Welcome back to Beyond the Pew! We hope your new year is going well and that your New Year’s resolutions are still in existence, and that you are able to grow in prayer as a family during this month of January! This is our prayer for you here at Ablaze Ministries.

What we want to talk this week about in family prayer is “blessing.” Blessings are a form of prayer that are very beautiful, but they are not very common in today’s world. The word blessing itself is something that we don’t hear a lot. I think the most common place we hear “blessed” or “blessing” is when someone tags a picture that they are #blessed. Or when someone sneezes and we respond, “bless you!” Blessings are meant to be rich, deep, beautiful prayers and well wishes for people and so that’s what we are going to dive into today.

Blessings are meant to bring God’s goodness into the lives of people.

There are three ways that we can really dive into blessings and practice them in our daily lives. The first is just knowing that blessings are meant to bring God’s goodness into the lives of people. That’s what we do when we say “bless you” or “may God bless you” – we are wishing for good things to come into the life of that person. What more could we want to give our young people? We want to bring God’s goodness into their lives and we want His will to be carried out in their lives, it’s one of the best things we could hope for them. 

Whenever your children are starting something new- maybe it’s a new team, activity, or a job, a blessing is a beautiful thing you can give them as they start this new phase. It could also be as simple as starting a new day. Before your children leave the house or as they are getting into the car to drive to school, you could give them a blessing.

Or if you are about to be apart for a long time, you could give them a blessing as a sign of protection. I have a really good friend and whenever we say goodbye, she marks a small cross on my forehead. That is a beautiful gift that she gives me! Whenever I am visiting my mom and am about to leave, she marks a cross on every window of my car. Again, it’s a sign of protection. She wants goodness to follow me and God to be with me.

It’s a beautiful thing to acknowledge the ways that our young people bring goodness to others.

It’s also a reminder of our baptism. We belong to God and He has promised to be with us and to follow us. This is a way that we can remind our young people that God is providential and is always present in their lives by blessing them.

The last part of a blessing that I want to talk about: what does it mean to bless someone? There is a scripture passage from the Psalms and a song that says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Well, if we are going to bring goodness to God, who is already good, then that doesn’t quite make sense. People often get very confused because of that. A blessing is also speaking good things of someone or bringing honor to someone. So we can do that for God. We can bless Him to glorify Him. Another way that we can bless our children is to speak good things of them, to them. So it’s an affirmation, but it’s even deeper than that because it’s acknowledging the gifts that they have, acknowledging the love that God has shown them, and the way that He’s moved in their life. It’s a beautiful thing to acknowledge the ways that our young people bring goodness to others. We bless them by acknowledging that in their lives.

We hope that you are able to use some of these practices in your daily walk with your families. Until next time, we will be praying with you and we will see you next time!

[tweetthis]A way we can bless our kids is to speak good things of them, to them. Acknowledge the goodness they bring to others![/tweetthis]