Gboyega Adedeji: Every time believers meet and they want to start conversation, they say “God bless you.” Now, while we all use the phrase “God bless you”, the missing factor is: how do I or how can you connect with God’s blessing? Does the blessing of God fall on a man like a ripe pawpaw or does it flow through a channel? Is there a condition I need to fulfill for me to connect with the blessing of God? What are the things that are expected of me, is there a particular life I am expected to live? Am I expected to be a particular kind of person for me to be qualified or to be entitled to the blessing of God? Many people don’t think or talk about it yet, everyone says “God bless you.” Some even do “bless you.” But the truth is: there is an answer in the word of God for this particular thing. You know, there are many people who says “bless you, God bless you.” Does every word of blessing carry the weight or confers the blessing? You know, it looks as if there is so much empty blessing being released on people and being bestowed on people. I am sure we remember the story of Esau and Jacob. For the father to bless the son, he requires something from him. He told the elder brother, Esau, to go and get something that will satisfy him the father and afterward the son, Esau would be bestowed the blessing of the father. So, blessing does not fall on nothing, blessing does not just happen. There is a way to be blessed, there is a channel through which blessing flows. I am sure there is a need for us to probe into this.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes! Very important for us to note that blessings do not just come via a statement of “God bless you.” There is a way in the kingdom that the blessing of God is channeled to us as His children. And that is why in Bible in Focus today, we will be looking at Deuteronomy 28:1 and 2, letting us into the mind of God concerning how His blessings is transferred to us as His children.
Gboyega Adedeji: Alright! Without wasting much time, let us go straight to the word of God. Deuteronomy 28:1-2, from there, we will learn from the LORD how we can connect to His blessing on the earth. The Bible says: “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God…”
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Did we hear that? Now, the Bible has made it very clear to us that this is the channel through which God confers His blessing on us. It says: “now it shall come to pass if you…” talking about you, that this is how you connect to the blessing of God, if you would do this. So, for every blessing of God, there is a condition. That shows there is a precondition that God has stated clearly in the Bible for us to connect with His blessings and the condition is this: “if” because “if” is a conditional word. So, before you step into it, you have to fulfill this condition and the condition is this: “if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God…” the voice of the Lord, your own God. So, God has to be your Lord, this is the starting point.
Gboyega Adedeji: For instance, for Esau to be qualified to be blessed by Isaac, he needed to be the son, so, there was the son who was looking towards an entity called the father. So, there a father-son relationship, showing a connection.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: There must be a connection between you and God for you to qualify for His blessing. And that is why the Bible says very clearly and the example of Isaac and Esau is very apt because for the blessing to flow, it was a channel and Isaac got the blessing from his father Abraham and Isaac is supposed to carry on the blessing and transfer to his son. And the son that was qualified for the blessing at the time was Esau and we knew that there was an arrangement by God for Jacob to be the bearer of the blessing. But there was a connection. So, for you to be a partaker of the blessing of God, there must be a connection between you and God. So, what is the connection between you and God?
Gboyega Adedeji: It is difficult for you who has no link to God to say “let their God bless me”, their God can’t bless you. He has to be your own God, and He has to be your own LORD, not just your God. Because the truth is: none of us can negotiate or renegotiate the Godship of God. The only thing you can begin to think or tinker with is: is the God my LORD? Is He the one who owns me? Is He my owner, my Master?
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Does He have the ownership right and control over my life?
Gboyega Adedeji: And it is upon that foundation that the blessing can flow.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes! So, you create that channel by creating a connection. And that is why one of the principal commandments and instruction of God is in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world that He gave His only beloved Son Jesus that whosoever believes in Him…”, not minding your race or gender, whether you are colored, black or white, it does not matter, “whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” So, you have access to the life in God because the life of God that exist in Him is eternal in nature and it is even through that the blessings flows. So, the first thing to do is to make sure that there is a connection between you and God. So, when that connection is established, by being born again, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, being born into the family of God through Jesus, because this is what qualifies you for the blessing; you can’t lay claim to the blessing that you are not connected to.
