Turning Curses into Blessings, episode 102

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. So let me start with a story. Once again, our prodigal had aggravated me. My natural reaction was to raise my voice and assign a consequence. Instead, as he stormed out of the house, I went to his room, gathered his scattered dirty clothes, and headed to the laundry room.

0:41 Doing his laundry was his job, not mine. But today, it was mine. And as I threw each shirt and pair of shorts into the washer, I said, Josh, I bless you, my son, I bless you. I don't know if he felt blessed, but it did wonders for me. So why did I do that? Because God has convinced me of the power of blessing and the challenge to live it out every day. Scripture tells us in 1 Peter, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.

1:26 On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. Author Dallas Willard has said that the two ways we impact people most often are to either bless them or curse them, one or the other. Sometimes we probably aren't aware if we are blessing or cursing, but we can certainly intentionally choose to bless. Because you see, God has chosen to bless you and me.

2:06 The Lord bless you and keep you, we read in Numbers. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. That's just one of many blessings, but it's probably the most familiar and popular one that God said to the people of Israel. But he says it to us as well. I want to bless you. And I really believe that blessing others, and especially our prodigals, is a key to restoring the hearts of our loved ones to us, and maybe even God.

2:51 So what does it mean to bless? Blessing is the projection of good into another's life, according to Dallas Willard again. Or to bring God into it, to bless is to offer prayer to God for someone's welfare and benefit. What a wonderful thing to ask for good to happen in another's life. Even someone who doesn't seem to deserve to be blessed, but God has called us to bless. Given the realities of family stress these days, financial needs, prices are climbing, gas prices are climbing, racial tensions, fires and hurricanes everywhere, or snowstorms, mental health breakdowns, I imagine there is great need of blessing in both word and deed in many homes, if not every home.

3:56 But the call to bless extends well beyond our families to neighbors, coworkers, to those with different political views, to those with divergent cultural and racial attitudes and opinion. God says, bless, don't curse. In speaking our thoughts, expressing our feelings, describing the reality of our experiences, as God's children, we are called to speak in love, not animosity, with blessing, not cursing.

4:36 And it goes further, Jesus himself admonishes us, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Paul affirms this and says, don't be overcome by evil, overcome evil with good. So seriously, God wants us to bless our enemies, people who have harmed us or demeaned us, or in the case of a prodigal, really almost destroyed our lives sometimes. Those people I love but are hurtful, yep, he wants us to bless them.

5:18 Here's the deal, hate multiplies hate, but blessing multiplies blessing, both to others and it comes back to us. When we bless people, then there's going to be blessing coming back to others and will often spread beyond just the person that we blessed. And so what do I do in response to that? To bless those I live with and live near and encounter with hopeful words, encouraging affirmations, maybe just a listening ear, or maybe it's meeting some real needs.

6:04 I had a chance to bless a neighbor recently who's been ill a lot and I made some soup and took it over thinking I would give her some soup and maybe say a prayer for her. And she asked me to come in and stay and we talked for more than an hour and I was blessed, but so was she. You don't know the opportunities you have to bless. Now we can bless also on our knees. We pray to our loving God to do his good for whomever we want to bless. Again, if that's our prodigal, they need lots of blessing.

6:45 And so we have a chance to pass that on. Now I want you to think about this. Life is hard for a prodigal. Their lives are filled with fear, a lot of things to be afraid of. They know that there's danger in some of the things they do. I remember how our son lived in fear of getting picked up by the police. I never understood how he never got a DUI, but they're filled with failure, whether it's in school or at a job or at home. They're being told all the time that they have failed, they have done it wrong, or they're just frustrated.

7:32 Even maybe they're trying to change their lives and do better and they keep going back to their old ways. Much of it, much of their fear and failure and frustration is from their own choices, their own making. And that often, yes it does, gets instead of affirmation, it gets negative harsh words from those who are in authority over them and even from those of us who love them. We can say some pretty negative things. Now we have an enemy who hurls curses at us, but we have a God who loves to bless us.

8:19 See how we can turn the hurtful words that we might be, all that we do often say to our loved ones, our prodigals, instead of hurting them, instead of putting them down, God says bless them. So I'm gonna give you some help on how to do that. This may seem a little funny to you, but I'm gonna take the words we often say and I'm gonna give you something scripture says and something that you might say that would be a blessing. So you can use these words from God himself or you can just kinda let them guide you to what you could say instead.

9:02 So here we go. Here are some things that we might say, well deserved probably, but another way to bless instead of curse. So you might be tempted to say, you can't do anything right. Instead, we could say words of blessing from God's word. God has said in Jeremiah, may you be built up, not torn down, planted, not uprooted. May you return to God with all your heart. So do you see that? Instead of you can't do anything right, we let God say, no, I'm gonna build you up.

