BLESS: How Can We Love Our Neighbors?
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
Biblical Love
As I think about, just about life and some attributes and different perspectives that we can develop in our lives on certain things, a lot of it is formed by the culture in our world, especially maybe as we think about love, right? Who of you have been in love before? Okay, who’s… Still in love? I like it. There’s at least two people that can say it. And Paul, way to go, just scored some brownie points there, nice job. That’s the goal. We always want to stay in love and be in love with our spouses, right?
As a kid, you know, at least in South Africa, in high school and middle school, Valentine’s Day, you would take some chocolates and cards, and you always want to kind of outdo your buddy, right, with like taking the biggest card. It’s not like here. It seems like in elementary school and middle school, everyone gets a Valentine. Right, it’s like the whole class bring chocolates, and you just load the chocolates into bags, and it’s like everyone is a winner. It’s like no, in South Africa it’s very clear who is not loved, all right? Who’s hot and who’s not, all right? And so I always had kind of a plan A, B, and C with some girls that I liked and had some cards and candy. You always hope that they never communicate with each other, right? But if something falls through, you know, then there’s some backup plans. And then just maybe even like, a backup plan, it’s like ask your brother or somebody to say, “Just write a card, at least that it looks good that I’m receiving a Valentine as well.”
But so you form ideas on what love is through those experiences. And a lot of times we take those experiences and we evaluate God’s love for us in the same way, which is totally not biblical. And in our world today we have so many different concepts, when we watch movies and stuff, it is very clear what the world thinks love is, but it definitely doesn’t line up with God’s word. And so 1 Corinthians is very clear on (let’s see why… there you go) how God defines love. This is how he loves us and this is how we should love. It says:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And so love is patient, love is kind, right? So that is God’s definition on love, and it absolutely does not line up with what we see in this world, right? Totally opposite. So much is about my feelings. It’s like, “Well, I don’t like you, then I’m gonna cancel you,” type of deal, right? And it is not the biblical way of doing things. And so, here again, we just we see how God loves us. This is powerful. It is good to know that God’s love is patient, that it is kind, it does not envy, right, and that he only has the best in store for us.
And so it doesn’t help—I tell Venessa, it’s like, “Yeah, I love you,” but then I don’t respect her, and then I’m not kind to her, and then I’m selfish. Sometimes I can be a little selfish when it comes to eating out. Like when you go to Texas Roadhouse, I am not that type of guy that likes to share my food, right? It’s like this is my plate, this is kind of my moment. I don’t want to do this whole Instagram thing—I’m gonna share with you my little piece of steak or shrimp and photos—like just stay out of my bubble space type of deal. Venessa, on the other hand, is like, “Man, let’s just share everything. I want a little bite. Can I ta—” It’s like, “You have a potato, I have a potato, why do you want to have a taste of my potato?” Right? And it’s like, “Yeah, but your potato looks better.” And so I’ve been challenged and I’ve been learning to grow in that love experience. But, see now lately my wife—so I’m trying to at least just look at the calorie intake, and then there’s dessert, and I’m like, “Oh honey, can I share with you your dessert?” I want the whole thing. I don’t want a thousand calories, I just want 250 calories. And then she’s like very unbiblical, and she goes like, “No way, I don’t share my dessert.” And it’s like, “Well, don’t ask me for my steak or potato again,” right? But this is God’s definition, and what we get to learn about love.
You Are Blessed
So, in the same way this morning, as we think about this word “bless,” what does “bless” look like within a biblical concept, and what does that sometimes look like in our world? Now, again, “#bless” is quite popular, right, when we look at social media, and I have done that. There’s moments and you just, you know, you’re somewhere cute, and you take a picture and you say, “#blessed,” right? Done it. We’ve all done it. And so many times it is based on our experience and what we have received in that moment. But, and again, that’s all cool, we are very blessed, and I want you to know this morning that you are blessed by God, and very totally different reasons why you think you are blessed, right? And again, so many times we feel, “I’m only blessed if I have the house, if I have the boyfriend, if I have the girl, if I blah, blah, blah…” you name it, right? And it’s when all those things line up, then take a picture, “#blessed,” right? And all of those emotions goes up and down depending on how we feel in that moment and what we have received from somebody. And so many times it’s about what can I receive out of this deal to be blessed?
And this morning I just want to, first of all, just want to again show you God’s character, because God loves to bless. Amen? God loves to bless. He’s a God that blesses, right? And again, depending on how you grew up and what type of church and denomination, right, sometimes we just think, “Oh God is this angry God, and he just wants to zap people and is waiting until you make a mistake.” But I just want to show you several scriptures where it is talking about how God wants to bless. So Genesis chapter 1:
God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And then look at this:
God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”
Genesis, chapter 1:27:
So God created mankind in his own image.
