Barakh

Genesis 12:2

“And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.“

Often, we hear people say ‘I want to bless you,’ or in the story of Abraham, God promised Abraham that God would bless him and make him a blessing for everyone. What does it mean for us to receive blessings and to become a blessing to others?

The Bible says bless those who cause difficulties in our life. What does it mean? Is it Saying nice words to those who do bad things in our life? 

When we become a blessing to other people, spiritually we say: through me, those who don’t know God will have the opportunity to know and come to God one day.

Have you experienced God’s blessing in your life? Yes, We do through Promotion, having a family, finding a job/ career, college admission, etc.  Those are things we expect God to bless us in our life when we say a prayer. 

Now, there is a question we need to think about: How can God bless us? There is no doubt whether God would bless us but how?

According to Islamic interpretation, Barakah (blessings) means something God has given to you to enjoy for a long period of time. In Hebrew, Barakh (blessings) focus on the relationship. Genesis 12:2: God blessed Abraham and promised he would become a blessing to others same as we receive blessings from God and we become blessings to others. In other words, The relationship that we have with God must be reflected in our relationships with others, then we will be a blessing for others.

Barakh: kneel before you. It’s not Abraham who kneels before God but God kneels before Abraham. How can it be? In other religions, people kneel before their gods, but our God kneels before us. This is our God. What kind of response do you have if God kneels before you? 

If God wanted Abraham to become Barakh to others, then Abraham’s relationships with others must reflect God’s relationship with Abraham, meaning that Abraham cannot control others but become a servant who kneel before others kneel before others. God wants us to receive this blessing from Him first then we do this to others

How can we experience this Barakh? we can apply this in 3 ways:

1. Let’s be someone who needs to serve other.

• If we want to become a leader, we NEED to serve others which is different from serving others. Often when we serve others, we choose who we serve, where to serve, and who is in charge, then we put ourselves first and eventually we serve ourselves. The mindset we have here is ‘I serve you but I am not your servant,’ ‘I serve you because this society expects me to serve you but I am above you.’

• In the Bible, Jesus made himself nothing by becoming a servant for everyone. Jesus came not to be served but to serve others, he became a servant. The mindset of a servant is ‘I will become your servant ‘ When we kneel and serve others, we choose to surrender ourselves and put ourselves below them. This is a mindset we should have. We serve others by kneeling before them. We can not say the empty word ‘I want to bless you’ and it does not mean anything. When we experience this first from God, God humble himself and serves us joyfully, so we can understand and be able to apply this to others. Let down our arrogance and pride, humble ourselves to become a servant of others. 

2. Jesus kneeled when he served his disciples washing their feet and he kneeled when he prayed. So, we need to kneel when we pray, our gesture is important not only our words. We want to learn from Jesus that Jesus showed us this relationship of Barakh not only with words but with actions.

3. The words kneel appears 39 times in the bible especially when Peter encountered Jesus, that was his response to God. In our relationship with God we need to kneel down as a symbol of surrender, obedience, desperately asking for help, humble ourselves, and commitment to God. Peter surrendered when he encountered God. He responded to Jesus by kneeling before him, so we need to kneel before Christ. Kneeling before God is our commitment to have a relation with God.

• There are 3 important parts that ANF tries to implement: HC, Bible study, and Sunday worship. In HC, we want to focus on our emotions so sharing time is the most important part. In Bible study, we focus on our intellect through learning. But we also have our own will (will to choose) this is a privilege humans can have that God gave us. Through the Sunday worship, the important part is commitment time. We don’t simply stay here and enjoy singing or listen to the message. Worship is the human’s response to God (love and grace). Our response to God must be Peter’s response to God: surrender ourselves. 

• So, everyone commits once a month. This is the attitude that we should have. We ask people to commit to the word (message) not because the message is great but we want to respond to God. We want to come and commit to God. Come and kneel to our God, the one who kneels first. Let’s encourage one another to come and make a commitment during the commitment of Sunday Worship. 

Reflection Questions:

1. What is your take away from the message?

2. How can you practically apply the three implications?