“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you…and give you peace”
(Numbers 6:24–26, NIV)
Take a cup of coffee and enjoy the study and living of God’s Word!
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you…and give you peace”
(Numbers 6:24–26, NIV)
Take a cup of coffee and enjoy the study and living of God’s Word!
thedailylily.com 
As I read this scripture and some of the references associated with it, I see what a powerful blessing this speaks to us.
Some things I thought about…”God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (I John 1:4 NIV)… therefore that face is beaming holiness and purity and truth upon us. We are promised in Revelation 22:3,4 that the Lord’s servants are the ones who will see His face so Numbers 6:24-26 holds hope of His redeeming and transforming power extended to us. And the Lord’s face can be hidden from us because of our sins (Isaiah 59:2) so His graciousness must be that cleansing power of the cross offered to us to make us clean and whole.
Hey, Debi, I think many of us would agree that In Christ Jesus we are clean and whole, ie holy. However, the fact remains, do we act it? Live it? Show it? And enjoy the fact that we are!
That’s right, Sara. God is not mocked. His grace and unmerited favor is beyond our comprehension but He is NOT an ancient Pushover Granddaddy Who overlooks one’s habitual sinning. HE sees the heart and knows our motives and intentions. And although we have been washed and cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, if we continue to sin BECAUSE of GRACE, being presumptuous that He will overlook the sinning, then we frustrate the Grace of God and mock Him. And HE WILL NOT be mocked. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness when we confess AND REPENT. (1Jn. 1:9). But he/she who carries on a lifestyle of sin, after we have been cleansed is like the dog returning to its vomit and the washed sow to wallowing in the mud” (2Peter 2:22)
Bless yourself once, twice and over and over and then over again!
When we wake up in the morning till we set ourselves to rest, we are blessed, we are blessed.
Sara your questions are where the ‘rubber meets the road’. It seems that those who have received this free gift of Christ and walk it, live and show it must be enjoying it because they seem happy with who they are, full of the life of Christ and able to help and encourage others. So, they are blessed…and blessed twice over as they share the joy with others around.
In a book by Gwen Shaw, the Spirit of the Lord revealed this to her and I paraphrase. The Lord told her that while we had nothing to do with preparing our physical body to be born into the world, we do have influence on our eternal bodies. Any and all the virtues we posses in this present body will go into the making of our eternal bodies. The Lord said that we are not one person on earth and then an entirely different person a minute after we die. We will be exactly what or who we are now. He told her that dying does NOT perfect us. So, He advised and warned us to prepare NOW our bodies with great care and diligence and HONESTY. “Do Not Deceive Yourselves”. Labor to be accepted by ME, the Lord so that you may have a more glorious promotion in Heaven.”
I believe the longer we wait to straighten out the things in our lives that need to be straightened out, the more of a chance we take of making heaven just by the skin of our teeth;(Job); works burned up by fire; no rewards; no crowns to cast at Jesus’ feet; Paul said in 2Cor 5:10, “For we must all appear and be revealed AS WE ARE, before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive his pay according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil, what his purpose and motive have been, and what he has achieved and been accomplishing while in the body.”
That gives us all, pause (selah)
The expression I recall hearing frequently growing up was ‘never put off for tomorrow what you can do today.” That certainly applies in what Mg said. We have no guarantee of a tomorrow and another opportuunity for change and must make the most of God’s graciousness extended to us today.
One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace will have the king for a friend”
(Proverbs 22:11, NIV)
God must want to be gracious to us but as Iread Isaiah 30:vs 15 and 19 there are conditions we must meet to receive it…repenting, trusting, resting in Him, crying to Him for help.
“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! ” Isaiah 30:18
Debi, I love that God wants to be and is so gracious to us. In the verse I have quoted from Provers 22:11, do you think it means I must speak with grace before the light of grace goes off in my life?
I believe that would be correct, Sara.
I looked into your question and found Ephesians 4:29 NKJ: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”
And Luke 4:22 about the Lord Himself: ” Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
And Matt 5:15 and 16 NLT speaks of the light from our lives and our words are deeds.
“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.”
Thinking more on your question, Sara…there is a Biblical principle that we are supposed to ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us’. Correct, healthy communication is such an important part of doing for others and receiving from others. So if I understand your question correctly, when we give gracious speech out (and Colossions 4::6 says, ‘with grace seasoned with salt’) we’ll have Gods’ grace shining on us. The seasoned with salt part may mean that our words shouldn’t be just tasteless and bland (even if we have all the right ingredients or words in our conversation)…they have to connect to and benefit the hearer somehow. There’s some learning and work to cooking and serving good food.
Correct seasoning is very important, especially if we want to serve an exquisite and properly seasoned dish in true gourmet fashion. There are all kinds of seasonings for every kind of taste, practically. There are the fragrant cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger spiced words that deliver an exciting message, flavorful and tantalizing, provoking one to seek, to investigate further, revelations of the Word of God. There are the garlic and onion pungent words…words of correction, admonishment…bold, almost overpowering but life straightening kinds of words. There are the honey-basted words from the Scriptures that comfort and console sad, wounded and grieving hearts, like Psalm 23. Then there are the fiery, hot pepper words of final warnings and predictions of great pressure-words if one does not repent, like the Word that Christ gives the Laodicean church in the Book of Revelation.
Paul says our words should be seasoned with salt. Jesus says if the salt loses its saltiness it is no good and need to be thrown out. Those words of Jesus Christ are surely WORDS well seasoned and to be ingested into the inner man for spiritual nutrition.