A Father's Blessing

Message

A FATHER’S BLESSING. Ephesians 3:14-4:3

Today is Father’s Day, a day we celebrate fathers and their impact on their children and families. So I decided to look at some Fathers in the bible and what better place to start than the beginning with Adam who had many sons and daughters. As we know, his first son was Cain and second son was Abel. In Genesis 4:8 we read, “Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” 

Maybe starting with Adam wasn’t the best idea, so I decided to move to the next major father figure in the bible. In Genesis 6:9-10 we read, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.”

We all know the story, they all get on the boat, survive the flood and live happily ever after, right. Not exactly. Sometime after the flood Noah got drunk and Canaan, Ham’s son, was cursed.

So let's move on to the next father, Abram or Abraham as we know him. We know his sons Ishmael and Isaac. Well their descendants are still fighting today, so again maybe not a good example. 

How about Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob? Jacob tricked Isaac into getting Esau’s birthright blessing. Well then what about Jacob, he had 12 sons, surely one must have turned out alright! Yeah, but the other 11 wanted to kill him and even sold him into slavery.

As we get to the end of Genesis though we find something interesting. Jacob is at the end of his life. Joseph and his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim go to see Jacob. After some brief conversation, we read in Genesis 48:15-16, “Then [Jacob] blessed Joseph and said,

“May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,

the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,

the Angel who has delivered me from all harm —may he bless these boys.

May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,

and may they increase greatly on the earth.”

 

It is at this point that I realized that the book of Genesis emphasizes the blessing of a father to his sons. The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all gave formal blessings to their children—and, in Jacob’s case, to some grandchildren. Receiving a blessing from one’s father was a high honor, and losing a blessing was tantamount to a curse.

An Old Testament blessing of a father to his sons included words of encouragement, details regarding each son’s inheritance, and prophetic words concerning the future.

That is what I want to focus on today: the blessings of a father. 

Being a father means forming and nurturing another human being. Today we’re exploring a powerful tool to do that. It is the Blessing. A Father’s blessing is speaking the word of God over their child.

There are many great blessings in the Bible, one that jumps out at me is from Proverbs 3: “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make straight your paths.”  (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Who doesn’t want that for their child? Above all else: Trust God and let your feet be led in God’s paths.

In Scripture, a blessing is the greatest gift a parent can give their child. It defines who that child will be when they grow up. In the 49th chapter of Genesis, it says, “The blessings of your parents are mighty beyond the blessings of the eternal mountains,  the bounties of the everlasting hills.”  (Genesis 49:26)

People of courage, faith and integrity don’t just come out of nowhere. The Apostle Paul was like a father to the church in Ephesus. When he writes to them, he says, “I pray, according to the riches of God’s glory, that God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Holy Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love…” (Ephesians 3:16-17)

Do you hear the power of that prayer? Can you imagine what a difference it could make in our children and grandchildren’s lives if every night as they drift off to sleep, they feel our hand upon their head, and they hear our voice praying that God would strengthen them, that God would dwell within them, that God would fill them beyond all fullness with the love of Christ.

This isn’t a prayer we say just once and call it good. Some blessings take time to take root. 

“I pray that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Holy Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love…”    (Ephesians 3:16-17)

Rooted and grounded in love. All it needs is our faithfulness; when we remember we can bless life, we can repair the world. We can nurture their heart, and the depth of their spirit.

This isn’t a prayer that they’ll understand right off. The fruit of a growing soul doesn't appear all at once. This is a prayer that sinks into them, waters their spirit, grows inside of them: a prayer that they will understand in time as it forms their very character and expectation of life.

Can we imagine what a difference it would make in our children, our step-children, our grandchildren’s lives to know that we love them enough to pray for them like that. Not praying that she would just be a good little girl, but that she would be filled with the power and love of God.

Not praying that he will just do well in school, but that he will come to know the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that he may be filled with all the fullness of God.

That’s expansive and powerful. A prayer worth molding your life around. A prayer faithfully reinforced every day and every night. That is a prayer of blessing. That is what Genesis claims is mightier than the eternal mountains, more bountiful than the everlasting hills. It’s your blessing.

In Scripture, the blessing is usually spoken aloud as the parent’s hands are on the head of their child. This is not the time for subtlety, saying, “oh, they’ll pick up my faith from my actions”. No, we say the words out loud, clearly, powerfully, so they can hear every syllable.

And we don’t say it from across the room. No, a blessing is a profoundly intimate, physical type of prayer. We lay our whole hand on the child’s head- both hands- gentle, firm, strong. This is an action of incredible authority. Put your hand on someone’s head, and it says “I have power over you.” It is not an insignificant gesture. It is a gesture of power, and we don’t do it unless we’re doing it appropriately, to strengthen, to bless.

Holding our children and grandchildren, the words we speak are a vision, a glimpse of what God is creating inside them. A woman of courage and compassion. A man of integrity and hope. God’s children and God’s people, formed by our continual prayer of blessing.

Listen to Paul’s blessing again, and as I say it, try to imagine one person you’d like to pray it for: I pray… by riches of God’s glory…  that God will strengthen you… in your inner being… that Christ may dwell in your heart… as you are being rooted… and grounded… in love.     (Ephesians 3:16-17)

This prayer in Ephesians ends with these words:“Now to God, who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine… Amen. And what Amen means- it’s a Hebrew word that means, let it be or may it be so.

May our desires be wide and true and faithful enough to be worth praying. May our blessings extend beyond even our own understanding. And may our own souls be broadened in the speaking, in the nurturing, in the creation of the world through the blessing of another person.

Let us pray

Dear Heavenly father, may we truely be a blessing to not only our children today, but to all those that we come into contact with this week. May Christ dwell in our hearts. In the Name of the One whose blessing will never let us go. Amen.