Prayer that Opens Doors: Bless, episode 122 (rebroadcast)

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast, and also help and hope for your own life journey. This is the third episode of a three-part series on prayer that opens doors. We looked first at praise and then at thanks last week, and today we consider a powerful key that can open tightly shut doors as well as minds and hearts. When someone near you sneezes, do you or someone nearby say, God bless you?

0:44 It happens pretty often, doesn't it? And perhaps as a child in church, you sang, Bless to be a blessing. We were being encouraged that we would be blessings to other people. Do you hear or say, God bless any other time? Not too often, I imagine. And yet we are called to be people of blessing as a way of life. To bless, to define it for you, is to express good wishes or offer prayer to God for someone's welfare and benefit. This can be spoken or prayed or given in service.

1:29 We can bless people by the way we serve them. When we have a prodigal in our lives, we find we are so often correcting, admonishing, accusing, reprimanding, even yelling at that one we love. And rarely do we take time or make the effort to bless them. So how do we become people of blessing? And how does that become a key to open the doors that seem to be shut tight with our wanderer? First, we are to bless God. In Nehemiah chapter nine, we read, and the Levite said, Stand up and praise the Lord your God who is from everlasting to everlasting.

2:18 And here's what he said you should be singing to him, bless it be your glorious name and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. Okay, so how do we bless God? We bless him when we praise him. We bless him when we thank him. And we looked at that in our previous two sessions. Seeing him by one of his many names blesses him, as does thanking him for his beautiful character. Surely, we bless him when we worship in song. How many times have you sung, ten thousand reasons bless the Lord from Psalm 103.

3:03 Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name. We also bless him when we obey him, when we do what he's instructed or commanded. We bless him when we trust him and when we thank him in good circumstances and in very hard realities. And I'm certain he is blessed when we live in love, mercy and grace toward others. So it's not so hard to bless God. Just do what he says. He's blessed by that.

3:44 We're also to bless others. God's word is filled with blessings, spoken to us and that we can speak to others. This is a beautiful model for one of them in Numbers chapter six. You've probably heard this. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Speaking a blessing rarely entered my mind until a few years ago. I read a book about blessing, living blessings and God encouraged me to make it a way of life.

4:30 So now I consciously speak blessing to almost everyone I encounter a store clerk finishing a phone call at the doctor's office. I said that as I checked out of an appointment this morning to a homeless person or driving through the Starbucks line, which I also did this morning. God bless you. They would often have no clue how that would happen or what it would look like, but they appreciate somebody speaking that kind of care and concern for them. I also tend to end my emails and most communications with words of blessing.

5:13 One of my favorite ways to bless someone is to pray for them in the form of a blessing and even to write out such blessings for them. If I want to write a blessing for you or someone that I know here, I think of needs that I might be aware of, of scriptures that would be good to pray for that person, of requests to ask for her or him. And I ask God for scripture for those requests so that I get a sense of caring for them. I think of what some needs are, I look for scripture that I could pray for them as a blessing and I put all that together.

6:02 Sometimes, actually many times, I've written out blessings that I write and pray. Here's one, a blessing for you in this case. It's been a blessing I've written for somebody that I care about a great deal. Because may you know that God delights in you and is crazy in love with you. May you know what a treasure you are to me and to God and to His kingdom. May Jesus satisfy your every need and your every desire. May you always walk in the Spirit. May you love the Lord your God with all your heart.

6:47 May you love the lost into the kingdom. May you be filled to overflowing with God's abundant blessings. Love, Judy. Those are scriptures that I turned into blessings. So why don't I just read that again to you and you just listen to these words of blessing that God has for you. And you might think of at least praying it for your prodigal. Here you go. Let me read it again just for you.

7:27 May you know that God delights in you and is crazy in love with you. May you know what a treasure you are to me, to God and to His kingdom. May Jesus satisfy your every need and your every desire. May you always walk in the Spirit. May you love the Lord your God with all your heart. May you love the lost into the kingdom. And may you be filled up to overflowing with God's abundant blessings. You can do that too. It may not be written out like I've done it, but you can be speaking words of blessing by turning scripture into blessing or your thoughts for a person into a blessing for them.

8:20 We are also to bless our enemies. Do you have enemies? Some of you probably have true enemies who threaten your lives, but most of us might consider those who speak ill of us or abuse us emotionally or compete against us intensely as foes or opponents. Sometimes just those who annoy or irritate us can feel like enemies, someone whose negativity we have to endure. Jesus made it clear. He said, Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.

9:01 On the contrary, repay evil with blessing so that you may inherit a blessing. Our natural response might be to treat them as they treat us or to speak ill of them or negatively to them or just to avoid them. So how do we bless our enemies? Well, we pray for them. Asking God to do good to them. We speak words of encouragement and hope to them. We look for tangible ways to express kindness to them. Not easy is it?

9:41 You're thinking, OK, that's almost impossible. You don't know who's my enemy is. Some years ago, there was someone in my life that I didn't really like in my life, which she knew. My feelings were not hidden. God said, Judy, I want you to bless her. If she is to come to know me, she must see how much I love her through you. So I began a journey of intentionally blessing her. I chose to do tangible, helpful things as well as speaking love and grace to her.

10:22 At first it was pure obedience. But then I began to really love her and desire to bless her. And eventually she began to believe I was sincere. She began to trust me, and our relationship grew into a real friendship. And there you see an open door. When we bless people, whether brief encounters or long-term relationships, even our enemies, we hand God the key. And with it he opens doors to our hearts, to the hearts and minds of those we bless, and even to turn enemies into friends.

11:06 Just imagine how your blessings to your loved one might surprise them, make them suspicious, but eventually break down some barriers, open their mind and heart. In a previous episode, I told about one time when I was really angry at our prodigal, and God said bless him. And he had left because my words had probably driven him away. And so I went up to his room and I got all his dirty clothes. And I went to the washing machine. And I basically started by throwing each piece of his clothing into the washing machine, saying, I bless you, I bless you.

11:53 And then with more gentleness and even with love and compassion, by the time I'd put all of his clothes into the washing machine and turned it on, God had turned my anger as I was obedient into love and compassion for my prodigal. And I had blessed him. And when he got home, because that was his job, not mine, he felt very blessed. What might you do to speak or pray or do a blessing to your prodigal? I would love to hear what happens, but do be patient.

12:33 It may take time before they respond even to your good intentions to bless them. And God bless you.