Prophetic Perspectives #5: Count Your Blessings
Prophetic Perspectives #5: Count Your Blessings
By Dr. David Reagan
Count Your Blessings
We are living in tough times right now. We have an unprecedented stock market crash. We have a pandemic raging across the world. We have massive unemployment. It’s a time of great fear and panic for many people.
I thought it would be good for us to pause for a moment and think about a way in which we can cope with all of this. I call it “tough faith.” I want to share some ideas with you about tough faith. For now, let’s look at counting your blessings. I know from experience it works, and it works like this. About every quarter I sit down one morning when I have my devo and devote that devo to counting my blessings. What I do is I start listing all of the blessings that I can think of. Sometimes I do this for thirty minutes going page after page after page after page.
I would strongly encourage you to count your blessings. Let me tell you how it will help you. It will help you keep your eyes on Jesus. It will help keep you from wallowing in self-pity because there are so many blessings you have been given, many of which you aren’t even aware of.
For example, when you make your list of blessings, don’t overlook the obvious things that are so easy to overlook, for example, like electricity and pure water. Did you know that the number one cause of illness in all of the world is impure water? Did you know that 1.5 billion people on this planet have no electricity whatsoever? Did you know that most people in rural America didn’t have electricity until 1940 as a result of Congress passing the Rural Electrification Bill in 1936? I can remember as a kid going to visit relatives who lived on farms that had no running water, no indoor toilet, and no electricity. We lighted the house at night with kerosene lanterns.
So, count your blessings! Not only the blessings of food and clothing and of a job and a home and family and friends but be sure to remember your spiritual blessings. The blessing, for example, of having a Bible. So you realize what a blessing this is? Do you realize that for over a thousand years throughout the Middle Ages people didn’t have their own Bibles? They couldn’t afford to own one, and even if they had gotten one their Bibles were all written in Latin and so the common man couldn’t read them. Today we have Bibles in almost every language you can think of. And yet, in many many countries in the world, Bible’s are illegal. We here have Bibles, and we have the freedom to get them and to read them. Don’t take that for granted! Bible’s are a very important blessing.
Let me end with two scriptures and a quote from a song. The first scripture I want to share with you is from Hebrews 12:1-2. “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
The second verse of encouragement I want to share with you is taken from the writings of Paul, in Philippians 4:4-7. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” Paul wrote this from prison, and the prisons of his day and time were not air-conditioned with big-screen color TVs. They were dank, dark caves in the ground. He says again, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Let me conclude with the words of a famous Christian hymn that was written in 1897:
When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.