Recently while Allison and I were away on vacation we had an idea to go eat at the nicest restaurant in town. Once we arrived, I noticed that this place was hands down one of the nicest places I had ever been to!
We started looking at the menu and realized that the prices were incredibly high but we didn’t think too much of it because were on vacation having fun. After we ordered our drinks and food we realized something… we had done a little bit of math from the menu and we hadn’t ordered dessert yet and our bill was already over $150!!
We were like, “Should we buy the decadent, smooth chocolate cake?” We decided that we’d let our server make that decision for us. Allison asked our server about the cake and she highly recommended it so we ordered it making our bill even higher.
While we were waiting for this amazing slice of heaven, two guys sat down next to me so I started talking with them. I learned they were both locals who were in the farming business. The guy that was sitting closest to me was named David. David seemed like he’d farmed for a long time and he was enjoying his latter years.
I told David that we were on vacation from Wichita and that we thought the area was beautiful. David and I exchanged a couple more words when all of a sudden, this magnificent cake arrived!
It was one of the nicest slices of cake I’d ever seen and it tasted just as lovely as it looked. Well worth the price if you ask me 🙂
Our server went to get our check for us while Allison and I were guessing how much the bill was going to come back for. The server finally made his way back with the check when all of a sudden, David my farmer friend, reached out and snatched the check out of the server’s hand! Like he snatched it hard!
David looked at me and said, “I’m taking care of this.”
Fighting the blessing
I wish I could say I just said “Oh wow thank you so much sir” but that’s not what happened. Instead, I think I was so shocked by what he did, that I turned to David and said, “I can pay for that, give it here” in a sassy kind of tone.
David looked at me with his eyebrows raised and said in a very firm tone,
“Do you want to fight me for it!?
It took me a second to answer his question as I thought about the difference in our sizes. David was a bigger guy than I was and he looked a lot stronger than me. So my choices were, to let the man pay for our food or get beat up in the middle of an extravagant restaurant and have to pay a $200 bill.
Saving myself the embarrassment, I let David pay for the ticket and I said “thank you so much” to him and left.
As I was driving away from the restaurant it hit me… I was fighting the blessing and not receiving the blessing.
How often is God trying to bless us with something but we’re either fighting Him over it or trying to explain it away?
This reminds me of when Jesus pulled off the greatest miracle in the history of the world – the resurrection! After He resurrected there was a group of people that were trying to do what I’m writing about. Jesus had just risen from the dead, His body was no longer in the tomb and word was getting shared about this.
Instead of saying what they were seeing, they were trying to explain away the miracle. Check this out:
12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’
(Matthew 28:12-13 NIV)
Rather than just saying what they saw and accepting the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, these guys came up with something to explain it away. They were literally living when Jesus rose from the dead and couldn’t understand what was happening. Even though they had a part in killing Jesus, instead of admitting that they could have been wrong they still tried to explain it away.
Have you ever found yourself in a place like that? Where you get an unexpected open door and you keep telling yourself “No it can’t be, it’s just not the right time. I know this can’t be real so I’m not going for it.”
God could be trying to send a David to help you but you’re over there saying “I don’t need help, I can take care of my own problems.” God might be refining you in the middle of what seems like a fire but instead of trying to grow, you are arguing with God. God could be trying to open a door that you’ve been praying about for years but you’re saying to yourself “I don’t know, it doesn’t look like I thought it would, I think I’ll keep waiting.”
We do this way more than we think we do. We’ve got to learn to recognize when God is doing something in our lives. I wonder how many of these situations have come up in our lives and we didn’t see them as blessings?
Reflection:
God knows the ins and outs of our hearts, our lives, our minds, and our souls. God knows how to get us from where we are now to where He wants us to be. He got us from where we were to where we are right now and He ain’t going to stop now.
God knows how to bless us.
God knows the needs you have, the desires in your heart, and the future that’s in front of you. When we do see a blessing in front of us, we need to accept it and thank God for it.
Several years ago when I was buying Allison’s wedding ring, the sales lady looked me in the eyes and told me “You’ve got blessings chasing you down! You need to look around you!”
Maybe that’s what we need to practice more… take a look around at all the blessings and say thank you.
This makes me think of one of my favorite songs right now called “Welcome Resurrection” that’s all about welcoming Jesus to do something in our lives. The song says over and over “My eyes will see your glory” and that’s my hope as we take a step toward Jesus and follow Him. That our eyes would be open, our hearts be receptive and not discount a blessing that’s right in front of us.
Bryant Westbrook 