What would have to happen in your life for you to think of yourself as someone who is truly and genuinely blessed?

What will it take for you to feel like God is smothering you with kindness today?

I want to laugh. If I could have a rolling on the floor, unable to breathe, can’t stop crying, deep belly laugh, I’d feel blessed.

Do you have an “if list” or a “God to-do list”? Something with a deliverable like mine or something that covers your health, job, finances, relationships, struggles or emotions? Something that’s 9/11 related or something that requires God to come through for you?

I’d be surprised if you don’t. But that’s not the way you should be thinking. God has already blessed you.

If you’ve trusted Christ there is no one who is more blessed by God than you. And that blessing is for all time. Even if you don’t feel it.

Feeling blessed is a relative thing. When we focus on what we don’t have it’s difficult to feel blessed. But you have been blessed.

You are being blessed right now, and you will be blessed as you follow God.

Live your life from this position. Don’t focus your mind, time and energy on, “I hope God blesses me.” That’s an approach that will produce unwelcome results in your spiritual life.

In your walk with God, it makes a huge difference when you view yourself as already blessed. It makes a huge difference when you view your future blessings as a sure thing.

If we view ourselves as “blessed with every spiritual blessing” our spiritual life. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and ultimately, it’s not about God convincing us, it’s about us choosing to believe Him.

Ultimately, it comes down to whom we’re willing to believe.

• God. Who says,
  

  I’ve given you everything you need. You are blessed. Walk with and follow me. You will not regret it.

• Our world. Which says,
  

  That’s not enough. What you really need is this thing. When you get that, you’ll be happy and know He loves you.

Every day, whether it’s 9/11 or not, we wake up and have to decide who to believe. God or the world.

What will it take for you to feel blessed today?

Special thanks to Jonathan Cleveland, the Discipleship Pastor at Pulpit Rock Church in Colorado Springs, who also contributed to this post.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

I said lemon so many times that it started to sound like a word I made up. Or like a word from a foreign language. After a while, the word “lemon” was meaningless — it no longer represented a tangy, yellow fruit. It was just a funny sounding nonsense word running through my head.

I think Satan likes to use a similar technique to get us to stop caring about the hurting people of the world.

Whenever we make an emotional connection to someone in need, we are motivated to act. So by getting us to feel disconnected from a certain group of hurting people, he gets us to stop acting on behalf of those who need help. One of the ways he does this is through what’s been called “compassion burnout” or “compassion fatigue.”

When a major crisis happens, the news media often reports it so quickly and intensely that for a time, it’s pretty much impossible to get away from it.

Remember watching TV the week after September 11, 2001? No matter where I looked, I couldn’t escape the horrific images. Those first few days, I couldn’t watch the news without crying. But after a while, I had heard the same stories reported so many times that they no longer affected me the way they did at first. I got used to the horror. I got numb.

Were any of you in this same boat with me? Maybe for you it was the coverage from Hurricane Katrina. Or the Asian tsumani. Or the earthquake in China. Or the Global Food Crisis. The list seems endless, doesn’t it?

This article, recently posted on urbana.org, addesses the idea of compassion burnout.

What do you do when you’ve heard something so many times that you get fatigued … you’re tired of helping, tired of giving, tired of caring?

How do you keep from getting overwhelmed with the desperate needs of the poor or numb to their pleas for help? How do you not get discouraged by the never-ending necessity for compassion?

The article includes several good suggestions for preventing burnout.

But what I’d love to know is how you deal with this on a personal level. Are there things we can do in bringing the needs of the poor to your attention that will help create the emotional connection and keep our stories from getting stale?

UPDATE: Aug. 25, 2011 – The article is no longer available on urbana.org.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates