Section (3) of Ch.8. (The Power of a Parent’s Blessing)

                                                                         *** BLESSING TOOLBOX ***

 As in the previous chapters I want to share some specific prayers you can pray over your children at the time of puberty. We will begin with remedial prayers you can pray if you failed to bless your children at puberty and they are now past that age. We will then look in some detail at how you can bless your son or daughter at the time of puberty.

REMEDIAL PRAYERS TO BREAK THE CURSE

 If you missed the opportunity to bless your child at puberty and he or she is much older now, plan to conduct a ceremony to release your child Into adulthood.
It is important to realize that your child's heart still longs to receive the blessing of a father that cuts the spiritual and
emotional umbilical cord that ties him to his mother and releases him into his adult identity.
It doesn't matter how old your son or daughter is. Remember Luis, whose life was changed when he received his father's blessing at age sixty-five? If you are still breathing and your adult child is still breathing, then I encourage you to conduct a blessing ceremony and celebration. If your child is already an adult, you may not want to include some of the components I outline in the next section, such as the time of instruction. It's OK to adapt this to fit your family. What is most important is that you conduct the blessing ceremony and celebration.

If you cursed rather than blessed your child at puberty, repent of being Satan's agent to impart his message in the life of your child.

 Then plan to conduct a blessing ceremony and celebration to release your son/daughter into adulthood. You can use the prayer below as a guide for asking God's forgiveness for cursing your offspring.
 Father, we recognize today that during the time of [your child's name]'s adolescence we were used by the enemy to curse his identity and take his value. That was not Your message. Today we renounce the message imparted at that time through our words, attitudes, and actions. Father, forgive us by the blood ofJesus for not imparting Your message to our son/daughter. Forgive us for not conducting a proper ceremony to release our son/daughter into his manhood/womanhood. We now break the power of any curse we released over [your child's name]'s manhood/womanhood. Lord, we ask You now to speak to [your child's name]'s spirit the truth of who he/she is as a man/woman. We declare that [your child's name] is no longer a little child - is not his mother's little boy/girl - but is a man/woman.

PRAYERS AND ACTION STEPS
TO RELEASE THE BLESSING

 The rest of the Blessing Toolbox will explain how to bless your son or daughter at the time of puberty. I mentioned earlier that three key components should be included in the act of blessing a son or daughter at puberty and releasing him or her into adult identity. For a more detailed description of each component, see my book Bar Barakah: A Parent's Guide to a Christian Bar Mitzvah.l


INSTRUCTION

 The blessing ceremony at the time of puberty for either a boy or a girl should include a time of preparation and instruction by the parents. Tlis time of instruction is as important as the ceremony itself. Unfortunately, because many of us did not receive this type of instruction from our parents, it is sometimes hard to know what to say to our children at this time. Thus it may be helpful to first consult your pastor as you would if your child were getting married.
 However, as I mentioned before, it is your responsibility to instruct your children, not the pastor's. Let him provide some guidelines for you, but don't turn the instruction over to him. The pastor or youth pastor will not stand before God to give an account for the instruction given to your children. You will.

 I believe the father is to initiate arid oversee this instruction, but both parents should participate if that is possible. God created a beautiful window of opportunity for this instruction, and that is in the year or two preceding the onset of adolescence. At around age eleven or twelve most children are uniquely prepared by God to receive instruction about
adulthood from their parents. 

 Children's hearts still tend to be very open to their parents at that time in life, as they are not yet consumed with as many extracurricular activities. Most children also still enjoy spending time with their parents at
that age.

Although information and teaching are important, these times of instruction should be more focused on building relationship and mentoring than on imparting content. This instruction time is meant to prepare the child:

1. To enter into a settled sense of adult identity
2. To develop a clear sense of destiny and purpose, including an initial personal mission statement
3. To be emotionally released into manhood or womanhood during the blessing ceremony
4. To take adult responsibility for his own spiritual health from the time of the ceremony on
5. To walk in emotional and sexual purity all the days of his life 

 Let us talk now about how parents might conduct the actual instruction time with their son or daughter. One of the critical responsibilities of parents is to give their children ageappropriate information about sex. While there are many other important topics to discuss with your children when they are approaching puberty, discussions about sex and the changes in their bodies are particularly important—and typically the most awkward. It will help to remember that discussions about sex should happen throughout a child's growing-up years, not just at one time.

