by photochick~ I realized after writing about my baby boy's dedication and the blessing that we spoke over both of our children, that some of you may not be familiar with the biblical foundation of pronouncing blessings and might wonder why we did this. Here is an excerpt of a study about scriptural blessings.
"Blessing our children is pat of a rich biblical heritage. In the Old Testament, fathers regularly pronounced blessings on their children (see Gen. 27:26-29, 39-40, 49:1-28). As New Testament believers and priests of god (1 Pet. 2:9), one of our privileges is to bless others. When we invoke God's name over His people, God blesses them (see Num 6:22-27)."
I do my best to do this each day verbally. In my heart is simply me saying "God, I trust you with these children. want your will alone for their lives and you alone are the giver of all good gifts."
In one of my Goodwill book buys I found an awesome children's book entitled "I'd Choose You!" It is a story of blessing in a little elephant family and in a note to parents further explains blessing your children. While not a formula, here's what they lay out as a simplistic way to speak blessings into your children's lives, "It's spoken in love . . . shared with a loving touch . . . and stirred by God's wondrous love, which we desire to communicate."
I encourage you to read the full pdf from NavPress about blessings. It's a free download.
Heather - I couldn't get that link to work and can't find it directly on the website. Do you have another link?
Posted by: Ayshia Hatcher | July 13, 2010 at 10:38 PM
I'm not sure why the link isn't working, but after further checking it appears that the book must be out of print. If you search for "I'd Choose You" by John Trent on amazon it does bring up a couple of "other sellers." However, they are all used books. Sorry!
Posted by: photochick | July 14, 2010 at 12:10 AM
Ha, ha! Just realized you were talking about the download link, not the book!! :-) I'll try to figure out why it's not working!
Posted by: photochick | July 14, 2010 at 12:12 AM
Here is the correct link for the free download pdf:
http://www.navpress.com/images/pdfs/9781576839638.pdf
Posted by: photochick | July 14, 2010 at 12:30 AM
Love it! Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: herrika | July 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM
That was awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Laura | July 14, 2010 at 08:07 PM