The Inevitable Consequence

I finished my last post by saying that the most important thing you can do today is enjoy God. Let's explore what it means to enjoy God and what we can expect:

Every Spiritual Blessing

Eph 1:3 tells us that in Christ we have ‘every spiritual blessing', this is a huge statement. There isn't a spiritual blessing in God's domain that isn't available to those who are in Christ! But what are 'spiritual blessings'?

In John 16:14 Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will glorify Him by taking what belongs to Him and ‘declaring it to us’. From this verse, I think we can define a spiritual blessing as the experience of having what belongs to Jesus. It's more than just our theology of what we have, it's the tangible feeling of knowing that's true. Romans 8:15-17 is a brilliant example of the two verses above as the Holy Spirit takes something that belongs to Jesus and declares that, by grace, we have it as well:

“…you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ”. 

Feeling adopted to the extent that you can't hold back a cry of, "Dad, loving Father!" is very different to just knowing that you're adopted. 


The Inevitable Consequence Of Enjoying God

Another example of what Jesus said in John 16:14, is when you're spending time with God and the Spirit starts to declare to you, animate within you, the truth that you have the same authority that Jesus has over sickness and darkness. One of the fruits of having a ‘time of refreshing’ is that it will increase your faith for miracles. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus tells us when we have faith we can tell a mountain to move and it will move. In the same way, Peter demonstrates in this account in Acts 3, that we can tell sickness to move in the name of Jesus.
So often I just 'humbly' ask God to heal the person that I'm praying for instead of using the authority that I have by grace. Perhaps this is a symptom of not having been recently refreshed! 


NB: This isn't like Harry Potter trying to recite the words to a complicated spell correctly... there's no formula here. It's just a big mysterious mush of God sometimes using us to heal people, sometimes healing without us, and sometimes receiving the glory in a different way. My point is that if you're having a bad day, and you haven't had a 'holy' time of refreshing in the morning, then you encounter someone who needs to be blessed, stop thinking about yourself and bless them.


A Quick Story To Illustrate
Yesterday, on Tuesday I woke up late and so didn't have a time of devotion and refreshing in the morning. After work I took some UHT milk to a guy who recently broke his leg and is really struggling. I asked if I could pray for him; he's not a Christian but he was more than happy for me to have a go. I put my hand on his cast and quickly told all the bones, ligaments and tissue to be made new in the name of Jesus. Nothing instant happened. 
Perhaps if I had made time to enjoy the blessing of God for myself yesterday, I might have had more faith, and that cast might have fallen off. Perhaps not. Perhaps God has more to show this guy in his debilitation, as the church cares for him in his need; and no matter how 'fired-up' and 'filled' I had been, he wouldn't have been healed there and then!

Conclusion
When our only aim is to enjoy God and we make time to enjoying thanking Him, praising Him and having the Spirit ignite things within us; then we can expect to bless others with what He has given us. Just think what a blessing the Crown Church can be to this community if people are regularly being healed and, as a result, enter into a lifetime of enjoying God for themselves! 
Let’s not restrict this to our meetings, let’s get out and about and expect to bring demonstrations and explanations of what it means to enjoy the living God!