Gboyega Adedeji: You cannot inherit another father’s possession except such a father has adopted you.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: So, you must be adopted into sonship through Jesus Christ into the family of God. That is what qualifies you. So, it is not enough that someone says to you “God bless you” or “bless you”, are you connected to the God that blesses? So, if you are not connected to Him, there cannot be a conferment of His blessing on you. So, it is important we understand that to start with. And it says: “obey the voice of the Lord your God diligently.” So, it means that it is not just in obeying, it is about the diligence and attitude of the obedience. It is not saying to God “Lord I will do it” and you end up not doing it, or you do it anyhow or halfheartedly and say “you know what, I am just doing it grudgingly.” And that is why Jesus said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, might and strength”, you are not keeping anything back.
Gboyega Adedeji: Do you know the benefit of that? It secures your position for the blessing. When you love the LORD your God with all of your heart, you remain the son of His love. You remain in the kingdom of His love and whatever the people therein are entitled to, you enjoy.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: So, we connect via that relationship. So, it is important that the love of God in your heart gives you security and secures your place in Him. So, you have to love the Lord because it is when you love Him that you can diligently obey His words. It is important. The Bible says “it is not only the hearers of the word but the doers of the word are the ones that are blessed.”
Gboyega Adedeji: Do you know Jesus even said to His disciples: if you love me, obey my commandment. So, obeying the commandments and the instructions of God even when we don’t fully understand the purpose of such instructions is what shows us actually that we love Him. If you don’t love someone, you cannot obey them. For instance, if you tell me to get you something from the fridge and I don’t love you, I will have all manner of reasons and excuses for me not to stand up. But if I love you, even though I am busy with something and you are like “can you help me with this”, immediately I will respond. Because this thing is not just about you and God alone, it is a reality that happens even in our lives. When there is no love, there is no obedience. So, if you are thinking: why am I struggling to obey God, it is simply because you don’t love Him. The love of God is not in your heart, you see Him as a terrorist or like someone who loves to bully or interfere with your business. But if there is love, you obey Him, not grudgingly, but wholeheartedly.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: So, obedience is a response to God saying that I love you Lord. So, I will diligently obey your voice. I am sure many of us, we have lovers in our lives. When you have a lover, you want to listen to them and know what they are interested in at every point in time. You want to please your lover.
Gboyega Adedeji: Do you know what I wanted to say is what you just said? You can never obey somebody you have not listened to and you can’t listen to somebody that you detest. You cannot hate me or detest my voice or mannerism and still listen to me. And if you don’t listen to me, you cannot know my will. So, obeying God is premised on you loving Him and your love for Him is what makes you to pay attention into what He is saying. Imagine a woman that talks to her husband for almost thirty minutes and the man did not hear anything, how would the man respond? The woman is like: since you married me, you have never taken me out, you didn’t surprise me, you didn’t buy me this or that, every time I do anything you don’t normally appreciate me, but every time the woman is talking, the man is not listening. You cannot respond to or move towards someone that you are not paying attention to.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes! That is why it is very important. That word “diligently” is so key and important in this conversation. For you to diligently obey, it means you have diligently listened. It might not be easy or convenient, so you now diligently obey His voice. The voice of the Lord, not the voice around you, not the voice of the men of God, the voice of your Lord. And that is why it starts with your connection with him. He has to be your Lord and He has to be your God. So, you are not listening to a stranger, you are listening to your lover after you have listened to the voice of the Lord your God and diligently consider all that He is saying to you, you observe carefully all the instructions, you have to be mindful of the things that He is saying to you, you don’t want to misbehave, you don’t want to take the instructions of God as an advice, as an opinion. You don’t want to have an uncompleted information. You want to holistically know what God is saying to you and do it. So, it is important that the word of the Lord becomes a law to you. See what the Bible says afterward: it says when you do these things, that the Lord your God, your lover will set you high above, will elevate you above all the nations of the earth. You will now be precious, you will now be a model, a choice, a special people, you become a chosen generation because you have obeyed the voice of the Lord. It says all these blessings shall come upon you. So now, when they say to you “God bless you”, the blessings now come upon you. It comes to stay and remain on you. Why? Because you have fulfilled the condition that confers the blessing.
Gboyega Adedeji: You know, when the Bible says “it is the Lord’s blessings that makes rich without adding sorrow.” Nobody wants to be rich for a season or just for a little while, you don’t want to have sorrow later on or sometimes, you don’t want to have it at all. So, the blessing of God must come upon you and remain.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: And this is how you get it. It says: “all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.” The blessing will go ahead of you, will go into your future and settle things for you. Is that not exciting? I am sure you want that for your life, but there is a precondition. So, it is not just about “God bless you”, it is about the life that you are living that qualifies you for the blessing. The Bible says this blessing will overtake you because you obey.
