blessings and enemies

Sometimes God’s idea of blessings doesn’t exactly match mine. 

In Deuteronomy 28 God tells how he will bless his people if they obey. Tucked in among the long list of wonderful things is this, in verse 7: “The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.”

To me, a good blessing would be not to have any enemies at all. I think a lot of people are like me. We want everyone to like us, just like we want to have fun all day and not work. There’s a great American blessing: everyone should love me so much that they provide for me, and I don’t have to work.

God intends to bless me in a different way. He says, “As you work, I will bless you by . . . .” He says, “When enemies rise up against you . . . .” Under God’s blessing I’ll be better equipped to do work and deal with enemies. 

Why can’t he just make life easy for me? It seems that in some way that would be bad for me - I’d die in the end of affluenza. 

Jesus didn’t live an easy life. Jesus spent every day serving people and doing God’s work. Jesus made a lot of enemies, people who were lied to by Satan and thought Jesus threatened their good life. 

Jesus, who showed me what perfect obedience looks like, had hardship and enemies in his life. God plans to put those things in mine too, as a way of developing and proving my faith. But he will walk every one of those hard paths with me. That’s the great blessing.