The Blessing You Want vs. The Blessing You Get

Series: Ask Me for a Blessing (You Know You Need One) – Week 2
Texts: James 1:19–27 (CEB), Psalm 84 (CEB)

When Blessings Don’t Look Like We Expect

When I was a kid, I thought blessings worked like Christmas lists. You told God what you wanted, and—if you’d been good enough, faithful enough, patient enough—you might get it.

At thirteen, the blessing I wanted was simple: to fit in. I didn’t want to be the weird church kid who loved piano and never got picked first for basketball.

But the blessing I actually got? A sense of belonging in the church choir loft. I sat next to someone’s grandma who couldn’t sing on pitch, but she loved me exactly as I was.

It wasn’t the shiny blessing I’d prayed for. But looking back, it was the better one.

So here’s the question I want you to hold as you read:
What’s the blessing you prayed for—and what’s the blessing you actually got? Were they the same, or worlds apart?

James on Blessing

James doesn’t talk about blessing the way we usually imagine it. There’s no mention of vacation packages, financial windfalls, or easy solutions. Instead, James says:

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry… You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.”

In other words, blessing isn’t about what falls in your lap. It’s about what gets worked into your bones.

The blessing, James says, is not just hearing God’s word—it’s living it. Sweating it. Practicing it when it would be easier to nod “Amen” and go home unchanged.

So let me ask you:
When you think of blessing, is your first thought about what you receive—or how you live?

The Blessing You Want

We want blessings to be easy. We want faith to calm our anxiety, pay the bills, smooth relationships, and give us that spa-day glow.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. Wanting is human.

But James would warn us: don’t confuse wanting with getting. The blessing you want might not be the blessing that actually makes you whole.

The Blessing You Get

According to James, the blessing you get looks more like this:

• Holding your tongue when every instinct says lash out.
  
  

• Doing the word instead of just admiring it.
  
  

• Caring for widows and orphans in their distress.
  
  

• Keeping yourself unstained by the world.
  
  

Not flashy. Not Instagrammable. But deep. Gritty. Resilient.

The blessing you get isn’t about your comfort—it’s about your character.

When have you gotten a blessing you didn’t want at first, but later realized it was exactly what you needed?

Psalm 84’s Reminder

Psalm 84 says:

“Better is a single day in your courtyards than a thousand days anywhere else!”

That’s not about escape. It’s about proximity to God.

The blessing is being close to the Source—even when nothing else changes.

Sometimes that feels like glitter and confetti. Other times it feels like wilderness, exile, or living in the gap between what you prayed for and what actually happened.

Have you ever mistaken a blessing for a curse because it didn’t come wrapped the way you expected?

If We Wrote Our Own Beatitudes…

Let’s be honest: if we wrote our own beatitudes, they might sound like this:

• Blessed are the people with stable jobs, because they’ll sleep at night.
  
  

• Blessed are the people with perfect kids, because they won’t need therapy later.
  
  

• Blessed are the people who win the lottery, because—obviously—they’ll be happy.
  
  

But James challenges that: Nope. Try again.

The real blessing is in the practice, the persistence, the patience. It’s in loving the hard-to-love, serving the overlooked, being quick to listen and slow to tweet your outrage.

Bringing It Home

Blessing isn’t about God as a cosmic vending machine. It’s about being formed into people who look more like Jesus.

That means:

• Sometimes the blessing is not getting the job you thought you had to have.
  
  

• Sometimes the blessing is the season of grief that cracks you open to deeper compassion.
  
  

• Sometimes the blessing is simply surviving—and realizing God’s presence never left you, not for a second.
  
  

So here’s the invitation:
What blessing are you holding right now that doesn’t feel like one? What might God be doing in that space?

Closing

The book guiding this series, Ask Me for a Blessing (You Know You Need One), pushes us to see blessing differently. It isn’t about polite platitudes. It’s about gritty, vulnerable, lived moments where God shows up in ways we didn’t plan.

The blessing you want and the blessing you get may not be the same.
But in Christ, the blessing you get is always enough. Always.

Amen.