“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn is face toward you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” (Numbers 6:24-27)
God gives gifts to His people so that they can use those gifts to bless and help His people. To one He gives the gift of hospitality so they can bless others with good food and good fellowship. To another, He gives the gift of leadership to help people press toward a goal instead of wandering aimlessly. To a third person, He gives the gift of exhortation to encourage others to do good.
The gifts specifically mentioned in the Bible include encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy, prophecy, service, teaching, administration, discerning of spirits, healing, interpretation, tongues, prophecy, wisdom, etc. (See Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12). But there are many gifts that God gives us to bless His people.
For example, we say someone has an “artistic gift” because they can create beautiful things. It comes from God: but they can choose to use it to bless others or to bring glory to themselves. Other examples are “a gift to understand mechanical stuff”, a “green thumb”, or the gift of being able to work well with others.
A gift that God has given to my family is the gift of blessing. While it’s not a 100% success rate to bless every person we come in contact with, it’s disproportional the number of times we can drive into a parking area, walk into a room, or just be hiking by, and someone gets blessed. They may or may not say, “You just blessed me,” but they often have a secular vernacular that means the same thing. It doesn’t even have to be the entire family. Before I had a driver’s license, my father drove me to a church where I was filling in on the worship team. He sat with the congregation and I sat at the piano. But people came up to him afterward and said, in their own words, “You blessed me by being here.”
Blessing isn’t something that’s limited to those with the gift of blessing. Like any of the other gifts, most Christians can carry Christ’s blessings with them everywhere they go, but some are called to it in extra measure. (For example: Every Christian is expected to evangelize, but some people have an extra gift of evangelism. People who want to accept Jesus as their Savior seem to be drawn to these “evangelists” and they tend to have a high rate of leading people in the sinner’s prayer, whether they’re looking for opportunities or not.) We can carry the Holy Spirit and display the goodness of God every place that we go.
The psalmist said, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us – so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among the nations” (Psalm 66:1-2). God pours His gifts and blessings on us and allows us to carry His blessings because it’s one way that He reveals Himself to the random people we meet. They see God and are drawn to Him just because He’s good.
At its very most basic elements, the gift of blessing is an accentuation of being salt and light in this world (see Matthew 5:13-16). It’s the ability to reveal the goodness of the Lord with little more than living out our relationship with God. It used to shock me: “God, what did You do? I certainly didn’t do anything more than walk into the room!”
In this uncertain time, I’m finding the importance of blessing to be so much more necessary. I watch the hatred, and I know that we must respond with blessing. I watch the fear, and it’s so necessary that we respond with blessing. It’s not the passion of rioters or the cracking down of rules that will change the world. It’s people who are willing to carry God’s blessing into every situation who have the opportunity to change this world with God – one person at a time.
“May God bless us still, so that the ends of the earth will fear him” (Psalm 66:7).
