A Father's Blessing

A Father’s Blessing

Genesis 49:28

Slide 1

The Blessing of an Encouraging Word

Ephesians 4:29

A Word of Acceptance & Affection

Jeremiah 31:3 - I have loved you with an everlasting love

A Word of Appreciation

Philippians 1:3-5

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

The Blessing of a Loving Touch

1 John 3:18

The Blessing of a Father’s Faith

Joshua 24:15

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me!”

How many of you have heard or said that phrase before.

Those words sound good and we ourselves have probably used them to encourage someone to not worry about what someone else thinks or says.

But that statement is not true. There have many people that have been hurt by words before.

The reality is that

Words have Power.

Slide 2

The power to hurt or

The power to help.

No one’s words have more influence in the life of a child than that of their parents, especially their Father.

We see this often in the Old Testament.

The Father’s blessing was of huge value and determined greatly the entire life of the child.

We see several times in the OT the blessing being given.

Isaac blesses Jacob (Genesis 27)

Israel blesses his twelve sons (Genesis 49)

Genesis 49:28

28 All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them, giving each the blessing appropriate to him.

These blessings that these children received from their fathers, greatly influenced their lives and what they would do.

Even today,

How a Father blesses his child, has a huge impact on the child’s life in the future.

And today, on this Father’s day,

I want to give dads some tools (always a good Father’s Day present) to be a blessing to their children for now and into the future.

Preaching style different

I am preaching a little different than I normally do. I think it is

important to both look at particular texts and draw out of those texts applications for our own lives based on a particular passage.

But I also think that it is

important to see what the Bible teaches about a particular topic that may not be found in one particular place.

Today I am going to be drawing on several texts to help us Dad’s see how we can be a blessing to our kids.

We have seen already how the OT blessing greatly determined a child’s future.

For today though, the first tool I want us to be able to use is

The Blessing of an Encouraging Word

Slide 3

Ephesians 4:29

29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Dad’s in regards to your kids, is the only thing that is coming out of your mouth something that is helpful for building them up?

This is one of the primary ways we are going to be able to bless our kids, by the way we speak to them.

Now the question is

In what ways can we offer encouragement to our Kids to be a blessing to them for their lives.

There are couple ways that I want to talk about here to encourage our kids with our words.

One way we can use this tool with our kids is by encouraging them with

A Word of Acceptance & Affection

Slide 4

When God spoke to the nation of Israel through Jeremiah, he said to them

Jeremiah 31:3

"I have loved you with an everlasting love”

God was telling them 2 things here.

First, I love you. Those are words of affection. Those are words we need to say to our kids. Our kids need to know and hear of our love from our own mouth. That is what God does to his children.

Second, He tells them His love is everlasting. Those are words of acceptance. I love you no matter what. It is not dependant on anything that you do. It won’t get stronger if you do good and it won’t be less if you do bad. The love I have for you is an everlasting love.

Dad’s, we need to talk to our kids like that. They need to know from their fathers that we love them and accept them for who they are.

And we need to tell them that in words.

So often, we hear from men in this country that

we show our love by bringing home the bacon and providing for them all that they need.

While that is true that that is one way we show love,

Our kids need to hear it from our own mouths.

This is true for almost any relationship, but if we are going to be a blessing to our kids, we need to tell them verbally that we love and accept them just as they are.