Blessed to offer true praise
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)
There are two words which are really at the heart of our Bible verse for this week. They are two words and two Biblical concepts which go hand in hand, but yet are often not tied together. The two words are “praise” and “blessed.”
Think of stories from the Bible and likely also examples from your own life where someone was blessed, but did not necessarily praise God for the blessings they received. The most obvious Bible example for me is the story of the 10 lepers (Luke 11:17-19). The Bible story tells of 10 men who begged Jesus to heal them of a horrible skin disease and yet only one of the 10 men came back to give Jesus thanks and praise.
Survey your life for a moment and try to count all the blessings you’ve received from God. First of all you will probably have a hard time trying to enumerate all the blessings you’ve received. As you start trying to list and count all those blessings, you will quickly realize how many of them you’ve received and then just gone on with life without giving God the praise and thanks which are due him for the blessings he’s given you.
Reread our verse for this week and see how Paul speaks about the way God has blessed us “who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” So often when we think of blessings our minds first turn to earthly things, stuff, material blessings. Paul helps us put our focus where it should be – “every spiritual blessing in Christ.” The most important blessings we have are the spiritual ones – forgiveness of sins, the assurance of a place prepared for us in heaven, the promise of God’s power and blessing accompanying us every step of the way in life and many, many more. Notice that Paul doesn’t say some or most, but every spiritual blessing. God does not leave us lacking any of the blessings we need for our faith. That alone is reason enough to give him unending praise.
Then you add to that the rich physical blessings which we have and sadly are often not content with and we have so many more reason to give God true and real praise.
The thoughts we considered in this devotion might seem like something to consider in November, around Thanksgiving time. That is exactly one of the reasons God led Paul to write these words. Praise and thanksgiving to God for blessings is not a once a year or once a month or once a week occurrence. It is something which we can and should offer to God with every breath.