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Don't miss your time to be blessed!

by James Barringer  
1/29/2010 / Christian Living

Last week, my friend Ray was talking about a man he knew, a furniture salesman in California. This guy had a ferociously good attitude, and one day after he had helped a customer, the customer said, "Your attitude and work ethic are incredible. I'm an executive at Disney World in Florida. How would you like to come be in charge of Pleasure Island?"

If you're anything like me, your first reaction to this story was, "That's incredible, but it's never happened to me." That thought is true, but it's not the whole truth. If you want to play the probability game, then sure, the odds are pretty small that any given person you speak to will say something like that. Who knows how many thousands of people the furniture salesman helped before the Disney executive came in. But the lesson - both of this story and of the Bible - is to always be faithful, so that you don't miss your time to be blessed.

The Bible makes no secret about the fact that people who love God get rewarded. Repeatedly, throughout both testaments, God talks about lavishing his rewards and blessings on the people who follow him and are righteous. He's our father; he loves giving us stuff. But his rewards are conditional - they usually have to be earned, and they're only given to the people who are ready to receive them. So how can you make sure you don't miss your blessing?w

I was reading the book of Exodus last night and I noticed the story of how Moses found his wife (Exodus 2:16-21). On the run after killing an Egyptian, Moses was spending his time in the land of Midian. At the well one day, some women were watering their animals when a few shepherds came up and tried to bully them out of the way. Moses intervened and protected the women, who were the daughters of the priest of Midian. Impressed, the priest invited Moses over, and a short time later, the priest's daughter Zipporah got married to Moses. The whole story would never have unfolded if Moses hadn't stood up for justice at the right time.

The lesson for us is that we don't do things for the reward. Moses had no clue he was going to be rewarded, and certainly not rewarded that way; nor did the furniture salesman from that first story. But, if they had not acted the way they did, the reward would never have come. That's the tricky thing about it. If you live the right way, the odds of getting a reward are utterly unknown; it might happen today, or it might happen twelve years from now, or never. But if you don't live the right way, the odds of getting a reward are absolutely zero. If the furniture salesman had brought a crummy attitude with him to work that day, he would still be selling furniture. If Moses had sat back and pretended that the shepherds weren't his problem, he would have stayed single - and more. See, it was while tending his father-in-law's flocks that he ran into a certain burning bush, from which he heard the voice of God calling him to lead God's people out of Egypt. Without his wife and father-in-law, he wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time, and it's very possible God would have chosen someone else instead. He would have missed his time to be blessed.

Why do I say God would have chosen someone else instead? My evidence comes from the story of another person who was faithful at the right time, a woman named Esther. She was a queen, secretly a Jew in a kingdom where being a Jew had just been made a capital crime. Her cousin Mordecai tried to convince her to use her position as queen to intervene on behalf of her people. Mordecai said, "If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place...and who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for just such a time as this?" God placed Esther in that position so that she would have the opportunity to be blessed, so that God could work through her. If she hadn't been faithful, Mordecai says quite plainly that God would find another person to work through - God's purpose will always be accomplished - and Esther would have missed her time to be blessed.

The lesson to us is that every day matters. We have no way of knowing who in our lives will be a Disney executive or a priest of Midian. Because we don't know, we have to be faithful every time. Every word, every interaction, matters. If we're in the right place at the right time, but we respond in the wrong way, we'll miss our chance to be blessed. God's purpose will be accomplished some other way, and we will miss the benefits - be they emotional, spiritual, or material - of having him use us.

Don't miss your time. Don't give God any excuse to hold blessings back from you. Be strong, be faithful, and be relentless, so that whenever the right person or the right occasion does come into your life, you will prove that you deserve the blessing that is coming your way.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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