Section (1) of Ch.2. (The Power of a Parent’s Blessing)

CREATING A FAMILY CULTURE OF BLESSING

 I BELIEVE IT IS God's plan for every child to do more than receive his parents' blessing once in his life. God wants children to grow up in a culture of blessing. You may be wondering what exactly a culture of blessing is. This is simply an environment in which family members regularly convey to one another God's message of value rather than Satan's message of worthlessness. In a culture of blessing, family members regularly pour the blue plant fertilizer rather than the hydrochloric acid over one another's lives. They desire to see one another prosper.

 No one will be able to do this 100 percent of the time. However, in a family that blesses, when someone inadvertently or even intentionally curses the identity of another family member, as soon as the offense is recognized, that person repents and makes things right. In a culture of blessing, family members hold one another accountable to be God's agents of blessing.

 Many people groups around the world practice customs, ceremonies, and traditions that naturally produce an overall culture of blessing. God gave the Jewish people a wonderful tradition of weekly family blessing that is practiced even to this day. I am speaking of the tradition of gathering the family together each week on Friday evening (Erev Shabbat in Hebrew) for a special meal and a pronouncement of blessing. (With the busy schedules of most modern families, getting everyone together for a meal would be a miracle in and of itself.)

 Each week at this time the Jewish father prays a blessing over his wife. He then pronounces a blessing over each of his children. In many Jewish families the father also proclaims vision and prosperity over his children, thus creating in his offspring an expectation of future success. By so doing, such a father, whether he knows it or not, is imparting God's image of identity and destiny into the hearts and minds of his children. In many Jewish families who practice this tradition, the words of blessing the father speaks over his children are prophetic, and in adulthood the children fulfill exactly what the father prophesied week after week.