😎🐫🎤 Christ’s peace be with you. This week I was reminded a little of my past. Before I get into that, I have a question for you and I want you to be very specific. What, if anything, do you say when someone sneezes around you? When I was a young child I would say “God bless you.” But there came a time as a young adult, and I don’t really remember why, maybe it just wasn’t cool to say, but I dropped God and just said “Bless you.” As I grew in my faith and relationship with God, I eventually brought God back in front of the “Bless you.”
So why do I bring this up now? This week, I spent time around a young child that had the sneezes. Every time I heard a sneeze I said “God bless you.”
After saying “God bless you.” multiple times, the young child said, “Can you not say G?”
I responded with, “G? Do you mean God?”
“Yes”
Pause a moment…
First, this may seem strange, but I was proud of this young child for being willing to speak up for what she’d been taught and her young degree of belief. At this age, it’s about mimicking those authority figures that influence her and less about her own educated belief. It may not seem like much now, but I’ll circle back to this.
Second, WOW! My heart sunk for two reasons 1) I was asked not to say God. And 2) the child wouldn’t even say the word God. Just G.
…un pause.
Without a thought I said, “God’s blessing is greater than any blessing I can give you, so I’m going to continue to say “God bless you.” And so, I did.
I’m not mad at this child or her parents. I was just really caught off guard. I would imagine a good portion of all of us have gone through those Saul periods of life when, maybe not as bluntly as Saul, but in our own ways have persecuted the Lord. Those years that I chose to remove God from the Bless you, yes, I was persecuting Him. Okay, you may think I’m overreacting, but am I really? Our purpose in life is to give glory, honor, and praise to the Lord in all we do, serving those He places before us, and make His presence known so that others may also live a glorious life with Him. So, the question is, how can we do this if we are afraid and won’t even speak His name. By letting the fear of what others think stop us from doing what we know is pure, right, and holy, how will we every glorify the Lord? Choose the Lord and be bold in the smallest of opportunities. Put God back in front of the Bless you. You know where you’re skimping out on Him and I pray that every time it happens, He makes us fully aware of what we do so that we go back to putting Him first.
I know for a fact we will ALL fall in our journey with the Lord. By our choices, some of us fall farther than others because of our lack of a personal connection with Christ, such as Saul. Once Saul had that personal experience with Christ…The rest is history. You can read about Saul’s conversion experience in Acts 9: 1-19. A prayer that I have prayed for many years for my children is, Lord I pray that they don’t fall too far and get too hurt before they come back to You.
Saul, one of the biggest persecutors of Christ became one of His biggest advocates. If you, like me are not Jewish, God’s choice to have Saul bring His message to the Gentiles is the reason we know Christ. That child’s boldness to speak up at such a young age gives me great hope for what God will do and work through her life and how her boldness will bring others to Christ. She has a Spirit in her that is the one and only Holy Spirit. Be bold in your faith, belief and actions for the Lord.
Bless others and be blessed.
If the Lord has touched you in some way with His message today, I ask that you pay it forward by sharing this message, so that you and He may also bless others.
#RhettWalkerBand – Believer
Third Day Devotions 