Why Do We Think Spiritual Blessings Are Immaterial?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Wake-Up Call

Episode: Why Do We Think Spiritual Blessings Are Immaterial?
Host: John David Walt (with guest David Walt)
Date: April 8, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode explores the tendency to view spiritual blessings as "immaterial"—less concrete or valuable than material blessings—and challenges listeners to see spiritual blessings as deeply real and tangible in their daily lives. Drawing from Ephesians 1:3–5, the episode connects Scripture with stories, poetry, and practical questions to awaken a deeper awareness of spiritual inheritance in Christ.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scripture and Central Question (00:55–03:25)

• Text: Ephesians 1:3–5 focuses on the richness of "every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ."
• Key Question: "Why do we think spiritual blessings are immaterial?"
• John David clarifies, "I don't mean that they're meaningless. I'm meaning that they're not material blessings." (00:36)

2. Personal Story with a Deeper Message (03:26–05:12)

• Shares a memory of seeing a refrigerator magnet with the message:

  "You are perfectly perfect in Christ."

• This phrase deeply resonated and provided assurance of identity in Christ, serving as "the essence of how Paul opens today's text." (04:46)
• Memorable Quote:

  "To be blessed with every spiritual blessing means to be perfectly perfect in Christ." (05:09)

3. Understanding ‘Every’ Spiritual Blessing (05:12–06:22)

• Explains the inclusivity of the term ‘every’:

  "You know what it means? Every. Every spiritual blessing." (05:54)

• Uses the analogy of inheriting a billion dollars to illustrate how eagerly we pursue material blessings, but often neglect spiritual inheritance.

4. Challenging the Spiritual vs. Material Divide (06:23–09:17)

• Confronts the false dichotomy between spiritual and material:

  "We tend to think that material blessings are superior to spiritual blessings. In fact, I don't think we really see spiritual blessings as material." (06:35)

• Proposes that Jesus unites heaven and earth, spiritual and material:

  "What if in Christ, these realities now hold together in a seamless whole?" (07:34)

• Asserts that spiritual blessings infuse the material world, affecting creativity, order, beauty, prosperity, and goodness.

5. Call for Awakening (09:18–10:12)

• Warns that many are “asleep to all of it… or maybe just still hitting snooze,” and what is needed is spiritual awakening.
• Memorable Quote:

  "If that were the case, you know what we would need? We would need an awakening, wouldn't we?" (09:56)

6. Reflection and Journal Prompts (10:13–12:35)

• Encourages listeners to reflect on:
  • Where they struggle or resonate with Ephesians 1:3–5.
  • How they value material vs. spiritual things.
  • What it means to claim their spiritual inheritance.
• Introduces the idea of an “eternal life benefits package,” emphasizing that “eternal life is… Jesus right now… You are in union with Jesus Christ, and everything that’s his is yours.” (11:55)

7. Bringing Spiritual Truth into the Immediate and Physical (12:36–13:55)

• Quotes (and paraphrases) Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

  “What if earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush is aflame with God. She said only those with eyes to see can see it. The rest just sit around it and pluck blackberries.” (13:28)

• The host expresses a desire to make the spiritual tangible—“out of ethereal space and bringing it into real world.” (12:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Magnet Message:

  “No one ever told me that before. I had no concept of it.” (04:48)

• On the Nature of Spiritual Blessings:

  “Because I belong to Jesus, all that belongs to Jesus belongs to me.” (05:24)

• On the Eternal-Life Benefits Package:

  “…We all think eternal life is just like, oh, well, that means that's heaven when you die, I'm like, no, it’s Jesus right now.” (11:39)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:55–03:25 – Ephesians reading and introduction of central theme
• 03:26–05:12 – Story about the refrigerator magnet and its meaning
• 06:23–09:17 – Discussion of spiritual vs. material blessings and their unity in Christ
• 09:18–10:12 – Call to awaken to spiritual reality
• 10:13–12:35 – Reflection prompts for journaling
• 13:28 – Browning poetry and earth crammed with heaven
• 14:54–19:36 – Hymn singing (“Open My Eyes That I May See”)

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The Hymn & Community Engagement (14:54–19:36)

• John David and his father David lead a hymn sing of “Open My Eyes That I May See” (Our Great Redeemer’s Praise, #311).
• Emphasis on singing as a communal act:

  “This is not a performance… This is a choir. It’s all of us together.” (15:50)

• Invitation for listeners to send in hymn requests and join in future live hymn sings.

