It was the weekend and I was pleased to have a break from all the hard work that I had been having the previous week. It had been crazy and there had been such hard work, but I felt unaccomplished.

My husband and I had both been praying and waiting on the Lord to somehow help us to make some extra cash. But it seemed as though no possibilities were on the horizon.

I was pottering round the house and catching up on some household chores when the phone rang. I ran to get it, and after answering the person on the line said,

"I am a university student and I saw your advert to type out theses for students. I am in need of some urgent work. Could you do it for me, please?"

Wow, there was my answer to prayer! I was so thrilled, and even though it meant doing some hard work, it meant getting some more provision in.

What was so exciting about that phone call was the fact that I had forgotten that I had put up a notice many months before, but nothing had materialized. Now it was as though my ‘seed had sprouted’.

At the same time as my extra project, my husband also received some extra work. He got a big programming project to do on the sideline and did a great job at it.

That night we both sat together and rejoiced in the blessing of the Lord. It was as though there had been a blockage that had stopped us from walking in blessing. But now that blockage had been removed and the blessing was pouring.

During that period of our lives we experienced the blessing of the Lord in unexpected ways. But it wasn’t the only time it has happened.

The Lord has been faithful to pour out His blessing on us in so many wonderful ways. And you are no exception to the rule. The same thing can happen to you.

Four Different Ways to be Blessed

So how can you tell if the Lord is blessing you in your life right now?

I got a kind of a revelation of four different ways the Lord can bless you from an obscure little chapter in the Old Testament. I was reading from Zechariah 8:12 and it says:

For the seed [will be] prosperous; the vine will give her fruit, and the ground will give her increase, and the heavens will give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these [things].

As I read that verse I thought,

"Wow, there are four different things that the Lord will do to show His blessing."

Of course this was a Scripture that was given to the remnant of Israel and it related to crops. But you can allegorize the Word and get pictures out of it, and I saw four areas where the Lord can show His hand of blessing in your life.

Let’s look at the different blessings it shares in that Scripture. They are:

1. The seed will be prosperous
2. The vine will give her fruit
3. The ground will give her increase
4. The Heavens will give their dew

Okay, let’s translate those four pictures into four ways that will mean more to you in today’s life and circumstances. They are:

1. What your hand touches will prosper
2. You will reap a harvest of what you sow in the spirit
3. You will have continual growth
4. The Lord’s anointing will be on your life

I want to now look at each of these four things individually and share some more on them.

What Your Hand Touches Will Prosper

There is a Scripture that I just love and it is one of my favorite promises. Deuteronomy 28:8 says:

The LORD [Yahweh] will command the blessing upon you in your storehouses, and in all that you set your hand to; and he will bless you in the land which the LORD [Yahweh] your God is giving you.

Wow, how is that for a double blessing? He will command the blessing on you financially. And He will bless all that you set your hand to.

Have you ever experienced the Lord’s blessing on what you do? We certainly have, and I am not just talking about doing normal stuff here.

I remember that one of the clearest signs of the Lord’s blessing in that way was when my husband had a big programming job to do. He was writing a program in a language that he had just started to learn and it wasn’t easy for him. Now he needed to complete something as soon as he could.

I began to pace up and down and pray for him. I was pretty used to doing that. I had done it since we had met and he was being thrown in the deep end with new programming languages.

This one particular day he was really struggling. He was making mistakes and there were bugs in the program. He was stressed and I was stressed, but I began to look to the Lord for some help.

The Lord is wonderful. He will never let you down when you truly look to Him. As I prayed and committed my husband to the Lord, suddenly it began to come right and my husband saw the problem.

It was as though some blinkers had fallen off his eyes and he could suddenly understand what was going on. But you see it was more than that. Whatever had been blocking the Lord’s blessing from flowing was removed and it began to flow once again.

My husband completed the job in record time and it was a fabulous program. His client was thrilled and so were we because the Lord’s blessing was on him.

You will know the Lord’s blessing in your life when whatever you do prospers. Things should flow smoothly and they should work without difficulty. If you are doing a job for someone else, you should be able to do it quicker than others.

This doesn’t only apply to working as in a job. It applies to anything in your life. If you are cooking a meal, it should go quickly and taste delicious. If you are doing some handcraft, you should enjoy it and make quick progress. And the finished product should be a blessing to you.

When you start to see these things in your life you will know that His blessing is getting through to you in your work.

Reaping a Harvest of What You Have Sown

Anyone who has ever done gardening will know that when you plant seeds they don’t grow instantly overnight. Wouldn’t that be nice if they did?

But here’s the reality check. It almost always takes time to show up. And if it happens like that in the natural, you can be sure that it happens like that in the spiritual.

How do you plant seeds in the Spirit? There are many ways to do it. But one of the most powerful ways that we have found is to do it through prayer.

I have been the main prayer warrior for our ministry for many years now. When we first came out to Mexico and formed the ministry, prayer was the only thing that I did for a good few years.

