For eleven years, I worked in an office building where I rarely sat near a window. In fact, I spent the majority of those years in rooms completely without windows to the outside, or with windows in locations so remote that they might as well not have existed at all.

One of the joys of my home-based occupation is that my workday unfolds alongside a large window overlooking our backyard. At any moment I can glance to my left and see green grass, the rough-hewn wood of the perimeter fence, and the swaying branches of the trees along the street. On clear days I enjoy sunshine. On rainy days — and we’ve had a number of those lately — I can watch the droplets plummet to earth. One day last week, hail fell. At other times, the wind whipped so violently that the windowpanes rattled.

Occasionally I have visitors. Bluebirds stop by to sit on the fence and chatter. A crow circles in to see whether there is anything available to eat. A neighborhood cat strolls past on his way to mischief.

The world outside my window serves as my constant reminder of the God who designed it. Day after day His creation puts on its fascinating display of light and life, and I am privileged to experience it — not because I am anything special, but because my God is.

Jesus said of our Heavenly Father, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). There’s a beautiful universe beyond my window, and all kinds of people benefit from living in it: righteous and unrighteous, worldly and godly, believers, agnostics, atheists, and pagans. God withholds His material gifts from none of these, nor favors any in their dispensation. He is pleased to share His sun’s light and His rain cloud’s bounty with good persons and bad alike.

But God has more to offer than the physical glories of the world outside my window. To His people He delivers this invitation: “‘Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it’” (Malachi 3:10).

These blessings that tumble from the windows of heaven are not the temporal blessings of life. Those everyone gains in some measure, as we have seen. No, this outpouring contains the spiritual blessings that are found only in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:3). Obtaining these gifts requires something from us: the sacrifice of ourselves to God (Romans 12:1-2).

How do we make this sacrifice? How do we, metaphorically speaking, bring all our tithes into God’s storehouse? “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Ephesians 1:4). If we would enjoy these spiritual blessings, we must dedicate ourselves to living holy — that is, set apart, distinctive — and blameless (law-abiding) lives. When we obey Him in holiness, it pleases God to adopt us as His children, accept us in His beloved Son, and redeem us from our sins through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 1:5-7).

God has a wonderful inheritance to drop down through the windows of heaven — things that can’t be seen with the natural eye through a pane of glass. But that inheritance He reserves for those who trust fully in Him, and who demonstrate that trust by believing with active faith in the word of His truth, the gospel of salvation (Ephesians 1:11-14). Are you ready to open the windows of heaven by obeying that gospel?