{"id":3545,"date":"2016-10-24T06:25:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T10:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2018-11-09T05:46:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T10:46:47","slug":"shelved-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/shelved-blessings\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelved Blessings"},"content":{"rendered":"

How happy are you right now? \u00a0Seriously, are you over-the-moon kind of crazy-happy in your life? \u00a0Blessed? \u00a0Certainly, better than you deserve, but do you experience real blessing in your life such that you are overwhelmed at how good life is…how good God has been to you?<\/p>\n

Sometimes, the blessings of life seem to hide when I spend most of my time focused on the troubles. \u00a0I get caught up in the busyness of life and the overly full calendar, the relational trials, the bills, and on it goes, so that it crowds out time to focus on the blessings in life and even robs me of the time I need to even pursue real, lasting happiness.<\/p>\n

I was revisiting one of my favorites in Scripture this morning: Psalm 1. \u00a0Kind of smooshing the English Standard Version and the Holman Christian Standard version (my two faves), it starts off saying, “How blessed (or happy) is the man who does not…[and here I paraphrase heavily]…listen to ungodly advice, hang out with people who chase after ungodliness, or take part in conversation with people who criticize and put people down…[ok, I’m done paraphrasing], but his delight is in the [Word of God…yeah, I know, I paraphrased again] and on His Law he meditates day and night…”<\/p>\n

So, if you caught that, Psalm 1 is saying that happiness and blessing in life is a result of delighting in the Lord’s instruction “day and night”, which is just another way of saying constantly<\/em>. \u00a0It’s about taking the Bible down off of the shelf and setting aside time in the morning to read it. \u00a0It’s about reflecting on what was read throughout the day, and quite often means memorizing at least some portion of it so that it’s fresh in your mind at all times. \u00a0This is the life of a disciple who wants happiness in life and if I’m not experiencing that; if my life is crowded out with all sorts of things that don’t end in happiness or blessing, then I have to start by evaluating my time in the Word. \u00a0Now, that said, Scripture isn’t talking about a “giddy” kind of happiness that is all circumstantial, but a joy and contentment, or the ability to delight in even the most mundane part of life, realizing the blessing in even being able to do it or participate in it.<\/p>\n

This changes the way we look at our crazy schedule, our less-than-satisfactory\u00a0job, and our relational\u00a0struggles so that we become\u00a0grateful for opportunities, for steady work and people in our lives to interact with. \u00a0It changes our perspective!\"water\"<\/p>\n

So, how much happiness and blessing do you want in your life? \u00a0No, really, how much do you want, because if the amount of time we spend in God’s Word is a “pound-for-pound” comparison to the amount of joy, contentment, blessing and happiness we experience, I wonder if we want all of these things as much as we say we do. \u00a0Saying we want blessing in<\/em> life without going to the source of blessing for<\/em> our lives is like saying we are thirsty but not realizing there’s a sink in the kitchen. \u00a0Sadly, in my own life, I often walk through the kitchen, notice the sink, but decide I’m too busy\u00a0to put the glass under the faucet and turn the knob. \u00a0That’s short-sightedness and results in shelved blessings!<\/p>\n

Then I walk out of the\u00a0room, look around at my parched life and think, “Man, I wish I had something to drink.”\u00a0\"crackedearth\"<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How happy are you right now? \u00a0Seriously, are you over-the-moon kind of crazy-happy in your life? \u00a0Blessed? \u00a0Certainly, better than you deserve, but do you experience real blessing in your life such that you are overwhelmed at how good life is…how good God has been to you? Sometimes, the blessings of life seem to hide…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,8,20],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidcprice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/A31C1DE5-6E91-44B5-9443-E61BFA36CB8B-e1541760370261.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3jKZO-Vb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1513,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/blessings-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":0},"title":"A Healthy Prayer on Blessings","date":"May 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cIf it be consistent with thy eternal counsels, the purpose of thy grace, and the great ends of they glory, then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts; If not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determinations.\u201d ~ from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Blessings\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":183,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/ridiculously-blessed\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":1},"title":"Ridiculously Blessed","date":"November 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I am continuing a series on the Lord's Prayer called \"GodTalk.\" It's been interesting to slow down and really look at what Jesus was telling us to do in that short prayer. Yesterday, we looked at the phrase, \"Give us this day our daily bread.\" We'll take that in two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian Living"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1454,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/blessings\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":2},"title":"A song for the wilderness.\u2026","date":"October 3, 2011","format":"video","excerpt":"A song for the wilderness. I talk a lot about \u201cThe Wilderness.\u201d\u00a0 All of us experience it and often we have no idea why we\u2019re there or how or when we\u2019ll ever get out.\u00a0 We ask a reasonable question: \u201cIf God loves me, why doesn\u2019t He deliver me?\u201d\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Blessings\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1048,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/a-christmas-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":3},"title":"A Christmas Revolution","date":"December 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Tired of Christmas as usual?\u00a0 Had it up to here with the long lines, long bank statements and long recovery time?\u00a0 If so, I want to invite you to join the revolution to take back Christmas.\u00a0 No, not that kind of revolution.\u00a0 I'm not advocating boycotts or signing petitions, nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian Living"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidcprice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/attack.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4251,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/light\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":4},"title":"Light","date":"February 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Son of grace shines the light of his grace into the darkest recesses of our hearts, not as an act of vengeance or punishment, but as a move of forgiving, transforming, and delivering grace. He dispels our self-inflicted darkness because he knows that we cannot grieve what we do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Devotions\/Biblical Insights"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidcprice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/576ED049-A34A-4592-BD4F-F3694D97DBEA.jpeg?fit=455%2C303&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":40,"url":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/faith-in-america-the-great-life-preserver-use-only-in-case-of-emergency\/","url_meta":{"origin":3545,"position":5},"title":"Faith in America: The Great Life Preserver (use only in case of emergency)","date":"April 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I am struck by the flippancy with which most of us follow Christ. To most of us, \"Christianity\" is just something that we are; a part of our lives. To these men, Jesus was their life...all of it, totally sold out and recklessly abandoned. How many of us today still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian Living"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4119,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/4119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidcprice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}