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"May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him\u201d (Psalm 67:1-3, 7).

Have you ever asked God to bless you? Of course, you have. We Christians hardly ever pray without asking for God\u2019s blessing. And we know these are not empty prayers because God does want to bless us. Pastors regularly offer these words to their departing flocks, "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace" (Numbers 6:24-26).

God told Moses and Aaron to lift their hands over Israel blessing His people with those words. But have you ever wondered what they mean? To ask it differently, when we ask God to bless us are we asking for what He wants?

From Psalm 13:1 and 89:46ff we learn that when God hides his face from his people it means trouble. It's a poetic image picturing the curse of sin having full licence to do its worst.

When God's face is turned towards his people then the effects of the curse are held at bay, even repelled. The oddest thing is that when God turned His face away from his own son in the darkest hour of Jesus' life, God was turning his face fully towards us.

During those darkest hours this world has ever known, in those events that led Jesus to cry out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" this same God was pouring out his blessings upon this earth.

It's true that when we ask God to bless us, we are often praying from selfish motives. Richard Foster tells us that all prayers begin here. But as we continue to pray, our motivations begin to change. Prayer changes us. Rather than looking fully towards our own interests, we move towards Gods. But this takes time, so maybe long prayers are not always a bad thing.

In prayer, we turn our faces towards God. As we gaze upon Him our petty motivations and desires crumble away. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we become absorbed with the great works of God.

This is where Psalm 67 leads us. It echoes that blessing of Numbers 6. And, I think, the Lord\u2019s Prayer echoes this Psalm.

God's blessings towards us serve the larger purposes of His redemptive work in Christ. We are blessed so that others may know the great ways of God, so that they will know how great Israel's God is. God blesses us so that we can bless others.

But there is even more to it than that. The structure of the psalm suggests that verse 4 is the heart of the matter. It says, \u201cMay the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth.\u201d We are blessed so that the nations we join us in glad songs of praise to our God.

In the end, all nations will be gathered about the throne of God and the Lamb as pictured in Revelation 7, \u201cthere before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb They were wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: \u201cSalvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb\u201d (9-10). To that end, God blesses us. Let\u2019s pray for that.