Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.  – Jeremiah 17:7

There are different ways to approach Bible reading, … water skiing or scuba diving. What? If you water ski across Scripture, you are hitting the high waves and letting everything else just glide past. If you take a scuba diving approach, you go deeply into the Word, searching out its meanings, and exploring its importance in your life. People often skim across the word “blessed,” with thoughts like, “God has blessed me with three children,” or “I’m blessed to have good health.” A word study, though, might surprise you.

The person who trusts in the Lord is blessed with the enviable position of receiving God’s provisions or favor as an extension of His grace. Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary references blessed as “made holy or consecrated.” The deeper you look, you see that to be blessed is not about wealth or comfort but of “being made holy.” The most complete form of being blessed is to be made aware of your wretched natural state, being led by the Holy Spirit to repentance, receiving salvation through personal acceptance of the work of Jesus Christ as atonement for sin, being set apart or sanctified for the purpose of righteous living before others, and one day receiving a heavenly reward. Any temporal blessing should pale in this light.

As today’s verse says, you are blessed if you trust in the Lord. Pray for a deeper understanding of God’s Word as you dive into Scripture each day. Ask the Lord to reflect His nature through your life. Seek His will for the nation and mean it in the deepest sense when you say, “God Bless America.”