One thing you can always do to receive God’s blessings
Have you ever felt like you needed a little extra blessing from God in your life? Maybe things are a bit challenging at the moment or you’ve just come through some rough waters and are on the other side of things, but you’re tired and need to find some peace of mind?
It’s at times like this that we need to feel God’s presence and the blessings that come with it.
There are lots of ways to ask for and receive God’s blessings, but today we’re going to talk about a unique way to do this that I just discovered in the Bible a couple of days ago.
Opening the Bible for inspiration
This past Sunday, while I was waiting for church to start, I opened my Bible and, as I often do, listened for God’s guidance for what verse to look up to pray about. Sometimes I just open the Bible randomly and let my eyes fall on a verse or two. And when I do that I usually find something that’s incredibly inspiring and timely.
But sometimes a specific verse comes to me. This time, the still small voice, said gently to read Psalm 81:10
This is not a verse I was familiar with, so I looked it up and it really spoke to me.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Psalm 81:10 NIV
I saw this as a wonderful invitation to receive God’s blessings, all the blessings He has in store for us.
When you read all of Psalm 81, the context of this verse has to do with God bringing the Children of Israel out of Egypt, how He delivered them from slavery, protected them from the Egyptian army, and how He provided for them in the wilderness.
And specifically, when God tells the people He will fill their open mouths, it implies He will give them the food they need to eat, which of course is exactly what happened as they wandered in the wilderness for decades.
Open your “mouth” to receive God’s blessings
But opening your mouth for God to fill can have other meanings as well.
For example, the Psalm begins with a call for gratitude with singing and music.
Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! Begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and lyre. Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon, and when the moon is full, on the day of our festival; Psalm 81:1-3 NIV
Now, I realize this is really obvious, but in order to “sing for joy” and “shout out loud” you have to open your mouth. This invitation in verse 1 is actually related to verse 10, which invites people to open their mouths and receive a blessing.
When you feel in need of God’s blessings in your life, for whatever reason, Psalm 81 can be a roadmap for how to receive that blessing.
When you open your mouth in prayer and praise and gratitude to God, it prepares you to receive the blessing God will put in your mouth, in your life.
Open your mouth wide
It doesn’t just say to open your mouth to receive a blessing but to open it wide.
What’s the implication here? That God is just going to give you a few little crumbs to eat, literally or figuratively? Of course not.
God is saying to get ready. He will fill your mouth with many blessings.
It reminds me of that wonderful verse
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” Malachi 3:10 NIV
Now some people take the word “tithe” in this verse very literally and give 10 percent of their income to the church or church related causes. And if that’s how this verse speaks to you, that’s great.
But tithing can have other meanings as well. Do you give 10 percent of your time to prayer and Bible study, or helping at church, or ministering to those in need? Are you giving God top priority in your life?
When you put God first and give to Him the honor due through praise and gratitude, God gives a bigger blessing than you can imagine.
Something is required to receive God’s blessings
But let’s come back to Psalm 81:10. I want to reemphasize this point. It’s not just that God gives us a blessing. Something is required of us.
We have to be ready to receive the blessing. We have to open our mouths wide—this is a metaphor. It doesn’t mean you have to literally stand around with your mouth wide open. We have to be ready to receive something big.
If you’re on a camping trip and need to get some water to cook with, will you take a cup or a bucket to the stream? A cup can only hold a little bit of water. You’d have to make lots of trips. But you could probably get all you need with a bucket.
I have known people who have a very tiny little cup, so to speak, a very small expectation, of how much God can or will bless them. They don’t want any special favors. Sometimes they feel they don’t deserve God’s blessing, that they’re not worthy.
How much expectation to you have to receive God’s blessings?
I’ve known people who don’t feel very important and they don’t want to bother God for a blessing. Or they think God has a limited number of blessings to go around and they don’t want to take someone else’s.
If you’ve ever felt that way, or know someone who has, God is saying, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” In other words, it’s like God saying: Enlarge your expectations of what I can and will do for you, how I can and will bless you.
Is asking God to bless you selfish?
It is not selfish to ask God to bless you. Now, that’s not to say it’s okay to ask God to bless you when you’re doing something wrong, or not doing what you’re supposed to.
The book of James makes this very clear.
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:3 NIV
But when your motives flow from gratitude and praise to God, and you’ve been faithful to God, even in a small degree, there is plenty of room for you to ask for God’s blessings.
So I’ll repeat: When your motives are right, it is not selfish to ask God for a blessing.
Jabez asks to receive God’s blessings
You probably remember the Prayer of Jabez.
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. 1 Chronicles 4:10 NIV
Jabez did not ask for something insignificant. He asked God to enlarge his territory. There’s a hope for something more expansive in his life. And he wants to feel God’s presence and protection. That’s a very good thing to ask God for.