9:43 Or you could say, I believe you are smart enough to make good choices instead of bad choices. So maybe you're tempted to accuse them, you have failed again. And instead, what might words like these do for your loved one? In Micah, it says, may you rise when you fall and come out of the darkness into God's light. That's a pretty good blessing on them. We might say, we all make mistakes. I know you can make it work next time.

10:24 So how many times has your prodigal heard you say, you're never gonna amount to anything? Well, maybe you wouldn't quite say that, but something like that. Maybe something like this from the book of Ephesians would be better. It says, may you hope in the future of God's good plans for you. So instead of you'll never amount to anything, you say to them, God has good plans for you. Or you might say, I'm sure you and God have good plans for your future.

11:06 You can do it. So maybe when you feel like saying, God will punish you for what you have done. Now, of course, most of us are too nice to say something like that, but I've heard it. And I know that it gets said, God will punish you for what you have done. Maybe you could try these words in Jeremiah. May you comprehend, may you understand that it gives God joy to always do good to you. Did you know that? It makes God happy when he can do good to you. And it makes God joyful when you can do good to your prodigal, your loved one.

11:50 And maybe you could say, instead of God's gonna punish you, I really want and believe the best for you. So when you feel hopeless, you might say to your loved one, and I bet most of us have, you are hopeless. I don't see anything working. So here are some words of hope from the book of Ezekiel. May you receive the new heart and new spirit God is giving you. Let them know God's there, he's working, and he has good gifts for them. A new heart to believe and a new spirit to trust.

12:35 Or maybe you just say, don't give up, keep hoping and trying, you can do it. Oh, and in frustration, maybe you would say, you are such a loser. But instead, you could offer a positive thought like this from the book of Joel. May all the days and years of your life that's been stolen by the evil one be restored. So for the decisions they've made and for the things that have happened in their lives, they might feel that they are losers. And we don't help when we affirm that.

13:15 But when we can say that all that's been taken from you, God is going to restore to you. And then you might add, you know, bad things do happen. But I know you can turn it around to a better outcome. The words of blessing, the words that offer them positive thoughts that you have about them make a huge difference in how they feel about themselves and how they look at themselves. So even if this is true, you might find yourself saying, sadly, you make it hard for anyone to love you.

13:57 Now I confess, I told God that a lot, that our son made it hard to love him. I probably said it to him, but I don't remember. I love this verse in Hosea. May you feel cords of loving kindness as the Father bends down to feed you. Can't you just see God saying, no, you may be making it hard for someone to love you, but I can love you. I'm gonna bend down, I'm gonna hug you, and I'll even feed you. That's God's attitude when somebody is making it hard to love them. Or you can just tell them, I will never quit loving you.

14:41 And you think they don't hear that, and they don't want to, but I assure you, those words will make a difference. And they may not come back in positive ways immediately, but if you say, I will never quit loving you, you're blessing your loved one. So when they've done something really bad, really bad, something criminal, you might say, you're gonna spend your life in prison. But instead, these words in Romans would give them hope.

15:22 May you know that in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation. Or you could say, I believe in you, and I am praying for God's good solution to this problem. Now those are just a few examples of the kinds of words we might speak that would really be curses to them. And God says, no, I don't want you to curse, I want you to bless. And so the word of God is full of ways to bless people. And those are just a few of the examples, plus simple ways for you to speak blessing over them instead of cursing them.

16:05 We're so quick to let our fears and frustrations cause us to utter words of accusation or condemnations. Those are curses. But God has blessed us and our loved ones. And he has called us to be channels of blessing to our prodigals. So let me ask you this. What blessing could you give your loved one today? Maybe in response to something they do or say, or maybe you just surprise them with a wonderful word of blessing.

16:47 You won't be sorry. Again, it doesn't always show up immediately that you are blessing instead of cursing. But if you keep it up over time, it will change their hearts. Next week, I will begin a series on Joy in the Hard Journey, which will be part of our preparation for the June 2 Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day. Probably most of you know about the Prodigal Prayer Day every June 2nd, but some of you are new listeners and you might not. What we do is we ask you to give us the first name of anyone that is needing some prayer in their lives because of the choices they're making or the situation that they're in.

17:40 Now, if you've submitted names in the past, you don't need to do it again. We still have them. But if you haven't, we would love for you to add to our list, there's several thousand people, names on it, and there will be hundreds, if not thousands, around the world who will pray and name every name on our list on June 2nd. So if you would like to submit a name, you can do that by clicking the link that'll be in the show notes, and we'll pray for your loved one. God bless you.