When I Bless Others I Get Blessed


Yesterday afternoon we piled into a couple church vans from Chicago City Life Center and drove a group of students to Phantom Ranch Bible Camp in Wisconsin. Charles and Kehinde Moodie are doing an amazing job of impacting their community, and we joined them on this student winter retreat. The location is beautiful, and our time is being filled with Bible teaching, paintball, horseback riding, archery, and more. For a group of inner city kids from ChiTown it's quite the getaway.

In the midst of all the fun we also raked. I'm a guy who recently wrote the blog, "We Won't Rake Leaves In The New Jerusalem." This isn't the New Jerusalem. This is the Old Wisconsin and there's a ton of leaves to rake. The students and leaders all worked hard, and when the morning was done we had the awesome feeling that comes with knowing we helped someone else. That's always the case.

Dan is the camp's program director. This morning he reminded all of us of the joy that comes from serving others. 

"But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me." Philippians 2:17-18

The rejoicing that Paul is speaking of in his letter to the church in Philippi is the joy that comes from giving of yourself to serve someone else. When we seek to bless someone else we're the ones who end up getting blessed. In fact, one of the greatest pick me ups you'll ever find when you're feeling down is to go out of your way to do something for someone else.

Let's all keep our eyes open for opportunities to help someone else. This is especially true on our "blah" days when we really don't want to do anything. When we do we are who gets lifted up. 

Following the Son,

James A Williams

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get The Rebound

Image
If you've ever played or watched basketball you know that rebounding is a huge part of the game. If you're unfamiliar with the sport rebounding is quite simply getting the ball when a shot is missed. You can't score without the ball which makes the play of great importance. It's not unusual for a team with a higher shooting percentage to lose a basketball game because they were out rebounded. On the court what you do when you miss can be even more important than making shots. It's true in life as well. Everyone misses shots, but that doesn't mean you've lost the game. Get the rebound. "For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again." Proverbs 24:16. People won't always give you the chance to rise again. For some your shortcoming is how they'll label you forever. Get the rebound anyway.  It was the historian Froude who wrote, "The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a singular a...
Read more

What’s In Your Cart?

Image
On this day in 1939, Sylvan Goldman who owned the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain got an idea. He was trying to think of a way for his customers to transport more groceries around his stores. He attached 4 wheels to the legs of a wooden folding chair, and then attached a basket to the seat. The shopping cart was born.  Before this shopping trips to the Humpty Dumpty or the Piggly Wiggly would be limited to what you could carry in your arms. I wonder if Sylvan’s original patent stated that one of the wheels was to either not spin or rapidly shake back and forth? It’s possible that this is some modern improvement on his original design. However it happened the carts keep getting bigger. When I bring my groceries to the check out counter I sometimes use the self check out. I don’t like the self checkout because the computer keeps telling me I put things in the bagging area when I didn’t. When I get a real person they will often ask this profound question. “Did you find ev...
Read more

Mercy

Image
We visited our nephew and his family last weekend. They have three boys, and witnessing their interactions brought back memories of both fun and difficult days of raising our boys. Sometimes when my boys were young I felt like all I did was discipline them. It seemed at times like we couldn't make it through a meal, homework, or even play time, without a fight breaking out, some inappropriate comment, backtalk, or a hundred other random things they could find to do to push their Mother and I over the line. I remember calmly saying things like, "I need for you to understand that I can feel anger welling up within me."  Sometimes this would result in corrected behavior, other times they would look at me as though I were speaking Chinese (I know this isn't actually a language, please don't write me a letter). I realize spanking children is controversial, so I tried not to spank my sons over 3 or 4 times a day (That's called hyperbole). On one occ...
Read more