\u201cThe person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord is blessed. \u00a0He will be like a tree planted by the water, it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn\u2019t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. \u00a0It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.\u201d Jeremiah 17:7-8 CSB
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It is really interesting what \u201cblessed\u201d means in its original form: to bless, kneel, salute or greet. It derives from the noun knee and suggests the \u201cbending of the knee in blessing\u201d. When I looked it up in Webster\u2019s Dictionary of 1828, which defines words based on America\u2019s early Biblically based values, it reflected how I thought blessed would be defined:
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Happy; prosperous in worldly affairs; enjoying spiritual happiness and the favor of God; enjoying heavenly felicity. (Felicity means: prosperity; blessing; enjoyment of good\u2026I had to look that up too.)
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Bending of the knee implies submission. We are submitting ourselves to the Lord, we are trusting in Him fully, which leads to a blessed life. But a blessed life does not mean a bank account with so many zeros you can\u2019t count them. It does not mean living in a mansion on your own private island or owning a private jet for transportation. It means having full confidence in the Lord, no matter what your external circumstances. If we look only at our current situation, and judge it based only on what we know, we could be completely wrong.
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Who knows what Good or Bad is? We can\u2019t tell until the story ends. Here\u2019s an example of a farmer and His horse:
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One day, the farmer\u2019s horse runs away. That\u2019s bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day it comes back with 12 more horses. That\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day the farmer\u2019s son falls off the horse while training it and breaks his leg. That\u2019s bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day the army comes through recruiting able bodied young men, but his son can\u2019t go because he has a broken leg. That\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on and on the story can go.
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Who knows what is good or bad? Who knows if it is a blessing or a curse? It\u2019s not until we get to the end of the story that we can fully know the answer. But what we do know is if we submit to God. If we trust in Him completely, if that is where our confidence lies, no matter what, we will have a blessed life.
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\u201cThe person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord is blessed. \u00a0He will be like a tree planted by the water, it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn\u2019t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. \u00a0It will not worry in a year of drought or cease… Continue reading MAY YOUR LIFE BE LIKE A TREE PLANTED BY WATER<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":668,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions\/668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}