Again, this is us.
In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number.”
We’re working through the story of Noah in our SAGE group, and again you just see that, Genesis chapter 9:
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
We have a God that loves to bless his people. That’s great news this morning, right? And so what do we do with that? How do we ponder all of that?
Be A Blessing
There’s a great passage, and this will be our focus for the next two weeks, Genesis chapter 12 says:
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all people on earth will be blessed through you.
How powerful is that? And so God calls Abram out of his culture, his family. He calls him out and says, “I’ve got a special purpose. I’m gonna call you out, and you are going to be a blessing for generations for every nation.” Right? “And it is so that you can be—" God says, “I want you to be a blessing.” And you will see a little later on, kind of again, what’s the bigger motive behind that.
And the same way, I believe, especially when we go and look at Galatians, that this affects us today, that this is still the same call that needs to be in our lives, where God is saying, “Hey, I’m gonna bless you so that you can be a blessing.” Can I hear an amen? Right? And so, church, this morning you are blessed. You are blessed because you have been blessed by God, and we received the ultimate blessing already through Jesus Christ dying on that cross for us. So this morning, even though you don’t maybe have everything that you want to have in your life, you are blessed, and we need to have that revelation in our minds and in our hearts, that, man, that we are so blessed, so spoiled by the Creator. We have a Creator that loves us, right, in the middle of even all of our hardships, because a lot of times when we go through hard times and hardships, then we can just feel like, “Man, I’m cursed,” and we lose sight of the actual blessing that is already in our lives. And so when we just think in general of all of the blessings that is in our life, man, this should just turn our worship upside down. Even if you are going through all kinds of hardships this morning, you are still blessed. Right? You are still blessed. And we need to have that revelation in our lives this morning.
And so there’s a Hebrew word—the Hebrew word that is being used with “God blessed him… that you will be a blessing” is the word barak. It is actually a powerful word. We use this word a lot in the concept of worship, but here’s some of the things that it means:
It’s to invoke divine favor.
It is to kneel.
It is to praise.
It is to show respect.
It is being empowered to impact others positively.
And so what we’re seeing here is that, first of all, we barak God. We worship God, we praise him, and it is this idea of going on your knees, in a sense, as you think about being blessed by God, what he has done in our lives, that that emotion is so big and so overwhelming that we actually go on our knees and that we start to worship God for who he is and all of the blessings in our lives. And so it is just a powerful word when we start to think about worship. But it’s to invoke divine favor, and I said we see that in the life of Abraham, and we see that in the life of every believer. And then it is being empowered to impact others positively. And so, ultimately, this is what God is saying. It’s like, “Hey, I’m gonna bless you to be a blessing.” And God is saying to Salem, “Hey, I’m going to bless you to be a blessing.”
So, just by the way this morning, I am preaching to the choir, because you are such a blessing. I was bragging about you again this morning to the group that is praying early, and I’m just like, I am so grateful that I’m part of this church, because I see how God uses you all the time in so many areas to be a blessing, and so continue to do it. As long as we have air in our lungs, we want to continue to be a blessing. We want to live with an open hand and not with a closed hand. And again, it is so easy, when we hear all of the fears and the things that is going on in our world, to then say, “Man, I got to just store up, I got to live with a closed hand,” but that is not what God has called us to do. He is calling us to live with an open hand, to be a blessing. Okay?
I really saw this my week in Haiti—and I shared this story with you—we went out into the little huts, we walked for several miles, and just taking food to different families in the community and that’s in Evens’s church, and we came to this very, very poor area. And so, just again, these families have nothing. When I say they have nothing, I really mean it. They have, I mean, almost no food, right? We have a different concept about poverty here in the US than what is actually happening in the rest of the world. And so we’re here, we’re taking this food for this family—I can’t remember how many of this grandma’s house small little room space in there was, I don’t know, maybe 10, 12+ family members that was living with her in this area—and so we’re taking food to them, and she was so blessed and so overwhelmed that she wanted to honor us and to bless us back. And she had nothing. And so she just took her son, she told her son to climb this tree and to go and pluck one of the coconuts for us. And so here’s the boy and he goes up, and they were so excited to share this coconut with the team, but that was all that she had. But that was like living with an open hand to say, “Man, I want to just honor you. I want to empower you back. I want to be a blessing. We don’t want to just be on the receiving end. We actually have something, we don’t have much, but we have this coconut, and we’re gonna bless you.” Right?
And so when we think about all of the things that we have in our lives, we are called to be a blessing. As I was praying this morning for us and for our time together, the thought came to mind, what if we can really have the image and vision and heart as families to say, “How do we live as a family,” that actually that is our goal in life? It is to be a blessing, to be a blessing as a family. We want to look for every opportunity where we can be a blessing. Man, that will change things in our city, amen? That will really turn things upside down.
