How Do I Bless My Children Before Bed?
00:00:00.000 | Well, how can I meaningfully bless my children before bed?
00:00:07.480 | I love this question.
00:00:08.480 | It is from a dad named Wes.
00:00:10.280 | Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:11.280 | Thank you for this podcast.
00:00:12.280 | My question is about blessing my children.
00:00:15.160 | I have three boys, six and under.
00:00:17.920 | Among the household duties that I regularly assume is bedtime, I have since each was born
00:00:22.000 | sang "Jesus loves me" to them every night, thousands of times, inserting their names
00:00:27.600 | into the lyrics.
00:00:28.960 | I am stunned at the impact this little song has.
00:00:31.240 | Even when a child is melting down and revolting against being put to bed, they will not let
00:00:35.560 | me skip the song.
00:00:36.880 | Additionally, I pray for each son as well.
00:00:39.520 | Now, I have decided to give each of my boys a blessing.
00:00:42.960 | It will be given to them nightly, and it must be theologically rich since it will be memorized
00:00:47.220 | by them throughout the years.
00:00:48.600 | There are so many biblical truths I want them to understand and carry on into adulthood.
00:00:54.080 | I can't seem to find the right words or scriptures to incorporate them all.
00:00:57.440 | If you were writing or selecting a blessing for your son to carry throughout his life,
00:01:02.760 | how would you do it and maybe more specifically, what truths would you want them to hear every
00:01:08.160 | night?
00:01:09.160 | Pastor John, what would you say to Wes?
00:01:10.720 | Well, since Wes seems to me to be so far ahead of most parents here, let me cheat a little
00:01:18.400 | bit on his question and back up and give some words of explanation and foundation and encourage
00:01:27.240 | judgment, I hope, before I say something brief in response to his particular question
00:01:33.800 | about a content for the blessing of his children.
00:01:37.680 | What I mean when I say he's ahead of most parents is that I would guess very few parents
00:01:43.280 | actually have given a lot of thought to what a blessing over their children would look
00:01:49.200 | like or whether they should do it at all or why they should do it or what it should include.
00:01:54.800 | Like he's asking, so in answering Wes, I want to encourage parents who maybe never even
00:02:03.120 | thought that this is a good idea to give it some serious consideration, namely blessing,
00:02:09.360 | speaking blessing over their children regularly, perhaps nightly as they put them to bed.
00:02:17.240 | So a little background and explanation.
00:02:19.740 | The most famous blessing in the Bible is probably Numbers 6, 24 to 26.
00:02:26.920 | The Lord bless you and keep you.
00:02:29.240 | The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
00:02:33.460 | The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
00:02:38.700 | Now here's what's unique about a blessing like that, as opposed to a simple prayer.
00:02:45.380 | In prayer, we are talking directly to God, and when we use the word you in prayer, we
00:02:52.700 | mean you, God.
00:02:55.180 | We're not talking directly to people when we pray, even though corporate prayer is good
00:03:00.380 | and it's intended that people are to hear us and say amen when we pray.
00:03:05.860 | But in a blessing, we are talking directly to people or a person.
00:03:11.620 | And when we use the word you, we don't mean God, we mean you, the person that we're talking
00:03:19.140 | to.
00:03:20.140 | And yet we are intending for God to be the one who acts in response to our blessing.
00:03:28.260 | In other words, a blessing is moving in two directions.
00:03:32.500 | We really do intend for two persons to hear what we are saying.
00:03:39.280 | The one we are addressing directly, and God, whom we intend to hear us and will give the
00:03:48.660 | blessing on the person that we're talking to.
00:03:52.940 | So when we say, "The Lord bless you and keep you," we are directly speaking to another
00:04:00.540 | person or group of people, but we're asking the Lord to do the blessing.
00:04:06.500 | So when we bless someone, we're making plain that we believe God is the decisive actor,
00:04:15.340 | but that he uses human means to perform his act of blessing.
00:04:21.260 | If we don't believe that, we wouldn't be speaking the blessing.
00:04:26.020 | Our speaking, we believe, that's why we do it, our speaking is part of God's way of doing
00:04:33.820 | the blessing.
00:04:35.220 | This is what's unique and powerful and precious about a blessing.
00:04:40.580 | In the very act of blessing, we become part of the means by which God blesses the person
00:04:48.860 | that we're speaking to.
00:04:50.260 | So the relationship that such a blessing forges is part of the blessing that God imparts.
00:04:59.880 | This is why it can be so powerful with our children.
00:05:03.720 | The blessing is coming from God through daddy.
00:05:07.680 | It's coming from God through daddy.
00:05:10.520 | That's a very powerful moment as children come to understand what's going on here.
00:05:16.500 | So here are a couple of bridges between the Old Testament practice.
00:05:19.760 | You might wonder, "Well, yeah, they did that in the Old Testament.
00:05:22.360 | Where's that in the New Testament?"
00:05:23.960 | Here's some bridges between Old Testament blessing, like number six, for example, Isaac
00:05:29.920 | blessing his sons by faith in Hebrews 11, 20 to 21, referring back.
