This past week I read an article called Blessed Even in the Worst, How to Give Thanks in Every Circumstance.  It started by asking what do we mean when we say that we are blessed? Is it being thankful for the things we have, good health, and the people in our life. The article then asked is this what it truly means to be blessed? Many people think that being blessed comes from having lots of money, or getting to travel a lot, but as I thought about these things, if your job was taken away, or you or a loved one got sick, or you couldn’t travel anymore, etc… would you still be able to say that you are a blessed person?

We can say we are blessed because we have God in our lives. If everything was taken away from us, (family, friends, money, health) all we would be left with is God. God keeps us safe, and gives us His grace. Happiness, and prosperity are things that God wants for all of us.  3 John 1:2 says “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers.” God is the source of us being able to say that we are blessed.

God is not only the source of being blessed, but He is also the substance of being blessed. This doesn’t mean that you can consider yourself blessed because you have God and that you will be blessed with more material things. Experiencing being blessed by God is when you experience that you are becoming closer and closer to Him. To consider yourself blessed is to be sure of the fact that God will never leave you. Something to remember is that we can ask God to bless us, but we will only be blessed by God if it is in His Will. 1 John 5:14-15 says “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His Will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us-whatever we ask-we know that we have what we asked of him.”

If we truly believe that we are blessed because we have God, we can’t only say that we are blessed during the good times of our lives. What it truly means to say that we are blessed is to truthfully say that we are blessed during some of the worst times in our lives. During the hard times in your life you can say you are blessed because you feel God’s presence in your life and that you can feel the closeness and comfort of God around you.

We can shout it for the world to hear, post it for the social media world to read, and nail it to every wall in our home: we are truly, deeply, eternally blessed in Christ.