Greater Than Material Blessings

Yael Eckstein  |  February 19, 2023

There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?
    Lift up the light of your face upon us, O LORD!”
You have put more joy in my heart
    than they have when their grain and wine abound. —Psalm 4:6-7 (ESV)

We start out each week with an inspirational lesson from the beloved Psalms. For centuries, these ancient poems of King David and others have been the foundation for Jewish and Christian worship. Enjoy!

“I’d believe in God if He showed me a sign.” How many times have you heard that one? Sadly, there are so many people who have difficulty embracing faith in God because they can only bring themselves to believe in something that they can see with their physical eyes.

Another related barrier to faith is that many people think that faithfulness to God is supposed to lead automatically to all manner of material blessings. Because they think this way, if they suffer materially in any way, this leads to a loss of faith in God. They shallowly think to themselves, “Well, if God really loved me, He’d bless me and I’d have no problems.”

What these people fail to see is that faith is a relationship. Like any true relationship, faith depends on trust. And like any healthy relationship, if we enter into it to see what we can get out of it for ourselves, the relationship is doomed. But when we have faith and trust in God, we realize that what we get from the relationship is so much greater than any material blessings.

Greater Than Material Blessings

We see this lesson in Psalm 4, when we read, “There are many who say, ‘Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O LORD!’ You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.”

The Hebrew for “lift up” in the first verse has an unusual spelling. The word used here is nesah, spelled the same way as nes which means “banner,” “sign,” or “miracle.” The first verse here describes those people who say, “I want God to show me a sign. I want Him to show me some prosperity. Then I’ll believe in Him.”

To this, David responds that the joy one feels in their heart from a relationship with God is far greater than material blessings. As David wrote, God gave him more joy than those who found happiness in the material blessings of “grain and wine.”

We don’t need signs and wonders from God. We need a relationship with Him.

Your Turn:

Rejoice in your faith. And know that with God in your life you are wealthy beyond measure.