Living From a Place of Blessing
by Annalene Holtzhausen
My husband recently felt led to speak a fatherly blessing over our two sons. He spent a few days prayerfully preparing the blessings, wrote them out and made printed copies for each of them. We then planned a lovely family dinner where he read them out aloud and blessed each of his boys. It was indeed a very special and meaningful time together.
This reminded me of my mother’s words many years ago, what they meant to me, and how I felt inside when she said the following: “I was blessed the day you were born.” It had such a deep impact on me. In that moment, I experienced such a sincere love and acceptance of who I am. Still today, these words impact my life and my being. I have always thought it must be one of the most special things a parent can say to a child.
If receiving a blessing from a parent or another person in our lives can mean so much, how much more the blessing we receive from the Lord? We read in Ephesians 1:3 that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ. The question I ask myself is: “Are we living from this place of blessing”?
In my human understanding, I cannot even begin to comprehend what this really means. Trying to word it, His blessing over my life means that He accepts me unconditionally and loves me completely. Nothing anybody says about me, or how I view myself, can change His love for me. His presence brings light and hope and joy. It brings destiny and meaning to every aspect of my life.
Once I begin to grasp this love, my relationship with the Lord takes on a whole new meaning. I begin to live life from the knowledge that my Creator loves me. Everything else pales in comparison to this truth. The Lord created us for a relationship with Him. That`s His heart for us. Our strength and authority lie in knowing Who we belong to, and that we have a heavenly destiny.
The enemy knows that our victory lies in knowing God’s truth and living from a place of relationship with our heavenly Father. He will do anything to distract us from living a life centred around the Holy Spirit. Through endless lies and deception, the enemy channels us to live from a place of ‘self’. The further he can remove us from believing that the Lord has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ, the more he makes us slaves to his lies and actually to himself. `Now the mind of the flesh is death [both now and forever - because it pursues sin]; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace [spiritual well-being that comes from walking with God - both now and forever]` (Romans 8:6).
Let us choose today to believe God that `He predestined and lovingly planned for us to be adopted to Himself as [His own] children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the kind intention and good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5).
Annalene Holtzhausen is on the Associate Team at Ellel, Africa. She is married to Renier, who introduced her to Ellel Ministries. She is a full-time mother to their two boys. Her passion is for the restoration of women’s hearts and for people to find their worth in the Lord.
Please feel free to use this devotional to send on to your friends or share with your church fellowship. Provided full acknowledgement is made to Seeds of the Kingdom as the source, you are also welcome to use it in a non-commercial way and reproduce it in magazines or other Christian websites. The copyright for any commercial use of the material remains with Ellel Ministries International.
