by Pastor Daniel
 
Introduction
Wishing you all a very happy and blessed Chinese New Year is always a greeting of blessing.  During this Chinese New Year, we will be receiving a lot of greetings of blessings as well as giving them.  We all love to receive blessings.  Thus here is a prayer of blessing:
 
The Prayer: Psalm 67 “...be gracious to us and bless us...”
The psalmist prayed this prayer: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.”  This is indeed a needed prayer, especially so with the Chinese New Year coming around the corner.  This is my prayer too for all of us - That God may be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.  It is knowing that true blessing comes from God.  It is more than being lucky and bump into a chance of good fortunes.  It is about the favor of God with his face shining upon us that we ought to seek for.
 
The Purpose: “that your way may be known...”
As God blesses us, may we also respond in gratitude in thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is a way of acknowledging the giver.  That is what we do all the time and teach our children the same.  When we are blessed, we always respond with the two magical words, “Thank You.”
 
By doing that we are acknowledge that the blessing is a pure gift.  When we are blessed by God, we must respond with gratitude so that in turn the world will know that we have such a great and gracious God.  Our blessedness is never to make us proud but always to humble us because ultimately we acknowledge that it is purely the grace of God that we are blessed.
 
Then the focus is no longer upon us but upon the Lord.  The psalmist expressed that very clearly in verses 3 through 5 where the people praise God and the nations rejoice in the Lord.
 
The devotional thought is this: “When we are blessed, how do we carry ourselves?”
 
Do we go around looking down on others giving them the idea that we are competent and that is why we are so lucky?  Or do we  carry ourselves about in such a way that we bring glory to God with all humility?
 
The question then is, “How do we do that?  How do we carry ourselves in such a way that we bring glory to God and not to ourselves?”
 
The Pattern: Blessed to be a blessing
The way we do this is really to know our role when we are blessed.  The pattern set for us by God is found throughout the scriptures.  When we are blessed, we must be a blessing.  That is how God wants us to become.
 
We see this in Abraham, a man who was called out from his country, his family and his relatives to follow God.  The reward for that sacrifice was the blessing of God.  Thus God came to Abraham and gave him these words of blessings, “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing....”
 
How would Abraham carry himself in such a way that he brings glory to God?  It is by being a blessing.  Because God has blessed him, he shall bless others.   When we bless others, we will in turn be blessed too.  Again the scripture tells us that God spoke to Abraham and said, “I will bless those who bless you...” 
 
Let us be a blessing because we are blessed by God.
 
Then we see the same pattern again in the nation of Israel.  In Isaiah 42:6-7, God said, “I have called you.... a light for the nations.”  When God blessed Israel, giving them a covenant, they will in turn be a blessing to other nations.  Israel was special purely by the graciousness of God and nothing else.  When God bless them, they must be a blessing to others - not a curse, not a snare.  When God called us, blessed us, we too must be a blessing to others.
 
When Jesus came to this world, he preached a sermon on the mount, pronouncing the famous eight-fold blessings, also known as the Beatitudes.  Ending the list were these words, “You are the salt of the earth and the light of his world...”  Again when we are blessed, we must be a blessing - bringing taste to life and light in a darkened world.
 
Conclusion
As we seek for blessings, may I urge you to be a blessing as well.  Let us think of three words to be a blessing - GIVE: this is perhaps the most tangible and obvious thing to do.  Give to God, give to those in need and give as God would lead you.  LOVE: Just as you are loved by God, love others. Love those who are near you and those who are far and may be difficult to love.  And finally LIVE: live a life that impacts others, a changed life that shows that God is alive and working in us and through us.