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Closing Reflection (19:36–20:50)

• Encourages quiet prayer after the hymn—asking Jesus, “What do you want me to know about today?” and listening in silence (19:36).
• Suggests writing impressions, words, images, or names that arise, trusting them as “seeds you can sow today.”
• Wraps with the reminder to carry the awakening into the day.
• Sign-off:

  “I’m J.D. Walt.”
  “And I’m David Walt.”
  “And we’ll see you on the field.” (20:49)

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Takeaways

• Spiritual blessings are not less real or valuable than material blessings—they are at the core of the Christian’s true inheritance.
• The division between spiritual and material is an illusion; Jesus unites both, inviting us to see the world as “filled with heaven.”
• Awareness of spiritual blessings leads to transformation of heart, home, church, and city.
• Practices of reflection, journaling, and communal song help reinforce this awakening daily.

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For New Listeners:
This episode is a practical and poetic encouragement to wake up to your spiritual inheritance in Christ and see the world with new eyes—where every bush can be aflame with God for those willing to see.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Wake up, sleeper. Good morning, sober nation. It is Wednesday. It is Wednesday of Easter week, April 8th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. We are ready to meet with Jesus. He's ready to meet with us. He's going to open the word of God to us. He's going to. He's going to teach us great and unsearchable things that we don't even know. So let's dive straight in. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is entitled why do We Think Spiritual Blessings are Immaterial? I don't mean that they're meaningless. I'm meaning that they're not material blessings. Well, we'll get to that in just a second. Our text, Ephesians chapter one. We're going verse, verse by verse. We're covering verses three through five today. Hear now the word of the Lord. All praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. I guess it must have been 20 something years ago I found myself house sitting for some friends who were out of town. I will forever remember their refrigerator. It was like a giant magnet for refrigerator magnets. These are friends, still friends, good friends to this day. Kim and Sally Bacon, and they live in the Woodlands, Texas, where I was on Good Friday night. Thank you for praying for me. That was such a powerful night, guys. And you all came through. Jesus came through. I got to see Kim and Sally Bacon there after the service. Anyhow, I was house sitting for them. Affectionately nicknamed their home the Bacon Lodge. Their refrigerator. Yeah, back to that. It was like a giant magnet itself for refrigerator magnets. In the midst of all the noisiness of so many messages and images, pictures, one magnet stood out from all the rest, shining like a beacon of good news to my Tired soul. I remember it often to this very day. The small white square with embossed black letters said, you are perfectly perfect in Christ. Wow. No one ever told me that before. I had no concept of it. For my money, this refrigerator magnet captures the essence of how Paul opens today's text. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. Because we are united with Christ. To be blessed with every spiritual blessing means to be perfectly perfect in Christ. The fascinating thing here is the meaning of the Greek term behind the English word every. You know what it means? Every. Every spiritual blessing. It says you've been blessed with every spiritual bl. Blessing. It's remarkable. It means this because I belong to Jesus. All that belongs to Jesus belongs to me. Imagine learning you just inherited a billion dollars from a relative you didn't even know you had. What would you do? Well, I would do whatever it took to claim this extraordinary inheritance. Come on. We say that's money. Of course we would go after it. The Bible is talking about spiritual blessings. And that's our big problem. Whether or not we're willing to admit it, we. We tend to think that material blessings are superior to spiritual blessings. In fact, I don't think we really see spiritual blessings as material. That what we see is superior to what we don't see. That Jesus rules his kingdom, but money rules the world. Okay, let's be blunt. How can this be true? Doesn't Jesus rule the world? Or does he just rule the spiritual world? The fuzzy, nebulous religious stuff. Because of sin and death, we have these two realms set in dichotomous dualistic categories. Big words. Heaven or earth, spiritual or material. What if Jesus, the God man, fully God, fully human, has actually put them back together? What if in Christ, these realities now hold together in a seamless whole? What if earth is filled with heaven and everything our eyes see is infused with a spiritual quality only perceptible to those united with Christ and infused with the Holy Spirit? What if the secret to all creativity, order, beauty, blessing, prosperity, goodness and glory on this material earth is found in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms? And what if all of this is ours to freely receive and freely give because we are united with Christ? This is amazing, guys. Now, what if we are completely asleep to all of it? Or maybe just still hitting snooze? Nine more minutes. Nine more minutes. Nine more minutes. If that were the case, you know what we would need? We would need an awakening, wouldn't we? Let's Pray. Abba. Father, we thank you for your son Jesus, who is the perfect union of God and man, heaven and earth, spiritual and material, grace and peace. Put us back together in him that we might truly live. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Wow, y', all, this is big, big, big stuff. There's so much I want to say about it. Let's go to the journal prompts first. How do you resonate with. With this text? How do you struggle with it? What do you make of this split between spiritual and material things and our tendency to place the most value on the material? Could it be that we think of the spiritual as being immaterial? And then what might it mean to claim your inheritance of every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms? That's a lot to reflect on, but you got a lot of space in your, Your journal, your workbook. I've got mine right here. I'm already. Guys, I'm already writing and underlining. If you're watching the YouTube, I'm holding it up. You see it? And I said, you know what? What Jesus, it looks like what he's. What he's doing here in Ephesians, Paul is trying to get across to these new Christians who are already drifting off to sleep, this notion of eternal life benefits package. That's what I wrote down. And. And he's saying, we all think eternal life is just like, oh, well, that means that's heaven when you die, I'm like, no, it's Jesus right now. The whole point, he's like this. You. You're united now. You are in union with Jesus Christ, and everything that's his is yours. And Jesus, you remember his favorite prayer? Your kingdom come, your will be done. Where? In the heavenly realms. It's already done there. No, on earth as it is in heaven. He's trying to bring the spiritual realm into the material world, starting with your very body. That's why the. That magnet. I love it so much. I want to make those magnets. Would you want one if I did? Maybe it's a T shirt, I don't know, but I just love getting it out of, you know, ethereal space and bringing it into real world. You are perfectly perfect in Christ. I'm going to be dealing with this whole concept and several other things in the second week of our weekly videos we're going to be showing as we're meeting together. But my gosh, there's so much more I would like to say. I think about the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem. She says something like this, what if Earth is Crammed with heaven and every common bush is aflame with God. She said only those with eyes to see can see it. The rest of it just sit around it and pluck blackberries. That's good poetry right there. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I probably butchered it, but you get the point. All right, it's time to sing, guys. Dad's with me today. We got a great hymn we're going to sing together. Just so on point. This goes all the way back to the very first. Well, we're actually. We're coming up to it. The whole notion of Paul praying, you know, that God would open the eyes of our hearts. We've been singing it already, but. Yeah, here we go. Okay, who's ready to sing?

