Bless you?

When we were at the international workers field forum in Thailand there was a man named Sunder from Canada there as the week's speaker. We missed out on all his messages since we were with the high school students but on the last night we got to sit in on the formal dinner where Sunder shared a closing message. He talked about what it means to bless people. He said he started closing his sermons at church with a blessing to the congregation instead of "You are dismissed." He said it changed Sunday mornings in his church. People were affected in amazing ways by his Spirit, Scripture-filled blessings. He commissioned all those listening to start blessing others, our kids, our congregations etc.

So, when we got home to our kids I decided to start blessing my kids before bed. It confused them at first because it sounds like a prayer but I'm talking TO them and not ABOUT them as I do when I pray over them.

Well, tonight, since I'm not feeling well, I rushed through the bedtime routine. I read the shortest Bible story I could find in their kids Bible, said goodnight and started leaving the room. Liam stopped me and said, "You read a Bible story and I'm confused cause you didn't do any other things" I knew he was talking about the blessing because he didn't know what to call it. So, I "blessed" him and prayed for him. Then he asked, "What does 'bless' mean?" I was thankful I had a recent lesson on this in my Beth Moore study. "Blessed" means to be happy or blissful so I told him that blessing someone is wanting them to be happy. He said, "I think I need to bless Brianna." He said that she cries at school almost every day and she's never happy. He said he'd bless her except he gets shy and can't talk to her.

The conversation went onto talking about praying for others and whether or not God hears us and can remember our prayers. He asked why God doesn't do what he asks for in his prayers. It lead to deep theological conversation with my little 5 year old son. It was so amazing! But more then anything my heart melted when he put it all together and realized that Brianna needed to be blessed.

What a sweet boy he is and such a sensitive soft heart!

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