 I believe it is God's intention for a father to be the primary source of sexual information for both his son and daughter. They are not meant to learn sexual misinformation from
peers, other adults, video games, websites, or movies. While it is important that both parents participate in the sexual education of their children, it is especially important when preparing to release his children into their adult identity that the father has several open discussions on this topic.

 When it comes to talking with their daughters about sex, many fathers, out of their own insecurity and embarrassment, delegate this task to the mother. This is not healthy. As I have mentioned, the way a father relates to his daughter at this critical time in life prepares her spiritually and emotionally for a relationship with her husband. If her father shuns her sexuality and femininity as shameful or embarrassing, the daughter will tend to expect the same from her future husband. This is why it is very important for a father to be involved in talking with his daughter about her growing sexuality. 

 When talking with a son about sex as he approaches puberty, the father could tell his son something like this: "Son, in the next few months to a year you will notice physical, emotional, and intellectual changes in your life. You will find yourself thinking thoughts that you have never had before. You will find yourself feeling some emotions that you have never felt before. You will begin to grow hair on parts of your body where you have never had hair before.
"Son, in the next little while, you will begin to care deeply how you look to other people, especially girls. I know this may not make any sense to you right now, but I want you to remember what I am telling you for the future. You will find yourself wanting to spend time with girls, and you will experience feelings of sexual attraction toward them. Son, I want you to know that these changes are of God, not the devil. God is the one who made us sexual beings, and sexual attraction in and of itself is not dirty or unclean. It is good, right, and pure.

 "God created you to be sexually attracted to women. However, son, there is a difference between sexual attraction
and lust.  If you do not learn how to handle sexual thoughts properly, they will develop into lust, which is not of God and will destroy your life. I know what I am talking about, son, because I have had to deal with these same thoughts and feelings myself. I want to teach you how to talk to Jesus Christ and release these thoughts and feelings to Him. Son, when you begin to have such thoughts and feelings, I want you to start talking to me about these things, because I can help you to handle them properly. OK? I want to walk with you through this time in your life.“

A father should be able to speak to his daughter in a similar way: "Honey, you are growing up, and in the next few months to a year you will experience many things changing in your life. You will begin to have thoughts you never had before and experience some emotions you have never felt before. You will begin to have feelings of sexual attraction toward boys. This is not wrong or evil. It is natural and designed by God. Sexual relationship is not something dirty, unclean, or impure.However, if you do not learn how to release your sexual thoughts and emotions to Jesus, Satan will try to develop this God-given attraction into lust. Lust is impure and is very destructive.

 "As you grow, because God made you very beautiful, you will find many young men who approach you in a sexual way because they are motivated by lust. You may feel like you have to protect yourself continually from them. However, God never intended for you to have to protect your own heart from the lust of young men. God placed me in your life to be the protector of your emotional and sexual purity. Therefore, if you find a young man flirting with you or expressing interest in having more than a friendship with you, please just give him my business card and tell him to make an appointment with me. I will be happy to meet with him to determine if he is sent from God as a potential marriage partner for you.

 "Honey, in the next few months to a year you will also experience many changes in your physical body. You will begin to grow hair in places where you have previously had none. You will also one day find yourself vaginally bleeding. I know that this is somewhat embarrassing to talk about, but I want you to know that this is completely normal. When it happens, I do not want you to be scared or to think that you are dying or are really sick. This is normal and was designed by God to happen to every girl as she becomes a woman. This bleeding is part of a normal cycle of life that cleanses your body and will give you the ability to bear children one day. You do not have to be afraid of it or embarrassed about it. When this cycle begins in your body, your mom and I want to celebrate with you, because this will begin to mark your transition from being a little girl into being a woman.“

 If you will have this type of open discussion with your son and daughter, you will move toward keeping an open relationship with them over the next few years. This will enable you to continue to bless and guide them as they learn to walk in their own adult identity and destiny. It may seem like I am describing "the talk" about sex, but that is not my intent. My hope is that over the years you will seize many opportunities to have these kinds of discussions with your children.