Ephesians 1:3–8

³ All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spir­i­tual bless­ing in the heav­enly realms because we are united with Christ. ⁴ Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and with­out fault in his eyes. ⁵ God decided in advance to adopt us into his own fam­ily by bring­ing us to him­self through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great plea­sure. ⁶ So we praise God for the glo­ri­ous grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. ⁷ He is so rich in kind­ness and grace that he pur­chased our free­dom with the blood of his Son and for­gave our sins. ⁸ He has show­ered his kind­ness on us, along with all wis­dom and understanding.

Count Your Blessings

If you’ve been around The Oil Change for any length of time, you already know this, but for the sake of those who are new to our lit­tle group, let me fill you in on how I decide what to write about each day’s pas­sage. Some­times, the point of the pas­sage is obvi­ous, and I sim­ply dive in. Some­times, I spend a lit­tle time read­ing through a pas­sage ask­ing God to allow one point to jump out. I often have two or three study Bibles open on my desk to use as ref­er­ence points. I almost always have mul­ti­ple trans­la­tions nearby as I write these.

At first glance, today’s pas­sage seems pretty obvi­ous. Paul is focus­ing on what Christ did for us and how we have been brought into a fam­ily — God’s family.

How­ever, for me, it’s the first line of this pas­sage that really jumps off the page. God has blessed us with all kinds of spir­i­tual bless­ings. In other words, there are so many dif­fer­ent things that we could be thank­ful to God for. If we just stopped and con­sid­ered it, we should be amazed at the many ways God has blessed us.

Let me ask you this: are you more focused on what both­ers you about some­thing than the many ways you are blessed? In the church you attend, does your energy go into crit­i­ciz­ing the things you don’t like rather than cel­e­brate the things that you love about your church? What about with your job? Your city or country?

I think spir­i­tual matu­rity comes when we are able to walk through the things we don’t like and seek out the stuff we are grate­ful about. Per­haps it’s because of my role as a pas­tor that I notice this more than oth­ers do. There are times when I shake my head at the crit­i­cisms I hear. The stuff that peo­ple expend energy com­plain­ing about never ceases to amaze me.

Folks: we are blessed! God has blessed us with every spir­i­tual bless­ing. What a shame if we miss the bless­ings because we’re focused on the complaints.

My prayer: Lord, for­give me for the crit­i­cal atti­tude I can often carry. Some­times I miss out on the glo­ri­ous truth right before me: you have adopted me into your fam­ily! I am free and for­given because of what you have done for me. Help me to remain grate­ful when I want to fall back into crit­i­cism. Help me to pray for those who frus­trate me. Help me to see my bless­ings every day. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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