Eight Ways to Seven Great Blessings for the New Year

Don't just receive the good wishes during this New Year time. You can do something about them to make those wishes come true. The Bible tells us how in the Beatitudes.

There are always good wishes for the New Year. Everyone wants blessings of wealth, health and peace, and honor. But there is nothing to back the good wishes. There is no guidance as to how those wishes can come true in our life.  The Bible tells us differently even though the Bible is the gospel of grace. Our attitudes and actions do affect our blessings now and in the future. It is covered in the Beatitudes of Matthew Chapter 5.

Here is the mind-map of the 8 Ways to 7 Blessings on Matthew 5:3-10.

Here is the takeaway:

1. A specific attitude and resulting behavior bring forth a specific kind of blessing.
   
   
2. The attitudes and behavior are actually characters of God and of His children, us.
   
   
3. The Life of blessing in this world is not just smooth sailing and all comfort.
   Precisely because of the things you will be doing, the world, or the evil in this world, will go against you. Hence the blessings now are not without difficulty and prosecutions. But the promises and the true blessings are that you will accomplish your purposes in spite of the persecutions and that you will come out of it with greater maturity.
   
   
4. The blessings are for now and in the future. It is not just in the future of heaven and it is not just for this present time. The blessings will be now, though with persecutions or hardwork, and in the future, as repeated in Mark 10:30 but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come, eternal life. 31 But many that are first(in this world) shall be last(in the eternal), and the last first.”
   
   
5. Go through the list of 8 things and see if any of our attitudes and behavior need to be changed. Else, we are just blocking the blessings that God wants to give to us.
   
   
6. If you have a problem now, go through the list and see what set of actions you could do to solve the problem, know that God is with you and will take you through your difficult time. But first, trust in the Lord, be calm and work out the solutions.
   
   
7. Don't begin with the persecution complex thinking people are against you.
   Of the 8 attitudes and behavior, only the last one is about persecution and for a specific reason of righteousness. Do we suffer persecution for the right reasons? 

May your New Year wishes come true this year as you trust the Lord and His ways.

See also Beatitudes - The Ways of His Kingdom

Lim Liat (c) 1 Feb 2014