What Does It Mean To Be Blessed?

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Bless Your Heart

A phrase you hear often in the south is, “Bless your heart.” This phrase can mean so many things. For those of you not from the south, let me help you understand this lingo.

Bless your heart can mean:

Example 1: Someone tells you of a hard situation they are going through and in all sincerity you say, “Bless your heart.” This means you really understand and are sad about what they are going through.

Example 2: You are a child and you’re acting up in class and the teacher says, “Bless your heart,” while patting you on the shoulder. You know you better get it together or the next step might be the paddle (I went to school in the 80s with discipline and survived).

Example 3: A snobbish person approaches another and makes a passive aggressive statement towards her. In perfect southern charm, the offended woman would say, “Bless your heart.” In that form I cannot say on my faith-based blog what she was implying.

When we lived in Houston, my girls heard this statement often and we would discuss how the tone of the words could change the meaning. Several years later, we traveled from Montana to Seattle for an extended weekend. Walking through downtown Seattle, I hear these two ladies walking past with a true southern drawl. One lady said to the other, “Well, bless your heart.” My daughter looked at me with enormous eyes and said, “Mom, I think she just cussed her out.”

Blessed

Because the word blessed is so overused, I never really fully grasped what it meant to be blessed until I studied Revelation. I know, not the place you would expect to find it. My overall understanding was that it meant you felt you had many things you held dear and you could thank God for them.

“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”

Revelation 1:3 NIV

Divine Favor

In the first chapter of Revelation, we find the word blessed at the opening of verse three. Out of curiosity, I looked it up in the Greek to see what it meant. It means receiving God’s favor. That is much more than I expected. So I looked it up in Hebrew. In the first chapter of Genesis, we read of God blessing Adam and Eve. In Hebrew, it can mean a lot, but the one that stuck out to me was that it can mean to speak words invoking divine favor.

Can you really grasp what it means to receive God’s divine favor? The God who created all things finds favor with us. My mind truly cannot grasp the abundance of this word.

The Bible begins with God creating all things and then blessing it. The last book of the Bible contains the same word and says, “Blessed are those that read His prophecy and take to heart what it says.” I wrote a little about that in the post ‘Revelation’ so I don’t want to repeat it. I want to dig a little deeper into how we should respond to such an amazing gift He gives us.

Hidden Gems

Not only does God give us the gift of salvation to spend eternity with Him, but He lavishes us with divine favor. What is your first reaction to learning of hidden gems like this? Please share them below in the comments.

For me, I want to fall to my knees and worship. To thank Him for all He has given us. To thank Him for pouring more on us than we deserve or can imagine. Then I want to thank Him the best way possible.

Gifts That Go Beyond Expectation

When someone does something that goes beyond expectation, it does something within you to want to pay that forward. I have received many gifts like this over the years, but I would have to say being given my horse is at the top of this list. The beautiful woman who gave him to me points the gift to God every time I thank her. God knew I needed that horse to give me a desire to live again when battling Lyme Disease. You can read more about that here.

This gift meant so much to me and has changed my life that it transformed something in me to want to give life changing gifts to others. Many of you may be thinking, and my first response too was, I do not have the money to give that kind of gift. But, the gift that can change so many lives is free. We just have to be bold enough to share it.

Change Someone’s Life

I pray over each of you reading, and myself, that God would restore the excitement of when we first met Jesus and add it to the years of joy we have had with Him. Then ignite us to share it with someone this week who needs a gift that can change their life.

When we receive gifts, we often like to take a picture and share it on social media so the world can see it and share in our excitement. I want to challenge you to do the same with your gift of salvation. I encourage you to share something God has done in your life and share it with a friend, someone God puts on your heart, or on a social platform (please tag me). The world needs to hear about this glorious gift you have to share.

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