Day by day, sometimes two or three times a day I was in my prayer closet. I paced up and down, prayed, and spoke in tongues and spoke the Word.

It was very difficult at times because I often thought that nothing was happening. It seemed that I was praying ‘into the air’ if you like and that it was a waste of time.

But time and time again the Lord came through for us. Suddenly we would get a major breakthrough of provision. Or the way would open for us and a new opportunity would come our way.

As we looked back at those times we realized that all those times of prayer had been sowing into the Spirit. I had been planting seeds and they were beginning to grow further down the line.

You may be thinking the same way that I did when it seemed like my prayers were hitting the ceiling. But I want to encourage you to keep going. The Lord has not left you. He has heard you and knows your desires. And soon what you have pushed through and sown before will begin to reap a big harvest.

The same thing can happen where ministry is concerned. You can pour into someone who is going through a problem. You can encourage them and urge them to put their eyes on the Lord because He is their victory.

Sometimes they may seem to have that same problem or bondage all the time, no matter how many times you pray or counsel with them. But then suddenly they will break through and be set free in a miraculous way.

Remember that no matter what you do for the Lord, you are planting those seeds. And the Lord will see to it that you reap the harvest.

Continual Growth

When the Lord’s blessing is on your life you should have continual growth taking place. By that I mean that you should be expanding, upgrading and growing all the time. Take a look at this verse from Isaiah 54:2 and 3. It says:

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of your habitations: spare not, lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes;
For you will break forth on the right hand and on the left; and your seed will inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

God does not want you to remain stagnant and stay in one place. He wants you to expand and grow, and as it says in the Scripture ‘enlarge your tent’.

How do you do that? Well if you have your own ministry or business it will usually mean starting off small and then continually growing.

At the very beginning of this ministry when we started out, it consisted of a small mailing list of only a handful of people. We sent out a mail every day and that was the sum total of our ministry.

Then we began to do more and we started preaching. That led to us beginning to transcribe the preaching and compile some lectures into big workbooks and tapes. Then we started a Prophetic School and it expanded and grew all the time.

We have found that even though it may take a long time to get off the ground fully, if the Lord is in the middle of it you will have a continual flow of ideas coming your way and things that you can put into practice in order to grow.

Perhaps you don’t run your own ministry or have your own business. How can you tell the Lord’s blessing in your life then?

Well if you are in a job situation you should have ongoing favor and blessing in promotions and being a valuable part of the staff in the company. Your employers should value you and start to promote you more and give you increases in salary, etc.

No matter who you are, the Lord does not want you to stagnate or go backwards. He wants you to grow; to get a better house and more of your needs and desires being fulfilled.

This doesn’t mean that you should get greedy and just demand whatever your eyes see. But the Lord told my husband that we should expect the best and believe for it to be fulfilled.

When the Lord’s blessing is on your life you will see growth and improvement in every area of your life.

The Anointing on Your Life

The final way you can see the Lord’s blessing on you is when His power and anointing flow in your life. You can see it in a believer’s life when they have power and authority; when things happen when they speak out and command things in their lives.

The Lord has given you His anointing and you can use it to cause His blessing to flow in your life. But usually you use the anointing for other people first. You see the Word says,

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

This is especially true as far as the anointing is concerned. This is because when you release the power of the Lord on behalf of other people, it goes forth and does wonderful things for them. It also destroys the plans of the enemy in their lives.

Right now you are probably thinking,

"But I thought we were talking about blessing in my life. What about blessing coming my way with the anointing?"

But the blessing is coming your way. Because you see as you pour out into the lives of others, the Lord will see to it that He pours back into your life. And just as you can release the blessing of the Lord onto others, so the Lord can use other believers to decree blessing into your life.

It is powerful, and when it happens you see amazing things happening in your life and desires coming into effect for you.

The Little Blessings

To end off this chapter, I want you to see the blessing of the Lord in your life in ways that you are not perhaps aware of. The most obvious way the Lord shows His blessing is of course when He blesses you financially or with your desires.

But what about other areas of your life that might not be so obvious? The Lord can bless you in so many little things, like these examples:

1. You are expecting a high bill and it comes out much less
2. You narrowly miss a car hitting you by millimeters
3. When you shop for groceries you get something unexpected for free, or an extra discount bonus
4. You feel led to take a different route to work and save getting hit by a two-hour traffic jam
5. The enemy attacks you with illness and you think it is serious, but you find out that it is nothing to worry about

Sometimes when you look at the little things that are flowing into your life you see that the Lord’s hand is still blessing you. It may not seem obvious, but if you look for it you will begin to see it.

Why not make it a habit to thank the Lord each day for His blessings – whether big or small. When you develop an attitude of loving Him and being grateful, He will continue to pour it out to you because He loves you so much.

Well I have shown you how to see the signs of blessing in your life. In the next chapter I am going to look at how the blessing does not show. In other words I will show you signs that something is wrong, and why perhaps the blessing is being blocked from flowing into your life.