He wants to bless me. He wants to bless me. Get it in your heart. This is a personal prayer. It's easy to pray for this one and that one, and pray for someone over there who needs help and whatever, and it's right for us to do that. That's called intercession, praying for others. But there's an area where you need to learn how to pray for ourself, that we could be increased in capacity, in territory, in influence, in favour, and presence of God. I want us at the beginning of this year as a church, to get it in our heart, this year God is going to bless ME. I believe if we've got five, six, seven, 100 people in this church, and God is blessing every one, the whole church has got to be blessed - let alone the community as well. So number one, notice the word 'me'. Without faith, you can't please God. There's got to be a part of our prayer life where we begin to believe and meditate on what God says about me, what God says about you, what God says about your positioning with Him.
You are accepted in the beloved. You have access to the throne of grace. If that gets into your heart, then when you stand and pray, it's not going to be prayers riddled with guilt and shame. It's going to be prayers - oh God, I come boldly into your presence. As a son of the living God, I stand before You, yielded to You. See, your prayer life changes when you believe that God wants to do something for you, so make it personal. So what are the heart issues that you need to break through? What are the beliefs, that hinder you believing God would do something for your life? I tell you what it is most of the time, it's because we prayed and had a disappointment. Then you prayed and had another disappointment, then you had another disappointment, then after a while you got to believe in your heart, well God doesn't really answer my prayers, but I know He answers other people's prayers, I'll pray for them.
No. Determine you'll move past your sorrows and pains and regrets. That's what this guy did. He refused to believe that no matter how bad things were, he refused to believe he couldn't have a great future. Your future is what you choose. It's not dependent on what someone else said or did. It depends on what you and I choose to do with ourselves this year, and the greatest person you can invest in is yourself, invest something in yourself this year. Invest in growth, invest in prayer, invest in your relationship with God. Start to invest in yourself this year, so that you don't stay limited where you are, but begin to grow and increase. So what areas do you want God to manifest some things in your life?
The second thing is: oh, that You would bless me, and not only bless me, indeed bless me in abundance! What he's saying is: God, I want Your presence, I want Your person, I want to know You, I want to experience wherever I am, I want Your blessing on my life. Joseph was a blessed man, and the Bible says: you could see the blessing on him, because everything he did came to life. When God's hand is on you, blessing you, things that you do have life in them. When God is pouring His blessing out over you, and it's manifested in the earth in a tangible way, it shows up at home, it shows up at work, it shows up in the community. It shows up in your relationships. When your life is in bondage, and restricted by fear or unbelief or other kinds of things, what happens is, there's a lack of flow from your life to others, so oh that God would bless me - because this is an Old Testament prayer in Galatians 3, 13 and 14, it tells us: Christ has redeemed us already from cursings, so that we can experience blessing, and get the Holy Ghost, so the blessing God has for you, is to be filled with His spirit, and that Holy Spirit reveals to you what is freely yours.