00:05:36.820 | For example, Jesus says in Mark 10, 15, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a
00:05:43.080 | child shall not enter the kingdom."
00:05:45.960 | And he took them in his arms and he blessed them, laying his hands on them.
00:05:54.780 | So it's a very Christ-like thing to do, to bless children, laying our hands on our children
00:06:02.800 | as we speak a blessing over them.
00:06:06.520 | Now, what guidance do we get from the apostles as to what a Christian might say in a blessing
00:06:15.840 | on another Christian or on a child or family?
00:06:19.320 | Here are a couple of pointers.
00:06:21.080 | It's amazing to me that at the beginning of every single letter that Paul wrote, that
00:06:29.140 | he says something like, "Grace to you, grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and
00:06:39.620 | the Lord Jesus Christ."
00:06:41.260 | It's Romans 1, 7, and it's at the beginning of every letter.
00:06:46.140 | And at the end of every single letter, no exceptions, he writes something like, "The
00:06:52.140 | grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you."
00:06:56.380 | That's Romans 16, 20.
00:06:58.140 | Now, these are the kind of blessings which Paul pronounces over the recipients of his
00:07:05.140 | letters.
00:07:06.140 | They're addressed to the readers, to you.
00:07:08.620 | He's saying you, readers.
00:07:10.500 | But they are intended to call down grace and peace from God the Father and from the Lord
00:07:17.340 | Jesus.
00:07:18.340 | So Paul expects that his words will be part of the blessing that God imparts with grace
00:07:25.780 | and peace to the readers.
00:07:28.060 | And I think the reason he says, "Grace to you, be to you, grace be to you," at the beginning
00:07:34.680 | of the letters, and "Grace be with you," at the end of the letters, without exception,
00:07:40.820 | is that the divine truth of the letter itself is part of the powerful grace that is coming
00:07:48.700 | to them as they read the letter.
00:07:52.820 | And then the abiding effects of the truth-mediated blessing coming to them in the letter goes
00:08:01.060 | with them as they get up and leave the reading of the letter and enter into their daily lives.
00:08:08.940 | So the biblical content, you might say, of our blessing spoken over our children is found
00:08:16.500 | between the beginning and the end of Paul's epistles.
00:08:19.580 | You want to know what to bless your children with, you read the epistles.
00:08:24.920 | And if we would go to the heart of the matter, it would be, I think, let Romans 8.32 guide
00:08:33.260 | the content of your blessing.
00:08:35.000 | Here it goes.
00:08:36.000 | "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with
00:08:43.880 | him graciously give us all things?"
00:08:46.700 | In other words, make sure that God's unfathomable gift of his son to die for us is placed as
00:08:56.220 | the foundation of all grace and all peace and all the blessings that come to your children.
00:09:04.540 | And then summarize that grace and peace with words surrounding Romans 8.32 and the rest
00:09:10.660 | of Romans 8, "called, justified, inseparably kept through hardship, through suffering,
00:09:16.860 | for the enjoyment of God's presence forever."
00:09:20.060 | I think one of the best guides, this little advertisement, I think one of the best guides
00:09:25.980 | for us is David Michael's little booklet, A Father's Guide to Blessing His Children.
00:09:33.220 | You can find that over at truth78.org.
00:09:37.060 | And some look your children in the eye and speak grace and peace into their lives based
00:09:45.220 | on the gift of God in the death of Jesus, and make plain the central blessings that
00:09:54.420 | Christ has purchased for his children—freedom from sin, everlasting life, everlasting joy,
00:10:01.660 | eternal presence of God, of Jesus, keeping them through all the hardships of life and
00:10:09.260 | suffering.
00:10:10.260 | What a privilege for dads.
00:10:11.940 | Thank you, Pastor John, for this advice.
00:10:14.460 | Well, whether you listen in the car or the gym or doing chores, thank you for inviting
00:10:19.740 | us into your busy day.
00:10:20.860 | If you have not yet done so, you can subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast
00:10:24.900 | app in YouTube or in Spotify.
00:10:27.580 | And to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us, like this really
00:10:31.100 | great one from Wes.
00:10:32.380 | Thank you, Wes, for sending this in.
00:10:33.940 | You can send us your own question online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:37.460 | Well, last week, we talked a little bit about the challenge of why our theology doesn't
00:10:44.820 | change our lives quickly, at least not as fast as we would like it to.
00:10:48.940 | We also talked about the expulsive power of a new affection that those new holy affections
00:10:53.180 | we have for God help push out of our lives the fallen desires that we have for sin.
00:10:59.060 | But from those topics emerges another related question, namely this one.
00:11:04.300 | Realistically, how changed will my desires become in this life?
00:11:09.020 | It's a question from a listener named Emma.
00:11:11.420 | It's a really great one, another really great question.
00:11:14.860 | And that's up next time.
00:11:15.860 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:11:16.860 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:11:18.100 | [END]
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