Road to a Blessed Life

Take God’s road, rough and narrow may it be, and experience a blessed life. There are people who are hesitant to follow God for fear that all pleasures of life will be gone the moment they commit their life to Jesus. They thought that living for God is akin to a sad and uneventful life. There are others still, who are already under God’s turf and inside His fence, yet they choose to jump over the fence and escape the loving embrace of the Good Shepherd. They think and feel that God’s road is way too hard and too narrow to live life with abundance and pleasure. Yes, pleasure. That is what many people is looking for in life. They call blessedness as living in pleasure. In the Bible, of course, pleasure accompanies God’s blessings. But being blessed as defined by the Word of God is not confined by all the pleasures you could imagine for yourself. It is more than that. And it starts with living for God and fearing His name.

Walking in fear and faithfulness to God is the way to a blessed life. There is so much emotion and pain in the words of God through Jeremiah when God said, “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.” – Jeremiah 2:11. It may be quite natural for a man who does not know God to pursue his own ways in the futility of his own knowledge. But it is a bitter and evil act when one man knows God and forsakes Him. “Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord GOD of hosts.” – Jeremiah 2:19. God says, no one in all the world has exchanged their false god to another, yet His children did it to Him. The one and true living God who led them out of wilderness to a land of abundance have forsaken Him once they enjoyed their bounty in the new life God gave them. How many times have this happened to God’s people as well? Sometimes, God’s people exchange God’s glory for nothing. They exchange God’s goodness and blessing for something that is of no eternal worth at all. The reason? His people do not fear His name.

God provides and opens the way to a blessed life. His road is the way to blessing. It is clear. But when the blessing is on your hand, how do you treat God? “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” – Jeremiah 2:12-13. When God brought Israel to the Promised Land where there is abundance, He actually led them out from the deserted land where there is no water to a land brimming with water. Water to them is life. God gave them exactly that and much more. But they chose to make their own water storage filled with holes or perhaps, dig their own wells of water that can never be full and that which can never satisfy. This is rebellion. Because they actually did two things. When they forsook God, they completely turned their back, their trust, their belief, and love for God. When they “hewed out cisterns for themselves”, they actually took their own authority and not God’s to rule their life in seeking satisfaction for themselves. When this happened, God said be horrified of this because this is an evil act. When did such time happen in your life when you chose your way than God’s way? How does knowing that the true blessed and satisfied life come from fearing God alone change your perspective?