And it always has a ripple effect in people’s lives. It will never just stay in that environment. There was a study that was done on missional strategies in Thailand. It’s referenced by Mark Russell in his book. This is actually a free e-book that is in the app notes that you have this morning. But as these groups went to Thailand, they made two groups. There was a converter group, and their whole goal was just to convert people. And then there was a blessers group, and they were just like, “How can we evangelize and share by being a blessing to the community?” And they were amazed, looking at the results, on how effective and how this blesser group impacted their communities, and they actually had fifty times more conversions than the converting team, just because their mentality was a little bit different. They went out to say, “How can we be a blessing and allow God to use that?”
Actually, if you have your Bibles with you, I want to just show you Matthew 5:16. Matthew 5:16. Actually, let’s start on verse 14. It says:
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
And so here it is, verse 16. This is powerful. Here’s the heart behind it:
In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Right? So as you do good deeds, you are reflecting God.
Now just think about our culture today and what’s happening on social media. It is way easier to tear each other down and have all of this political stuff. And guess what, when I look at God’s Word, this will not have an impact. The impact comes when we actually serve and lift people up and minister and be a blessing in their lives.
The BLESS Initiative
And God calls us into this beautiful plan. When we look at the mission of Jesus Christ, it always looks like this: he reaches out, he restores, and he reproduce. And this is true still in our lives as well. As we think about the mission of Jesus Christ and the mission in our lives, it’s like, hey, how do we reach out, how do we restore, and how do we reproduce?
So the Covenant Church came up with this initiative that they call BLESS. “It is less about downloading information and more about loving our neighbors well. These missional practices can help us get unstuck and find new ways to share the gospel story.” So what that means is to say a lot of times we think about evangelism as kind of this project. “I just want to convert you,” right, “but I don’t want to care for you.” And so the Covenant, and with this initiative is to say it is not just about getting people through the three or four steps, it is first of all being a blessing in people’s lives, really loving on them, caring for them, and through that process now we get to share the gospel message. Because nobody feels just like they want to be a project, right? But it changes things when we realize, like, “Man, I am loved. There’s actually people that are caring about me, and they’re walking with me in this journey.”
Now, with BLESS, acronyms for different steps that we can take, and I’ll focus on two of those things this morning, and then I’m gonna give you an opportunity to actually start to live this out.
So the first letter here is B: Begin with prayer. And so it’s about asking God to show us two or three people in our lives who do not know God and to just to start to pray for them each day. I have been amazed over the years, especially with BLESS, when sometimes it’s years in and people come and share, it’s like, “Man I gave my life to—” or “I prayed for somebody during BLESS, and we put the name in, and now they have received Christ, their lives have been transformed.” But again, as a church, we got to just believe that prayer works, that prayer is powerful. Easy to complain about people and people that don’t know Christ and they’re maybe difficult to work with, but have you actually prayed for them? Right? And so how can we have compassion and love for people if we’re actually not willing to pray for them?
And so today, and just even as you start about reaching out and building relationship and to be intentional about evangelism, it is about, “Hey, who do I need to really pray for?” And maybe it’s one name or two names, but to say, “I am gonna really seek God,” to pray for them, and that there will be some breakthrough. Because, again, the goal is you want to be a blessing, right? and there is no bigger blessing when you get to lead somebody to Christ. I mean it is amazing, and the impact that that has on somebody’s life is fantastic. Right? For them to have an encounter with God and to know that one day they will go to heaven with you, man, that is such a great gift.
And then it is this: Listen with care. Pay attention to people’s dreams and their pain. Listen with evidence of God’s work in their lives. And so, as you start to pray for people—and maybe God put some of those names/people into your life—then to be on a place where we actually listen. This is really hard for us. Some of us really have this gift of like a million words a second, right? And it’s just, we never take time to actually just listen to people, some of the things that are in their lives. It is amazing the doors that God can open up in our daily lives when we actually listen to people and we ask some more questions and we say, “Hey, this is not about me. Where can I be a blessing today?” And suddenly there’s somebody, and they just open up a door, deeper conversation, and because you listen and you start to ask questions, there’s a ministry opportunity for you and for you to be a blessing.
And so two things, for this week at least, as we look at BLESS. I want you to write down today, this week—we’ll have another opportunity next week—to write down maybe a name or two of people that you’re actually really going to pray for and stand in the gap for. And then I’m gonna ask you to practice the spiritual discipline of listening, and to say, “Lord, help me this week to maybe speak a little less and help me to just listen. Help me to listen to people’s hearts.”
