“So That” Thinking

Florida has many beautiful ponds. A pond has an inlet of fresh water and AND an outlet for the water to flow out. The inflow and outflow makes it alive and fresh. If there was not outlet it would stink and be full of death and decay. It would be a putrid swamp.

 One of the biggest lies of satan is that we are blessed because we are somehow privileged or entitled to be blessed. We can just indulge ourselves and revel in our “own” blessings. The ways we are blessed as God’s sons and daughters are almost endless.  All of these things we think can be taken for granted and not seen as what we need to pass onto others.

 We can become like that swamp with an inflow but no outflow. After a while we will begin to “stink” and no one will want to get near us…except maybe a few gators!

 John the Baptist warned the people of Israel who thought their blessing was what they were entitled to have by birth. The idea of PASSING ON their blessing to others was not in their mind. They clung to the idea of BEING BLESSED (and a little superior to others by the way). That blessing came by their blood tie to the Patriarchs.  John was not impressed. He warned them that God could raise up children of Israel through the rocks scattered on the ground if He wanted to. He also said that the unfruitful tree of the hard-hearted religious was ready to be chopped down.  The axe of God’s judgment “was already at the root.”

 These great, great…grandchildren of Abraham forgot something very important that God had said to Abraham when He called him out of his homeland to bless him in another.  “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will BE a blessing...” (Genesis 12:2 emphasis added) God’s wonderful call and blessing upon Abraham was SO THAT He could be a blessing to all of the nations!

 This principle is emphasized again in Psalm 67.  The Hebrew writer by the Holy Spirit pens, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine on us-SO THAT your ways may be known on the earth, and your salvation among all nations.” The writer repeats this at the end of the Psalm, “May God bless us still, SO THAT all the ends of the earth will fear Him.” (Psalm 67:1,7 emphasis added)

 “So that” thinking is seeing the blessings that God gives us as not ours alone but that which is to be shared with others.  We may not fully recognize them as blessings.  We man see them as not as great as others in comparison.  But is using whatever we have received for the blessing of others SO THAT they can know the Author of those blessings.

 So How does this relate to me and to you? We must see ourselves increasingly as conveyers of blessing, ones to point others to the Lord, vessels where His life can flow through us to others so they may know HIM. We will feel most alive we can point others to HIM in some way through an act…a word...a prayer.  All to point up to Him.  I will become more “Jamie” when I do this and you will be more (fill in your name here) when you do it.  Jesus speaks of the paradox when we stop putting the focus of ourselves on us and onto Him. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel (the good news of Jesus for a lost and condemned world) will save it.” (Mark 8:35) When we get over trying to fulfill ourselves, we paradoxically become the persons we were designed and redeemed to be (and thus will be “fulfilled”)!

John the Baptist, the same man who warned his fellow Israelites against complacent entitlement, said towards the end of his life when his influence was diminishing and Christ was rising, “He must become greater and I must become less.” (John 3:30) He knew and practiced the SO THAT secret his whole life, even to the end when he would face an early death in cold, hard prison. He was chosen from birth, filled with the Holy Spirit while in the womb, was given a godly heritage from his parents, was highly commended by the Lord Jesus as He fulfilled his task of preparing the way Christ. He received all of these blessings SO THAT others would be blessed to know Jesus through his words and actions.

“So that” thinking is seeing beyond myself and living unto God for the good of others. It is not looking back at the past because it is not about me anymore but about Him. This is the kind of thinking that will not settle into the comfort of the harbor “because that is not what ships are for.” It will neither glorify or vilify our past because that was just a road,  not a final destination. It will not be overwhelmed by present circumstances in our nation, our family or our even own personal lives, because true faith is seeing the unseen eternal God as victorious over the seen and temporal. It is not living in fear about the unknowns of the future but is trusting in the One who KNOWS the future and IS leading us safely home.

 -Jamie Bohnett