Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. Psalm 128:1-3
Early last week our neighbors blessed my husband and me with four tickets to an NBA game that night. Being there’s five of us we decided I’d take the boys and ask one of my girlfriends to come along. We had a great time and it illustrated something the Lord reminded our family later in the week when my oldest expected my life to revolve around him.
God loves to bless and there is a flow to it within families. We see that Noah found favor with the Lord and because of that God saved his whole family with him in the ark. Abraham found favor with the Lord and out of that nations are blessed. It all started with his immediate family and went from there.
Abraham followed God and God prospered Abraham. Prosperity is more than money; it’s every kind of blessing. Isaac was blessed just by being Abraham’s son, but clearly God blessed Abraham first. God blessed Abraham with a wife then blessed them as a couple (in terms of health, finances and fertility). Isaac grew up enjoying his father’s blessing and later inherited it, then God favored him with more of his own and the cycle continued down the generations.
Abraham’s blessing came in following the Lord’s lead not his son’s. That’s important to remember in a culture that promotes having fewer children while encouraging parents to cater to the whims of the ones they have. God delights in blessing our children and has plans to do more for them than we could ever orchestrate, but He does it through us not at our expense. Initially our children are blessed out of the overflow of our blessing. When they can handle it, they’ll enjoy a magnitude of blessing beyond anything we’ve known so while they’re in our care let’s encourage them to maintain position in the blessing flow:
The Lord
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Parents
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Their children
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Generations to come
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SOUL FOOD (Scripture References)
Genesis 6:8; 7:1
Genesis 12:9; 13:2, 14-16; 21:2; 25:11
© Vanessa A. Harris and The Legacy of Faith, 2013.
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