Believing, Receiving, Blessing

The foundation of our friend's home

I've always believed in God. Sunday school, youth group, church were all pieces of my growing up culture; it was a culture that traveled with me to college. My parents poured a strong foundation.

Believing, the foundation that readied me to receive.

"But to all who did receive him,

who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God,"

John 1:12 (italics mine)

Listening to my peers that Sunday evening in the college-aged youth group, I realized that a foundation is poured to support something greater. Believing was a foundation. That was the night my words reached to God, I opened my heart and my hands, and received my child of God identity. Something greater had begun.

It was the first step of many receivings.

D.L. Moody puts it this way, "Faith is the gift of God. So is the air, but you have to breathe it; so is bread, but you have to eat it; so is water but you have to drink it." (The Way to God, p.53)

Jesus encourages, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in (receive) my love." John 15:9 (parentheses mine)

My child of God journey is a journey of receiving. Only then do I have something to offer my world. Ann Voskamp calls this the order of grace. "You will be experienced as a blessing -- to the extent you have first experienced yourself as blessed. You must feel the fullness of your own pitcher before you trust the pouring out of yourself." (The Greatest Gift p.40)

As I read the scriptures, do Bible study, attend church, live in community, I'm always asking,

what am I receiving that is allowing me to bleed grace,

to love with the love I'm receiving?

Receiving built on the foundation of believing leads to blessing.

What questions do you ask to assure that you're receiving from God?

What does bleeding grace look like for you? 

"For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid,

which is Jesus Christ."

I Corinthians 3:11