5 Ways To Bless Your Children! Series

How to Bless your Children!

Question: How many here want to bless your children? Your Grandchildren – your spiritual children?

Main Scripture Text:

Proverbs 20:7: “The righteous lead blameless lives; blessed are their children after them.” (NIV)

New Living Translation

The godly walk with integrity; blessed are their children who follow them.

New American Standard Bible

A righteous man who walks in his integrity-- How blessed are his sons after him.

King James Bible

The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.

Good News Translation

Children are fortunate if they have a father who is honest and does what is right.

Thesis: The position of fatherhood comes with a grave responsibility from God and with the gift of fatherhood also comes the power to shape, guide and transform the lives of their children for success, for purpose and for the fulfillment of their children’s divine destiny.

Introduction:

We all have a powerful need to know that someone in this world loves us and accepts us unconditionally. We especially crave our parents' blessing, and without it, we may become angry and driven, or detached and empty. We may also feel this hurtful lack between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, or even within our religious congregation.

Drs. John Trent and Gary Smalley outlined five biblical steps for giving a blessing to children in their book The Blessing: Meaningful Touch, A Spoken Message, Attaching High Value, Picturing a Special Future, and An Active Commitment.

• 1 - appropriate meaningful touch

Before a word was spoken, there was the laying on of hands, a hug or reaching out to touch. Appropriate touch conveys in powerful, non-verbal ways, our love and affirmation – preparing the way for our words.

• 2 - spoken message

Biblically, a child wasn’t left to “fill in the blanks” whether they were valuable to a parent or grandparent. Words were verbalized, including written words today, that can place unconditional love and acceptance into the heart of a child or loved one.

• 3 - attaching high value

But what words do you say or write? The word, “Blessing” itself carried the idea that the person you’re blessing is of incredible worth and value – even as an imperfect person. In short, you’re helping a child “get the picture” that you see things in their life today, that make them special, useful and of great value to you.

• 4 - special future

With our touch, with our words that attach high value, come a response in a child or loved one’s heart that can be nothing short of transformational. The light going on in their heart and mind that the way God has made them, they can do more than they ever dreamed in living out a God-honoring future.

• 5 - genuine commitment

“Blessing” a child doesn’t mean we never discipline them or point out areas growth. But children “know at an incredibly deep level if they have their parents “blessing” – if that mom or dad, grandmother, aunt, uncle or other loved one really sees high value in them – even during the tough times. Genuine commitment is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person that says as long as I have breath, I’ll be there to seek to build these 5 elements of the Blessing into your life and life-story.

This sermon is directly taken from http://www.theblessing.com/html/overview.html great book I highly recommend you read it!

T.S. – Let’s look deeper into the 5 ways to bless our children.

1. Meaningful Touch.

a. Circulating story from my Psychology 101 class:

i. The Harlow experiments on rhesus monkeys?

1. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoptio.../HarlowMLE.htm

a. Quote: He separated infant monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth, then arranged for the young animals to be “raised” by two kinds of surrogate monkey mother machines, both equipped to dispense milk. One mother was made out of bare wire mesh. The other was a wire mother covered with soft terry cloth. Harlow’s first observation was that monkeys who had a choice of mothers spent far more time clinging to the terry cloth surrogates, even when their physical nourishment came from bottles mounted on the bare wire mothers. This suggested that infant love was no simple response to the satisfaction of physiological needs. Attachment was not primarily about hunger or thirst. It could not be reduced to nursing.

ii. Another story from class (not sure if true of not?) so please note this disclaimer: It’s a persistent story about a "Russian baby experiment.”

1. However, there is no other evidence I can find that anything like this actually happened and is documented – I pray it did not happen as I share in the story below ?.

a. The closest research I can find is that of Rene Spitz (wiki article) who researched infants living in institutions. According to this site, he found that: “The babies raised in the nursing home environment suffered seriously. More than a third died. Twenty-one were still living in institutions after 40 years. Most were physically, mentally, and socially retarded.”