Count Your Blessings – Deut. 28:2-6

My wife sings a song, “Count Your Blessings” and it is a beautiful reminder to me to do just that; stop and count my blessings. 

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your blessings, see what God hath done!

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Johnson Oatman, Jr., pub.1897

We live in a broken and fallen world and it is easy to become discouraged. The economy is down, crime is up, and it seems like there is sickness and death everywhere. Sometimes we look around and we start to wonder if God has forgotten us; maybe He is too busy with other more important things.   We focus so much of our time and energy on what is going wrong that we forget to stop and think about what God has already done, what He is doing, and what He has promised to do.

                                                                                                     

When the children of Israel were wondering in the desert seeking the land that God had promised them, they started to look at their situation through human eyes and it seemed pretty bleak.  They did not have any great stores of food, they had been traveling for a long time, there was no sign of and end any time soon, and now Moses had not came back down from the mountain.  They assumed God must have forgotten or at the least forsaken them. So they built an altar and created a golden calf to worship. They got discouraged and sinned because they forgot about what God had already done in freeing them from Egypt. They stopped trusting God to fulfill what He had promised and started devising their own plans. Things would have been a lot easier and joyful for them if they would have just stopped first and counted their blessings.(Exodus 32)

It does not take me long to turn my attitude around when I put into action the words of the song and start counting my blessings. Let me share with you how my counting starts: I am a sinner who was destined and deserving of Hell but Jesus paid for my sins and God has adopted me as a son; I have a wonderful wife and two loving children that mean the world to me and I to them; I have a wonderful and supportive family; I have a few close friends that would drop anything and come to my aide whenever I call. 

I do not have to count far to realize that I could go on and on with the blessings in my life. The trials and troubles of this world soon start to seem unimportant as I see that God is actively working in my life.  He has brought me from a path of destruction and set me on a path of righteousness; allowed me to trade Hell for Heaven.  I am blessed!

Stop and count your blessings today. I challenge you to name them one by one; you may be surprised at what the Lord has done!