Now if you just take this verse literally, it could be a very selfish prayer, that you just want more personal possessions. This is where it really all comes back to your motives.
How can the Prayer of Jabez apply to you? Will you ask God to enlarge your territory, your spiritual territory, your understanding of God’s love, His power, and healing presence?
What Jesus said…
Jesus said simply,
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7 NIV
Jesus is saying it’s okay to ask God to bless you.
And of course, as I said, all this is in the context of right motives.
When you ask for God’s blessing in this way, you are opening your mouth wide to receive wonderful things from God.
How wide can you open your “mouth”?
One of the things that really stands out to me, in this idea of opening your mouth wide for God to fill it, is the sense of expectation it requires of us.
Do you really expect God to bless you? How much do you expect God to bless you? Are you entertaining any limitations to the way God can and will bless you?
God is constantly pouring forth His blessings upon us but we have either closed our mouths or they’re barely open.
If the sun is shining brightly, but you are in your house with all the curtains closed, a little light may filter in around the edges so you can see to some degree. And maybe you have some candles or electric lamps that provide you with light.
Or maybe you open the curtains just an inch or two to let in a little direct sunlight.
But none of those can compare to opening your curtains all the way and letting the sun shine into your room full force.
There’s absolutely no good reason to limit your expectations of and receptivity to God’s blessings.
What will God fill your “mouth” with ?
I want to circle back one more time to this metaphor of opening your mouth wide and God filling it. And let’s go with the idea of God filling it with food, but in a metaphorical sense.
There’s an interesting little interlude right after Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.
The woman had just left to go back to Samaria.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. John 4:4:31-34 NIV
The food God gave Jesus to eat was to do God’s will. That’s pretty deep. Let’s take a minute to think about the implications of what Jesus is saying.
God gave Jesus the desire and the ability to His, God’s, will. This the spiritual food that fed Jesus on a deep spiritual level. It nourished and sustained him under all the demands of his busy ministry. It gave him courage to face opposition from the religious leaders of his day, and brought him victoriously through the crucifixion.
There were certainly times when Jesus ate normal, everyday food with the people he spent time with. But that food could never provide the spiritual nourishment he needed to be completely faithful to God’s will.
Doing God’s will helps you receive God’s blessings
One of the lessons here is that not only—as I said, that we need to do our part by opening our mouths wide with expectation— we need to let God fill our mouths with His will, but we also need to chew, swallow, and digest what God puts in our mouths.
We need to put God’s will and the blessings God gives us into action and let them sustain us and become part of who we are.
Jesus told a parable of a rich man who had a very plentiful harvest, or you could say, received a huge blessing from God.
“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:16-21 NIV
If you had a huge harvest…
Imagine you are like this man and just had a huge harvest. What could be a better solution than what he did?
Now, you could argue that he was opening his mouth wide, so to speak, by building bigger barns to hold his harvest. He did make room to receive it all.
But the real question is what he would do with it. Jesus is teaching several things in this parable, but what stands out to me is that the man decided to keep everything for himself. He didn’t share his blessing with others. He didn’t do anything to help those who may have been hungry.
And ministering to those in need was something really important to Jesus. One of the things I get from this parable is that we need to share with others the blessings God gives us.
Jesus didn’t keep all the inspiration he got from God to himself and live a perfect little life separate from others. He shared the truth God gave him with everyone. And that includes you and me today.
It’s impossible for me to imagine that Jesus could have lived his life just for himself. His whole purpose was to bring healing, redemption, and salvation to all mankind. His life was the epitome of accepting God’s infinite blessings and sharing them with others.
And he want us to live our lives the same way.
You can ask for, expect, and receive God’s blessings today
It’s time to open your mouth wide, as wide as you can, and let God fill it. It’s time to open your heart and expand your expectations as to what is possible for God to do in your life.
I love this verse from Isaiah.
Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. Isaiah 54:2 NIV
Here again, is another metaphor to expand your thought, your expectation, your receptivity to include more good, more of God’s love, grace, and blessings. Be open to God’s infinite possibilities in your life.
And you will receive God’s blessings in such a way that you can’t help but share them with others.
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James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
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Bible References
Psalm 81:10 NIV
10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.
Psalm 81:1-3 NIV
1 Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob!
2 Begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and lyre.
3 Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon, and when the moon is full, on the day of our festival;
Malachi 3:10 NIV
10 “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
James 4:3 NIV
3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
1 Chronicles 4:10 NIV
10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.
Matthew 7:7 NIV
7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
John 4:4:31-34 NIV
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Luke 12:16-21 NIV
16 “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.”
17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.
19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Isaiah 54:2 NIV
2 Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
