Psalm 23: (Read on air.)
Consider these words with the eyes of faith. Material blessings are wonderful, but we don’t need them to have everything as much as we need spiritual blessings. God is there to comfort us in our distress; we have the basic needs to live, and we may be blessed with a wonderful family and friends. These are all special gifts and graces.
In the Scriptures, blessings are abundant. They are given in abundance when the will of God is followed. The Divine Will is something I am currently studying, and it is a vast subject. At some point, I will share more about this topic.
Sometimes, God gives, and God takes away. That may be the story of your life. Think about Job’s life and the lessons to be learned from those passages. As you get older, you will not be able to escape the difficulties that happen in life. And yet we can rejoice because the blessings abound, knowing that the Almighty and King of the Universe cares about us. We may not see it. We may not hear it. We may feel lost but know He is there.
This brings me to the topic of loneliness. Many people are lonely. It transcends age. Young people, as well as old, can all suffer from feeling alone and left out. The common thread is a relationship, or lack of relationship, with God. As a young homeschool mom, I tried to make daily Mass a routine, and I failed miserably. On occasion, we did go, and I was impressed by the little ladies we sat near and how they seemed to make it routinely. One was always smiling and asked me my children’s names. I watched as she wrote them down in her prayer book and said she would pray for us (and them) each day! Even if I couldn’t attend, God took care of us and blessed us through this lady. She wasn’t lonely; she had a relationship with Christ and prayed for others, and God gave her the gift of joy.
As a young single woman in my first job, I had little chance of meeting anyone. I worked long hours and didn’t like the bar scene. Online dating wasn’t a thing at the time, and I’m not sure if I would have done it anyway. I finally realized it was my choice to be lonely, and I renewed my commitment to God, and all loneliness was gone! I was happy and content.
Truly spiritual blessings demonstrate the goodness and awesome power of God. I heard a priest once explain that the Catholic churches are such vast structures because they attempt to give the glory that God is due within the church through a beautiful structure but also because God is enormous and it is, in fact, symbolic. I believe that is why the oceans and sky are so vast, with millions of stars in the sky. It highlights the glory of God.
Psalm 19: 1-4, 8-10, 14 (read on air). Pray and meditate on that Psalm, especially when you doubt God’s blessings or feel lonely and lost!
A blessing is a grace, a gift. After the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles and Mary in a mighty way. This blessing was a gift to infill them with the ability to preach and teach. In this way, while the blessing upon the person is personal, it is for the entire community.
What talent, spiritual gift, and time do you have to work for the Kingdom of God? Do you volunteer in a ministry? Do you give your time and talents to others? When my children were little, the only energy I had was for my husband, children, and extended family. This was my calling, I believed, from God. Family first. Mother Teresa, in her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, gave a fantastic speech, and a paraphrase is the following: “If you want to bring peace to the whole world, go home and love your family.”- Mother Teres.a
Blessings include spiritual gifts, talents, personality traits, ideas, and material possessions. Have you read the scripture about the talents? Read Matthew 25 in its entirety. The story’s moral truth is that if God gives you a blessing in the form of a “talent” and asks how will you invest the gift I’ve given you?
Will we use it for ourselves? For our family? Or will we seek God and ask how to use it for the kingdom?
The post Blessings In Our Life appeared first on Ultimate Christian Podcast Radio Network.