Gboyega Adedeji: Should I give you an example? Now imagine a particular cap that is meant for you. There is somebody who has it, but he has brought it for you and he says “please, put yourself in order”, stay in one spot and patient, I am bringing this one cap and I am putting it on your head.” But instead of you to do that, you keep moving from here to there. Would the person who instructed you to stay be following you here and there? No! That is how many of us that are desiring blessing are not able to receive it because the blessing came via instruction which is supposed to situate us, establish us so that when the blessing wants to come upon us, it would locate us in the location of the obedience. So, the obedience is what forms us and establishes us, that secures our feet. It does not make us to be here or there missing the way or out of the experience. Imagine somebody who desires to partake in some things that are shared in a place, but before they begin to share, the person has gone out and before he returns, the sharing was already done with. If he had remained, he would have benefited from the blessing. So, there is a blessing for you but before you can enjoy the blessing, you must be at the location of obedience.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Wow! This is so good. So, obedience is also a location for you in God.
Gboyega Adedeji: So, it is like when the blessing of God is coming upon you, it is programmed to find you in the place of obedience. If God says “tarry with me in Jerusalem”, if God says “go to this nation, I am sending you there”, you simply obey every instruction knowing fully well that when the blessing of God is released, it is going to come for you wherever He has asked you to stay and it must find you doing whatever God has instructed you to do. So, if you obey God like in 70% and disobey him in 30%, you will miss your blessing. It is not because God does not love you, it is simply because He has packaged your blessing with your obedience, that is it! God loves all of us, but God does not have that enjoyment of all us obeying Him. He gives instructions for us; He sends the blessing. But the blessing can’t find us because we are not finding the obedience.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: So, when you choose obedience, you choose the blessing. If you desire the blessing of God so much, you must also desire to obey that much.
Gboyega Adedeji: You love to be called a medical doctor, but there is a precondition. You must go to school. So, that looks like an obedience. After going through that education, no matter how tedious it could be, you will come out as a medical practitioner. So, the enjoyment you now desire by being referred to as Dr. this or that, that is the blessing, it now comes because you have obeyed and finished from the medial school. See what happened to Samuel and Saul. Saul was given an instruction; he didn’t know that God just needed that instruction to guide him into the establishment of his kingdom. Samuel told him “If you had obeyed, your kingdom would have been established by now.” So, he missed it. If you notice also what happened to Solomon, the very things that God did to Saul He also did to Solomon. God expected him to offer some sacrifices, he did everything, God expected him to build and he did and the Bible says “his kingdom was established.” There is something that establishes the blessing, it establishes the glory of God on your life, it is not enough for you to have a good life once and you don’t have it again, if you must remain in that good state, you must remain in the place and at the point of your obedience. you remember that Scripture about Abraham, he had been instructed by God to sacrifice his son, he didn’t see the provision of God until he got to the peak of his obedience. The Bible says “at the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided.” At the mountain of need, when you get to the peak of it, you will see the provision. Now that peak of it is when your obedience is complete. Bible even says “every disobedience would be punished when your own obedience is complete.” Your obedience is your requirement, that is the only gap between you and your blessings. So, don’t just go about envying lives, wishing your life to be better, you must obey yourself into your greatness and into your future.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes! This is so good and I believe that you have been blessed because this is so important and key. It is not enough to just say it in a word, or pray it in a prayer, it is a life you must live. Obedience is a location you must be found for the blessing of God to locate you. I believe that you have learnt a lot from this Bible in Focus and the two Bible passages we have zeroed in on today’s episode by the help of the Holy Spirit. Continue to be located in the place of obedience and the blessing of the Lord will locate you.
Gboyega Adedeji: Alright. That is the end of the video and I believe the Lord has blessed you as she said. If you love what you have listened to, please like this video, drop your comments with us in the comment box below. We love to know what you are thinking about it. Has the Lord given you an instruction, did you obey, what was your outcome? If you did not obey God and you regretted the disobedience, please share your experience with us. Let us learn how obedience has brought you to where you are. If there was a lesson you learn from your disobedience, please feel free to share with us.
God bless you!