[B]

I am.

[A]

I knew you'd be ready. You know, it's. I never imagined, and I know you didn't either, that me and you would be singing together every day on the radio.

[B]

I know. No, I mean, I just. We just got a radio.

[A]

We're singing together every day, dad. And there's people. The good news.

[B]

They hear us.

[A]

Not only do they hear us, they're singing with us now.

[B]

That's perfect. I tell you what we'll start doing. Give them the title and tell them in this book that's we're going to do it.

[A]

We're going to do it again today. And you know what? I've had this idea that we should ask people what hymns they want to sing.

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

So if you got a hymn that you would like for us to sing together, this is not a performance. We're not singing a duet. This is a choir. It's all of us together. But if you got one, one. Maybe just hit reply to the email today or figure out how to send me. Send me an email. I'm jdbed.com. and we'll try to sing it. And another thing that might be fun sometime is for us to do a live hymn sing where we just let people call them out. Yeah, we did one of those at our pastor's retreat lately, and that was a lot of fun. So tell them what we're singing today.

[B]

This one.

[A]

This one right here.

[B]

We're singing Open My Eyes that I may see.

[A]

What's the number?

[B]

311?

[A]

3. 1. 1.

[B]

Now, that's in this blue, blue hymn book.

[A]

What's it called?

[B]

Our Great Redeemer's Praise.

[A]

Our Great Redeemer's Praise. We're going to sing all three verses. Open my eyes, Open my ears, Open my mouth. Notice the order of that Yep. I often want to open my mouth first.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That'll get you in trouble.

[A]

He's. It's. It's a nice progression there. And interestingly, too, we're. We're asking God. I mean, we can see what we think we can see, we can hear what we think we can hear. But that's not even the half of it. The Lord wants to open the eyes of our hearts, and he wants to give us the ability to hear beyond what's being said.

[B]

And he knows the people that need to open their ears.

[A]

He does. Okay, we're ready. We're ready to sing all three verses. 311.

[B]

Open my eyes that I may see Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me Place in my hand the wonderful key that shall entice and set me free Silently now I wait for thee Ready, my God? Thine will to see Open my eyes Illumine me, spirit divine Open my ears that I may hear voices of truth thus endlessly. And while his wings follow my ears, Everything else from lis appear. Silently now I wait for thee Ready, my God, Thy will to see Open my ears Illumine me, spirit divine Open my mouth and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere Open my heart and let me prepare Love with thy children Thou's to share Silently now I wait for. For thee Ready, my God, Thy will to see Open my heart Illumine me, spirit divine Amen.

[A]

Well, you know, I like that bit every time we sing. Silently now I wait for Thee. That might be something good to do right here. As we between this meeting we're having with Jesus and walking out into our day is just get quiet and just say, Jesus, what do you want me to know about today? Ideally, you'll have your journal there, your workbook, and you're ready to write. He'll say things to you. He might bring a name to mind. He might give you some kind of an impression. He might give you a picture of something, a metaphor, a word for somebody, a word of encouragement. Say, Jesus, what do you want me to know about today? And just get silent and wait and just kind of trust what comes. Cause that's a seed that you can sow today that if you don't sow, something won't be growing tomorrow. Well, it's time to get out there for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.

[B]

And I'm David Walt.

[A]

And we'll see you on the field.