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

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right

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here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast, and also help and hope for your own life

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journey.

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This is the third episode of a three-part series on prayer that opens doors.

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We looked first at praise and then at thanks last week, and today we consider a powerful

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key that can open tightly shut doors as well as minds and hearts.

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When someone near you sneezes, do you or someone nearby say, God bless you?

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It happens pretty often, doesn't it?

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And perhaps as a child in church, you sang, Bless to be a blessing.

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We were being encouraged that we would be blessings to other people.

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Do you hear or say, God bless any other time?

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Not too often, I imagine.

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And yet we are called to be people of blessing as a way of life.

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To bless, to define it for you, is to express good wishes or offer prayer to God for someone's

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welfare and benefit.

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This can be spoken or prayed or given in service.

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We can bless people by the way we serve them.

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When we have a prodigal in our lives, we find we are so often correcting, admonishing, accusing,

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reprimanding, even yelling at that one we love.

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And rarely do we take time or make the effort to bless them.

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So how do we become people of blessing?

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And how does that become a key to open the doors that seem to be shut tight with our

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wanderer?

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First, we are to bless God.

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In Nehemiah chapter nine, we read, and the Levite said, Stand up and praise the Lord your

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God who is from everlasting to everlasting.

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And here's what he said you should be singing to him, bless it be your glorious name and

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may it be exalted above all blessing and praise.

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Okay, so how do we bless God?

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We bless him when we praise him.

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We bless him when we thank him.

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And we looked at that in our previous two sessions.

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Seeing him by one of his many names blesses him, as does thanking him for his beautiful

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character.

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Surely, we bless him when we worship in song.

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How many times have you sung, ten thousand reasons bless the Lord from Psalm 103.

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Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

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We also bless him when we obey him, when we do what he's instructed or commanded.

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We bless him when we trust him and when we thank him in good circumstances and in very

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hard realities.

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And I'm certain he is blessed when we live in love, mercy and grace toward others.

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So it's not so hard to bless God.

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Just do what he says.

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He's blessed by that.

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We're also to bless others.

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God's word is filled with blessings, spoken to us and that we can speak to others.

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This is a beautiful model for one of them in Numbers chapter six.

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You've probably heard this.

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The Lord bless you and keep you.

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The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

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The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

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Speaking a blessing rarely entered my mind until a few years ago.

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I read a book about blessing, living blessings and God encouraged me to make it a way of

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life.

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So now I consciously speak blessing to almost everyone I encounter a store clerk finishing

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a phone call at the doctor's office.

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I said that as I checked out of an appointment this morning to a homeless person or driving

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through the Starbucks line, which I also did this morning.

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God bless you.

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They would often have no clue how that would happen or what it would look like, but they

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appreciate somebody speaking that kind of care and concern for them.

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I also tend to end my emails and most communications with words of blessing.

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One of my favorite ways to bless someone is to pray for them in the form of a blessing

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and even to write out such blessings for them.

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If I want to write a blessing for you or someone that I know here, I think of needs that I

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might be aware of, of scriptures that would be good to pray for that person, of requests

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to ask for her or him.

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And I ask God for scripture for those requests so that I get a sense of caring for them.

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I think of what some needs are, I look for scripture that I could pray for them as a

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blessing and I put all that together.

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Sometimes, actually many times, I've written out blessings that I write and pray.

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Here's one, a blessing for you in this case.

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It's been a blessing I've written for somebody that I care about a great deal.

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Because may you know that God delights in you and is crazy in love with you.

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May you know what a treasure you are to me and to God and to His kingdom.

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May Jesus satisfy your every need and your every desire.

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May you always walk in the Spirit.

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May you love the Lord your God with all your heart.

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May you love the lost into the kingdom.

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May you be filled to overflowing with God's abundant blessings.

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Love, Judy.

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Those are scriptures that I turned into blessings.

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So why don't I just read that again to you and you just listen to these words of blessing

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that God has for you.

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And you might think of at least praying it for your prodigal.

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Here you go.

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Let me read it again just for you.

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May you know that God delights in you and is crazy in love with you.

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May you know what a treasure you are to me, to God and to His kingdom.

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May Jesus satisfy your every need and your every desire.

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May you always walk in the Spirit.

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May you love the Lord your God with all your heart.

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May you love the lost into the kingdom.

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And may you be filled up to overflowing with God's abundant blessings.

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You can do that too.

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It may not be written out like I've done it, but you can be speaking words of blessing

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by turning scripture into blessing or your thoughts for a person into a blessing for

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them.

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We are also to bless our enemies.

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Do you have enemies?

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Some of you probably have true enemies who threaten your lives, but most of us might consider

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those who speak ill of us or abuse us emotionally or compete against us intensely as foes or

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opponents.

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Sometimes just those who annoy or irritate us can feel like enemies, someone whose negativity

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we have to endure.

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Jesus made it clear.

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He said, Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.

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On the contrary, repay evil with blessing so that you may inherit a blessing.

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Our natural response might be to treat them as they treat us or to speak ill of them or

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negatively to them or just to avoid them.

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So how do we bless our enemies?

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Well, we pray for them.

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Asking God to do good to them.

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We speak words of encouragement and hope to them.

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We look for tangible ways to express kindness to them.

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Not easy is it?

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You're thinking, OK, that's almost impossible.

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You don't know who's my enemy is.

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Some years ago, there was someone in my life that I didn't really like in my life, which

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she knew.

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My feelings were not hidden.

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God said, Judy, I want you to bless her.

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If she is to come to know me, she must see how much I love her through you.

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So I began a journey of intentionally blessing her.

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I chose to do tangible, helpful things as well as speaking love and grace to her.

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At first it was pure obedience.

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But then I began to really love her and desire to bless her.

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And eventually she began to believe I was sincere.

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She began to trust me, and our relationship grew into a real friendship.

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And there you see an open door.

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When we bless people, whether brief encounters or long-term relationships, even our enemies,

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we hand God the key.

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And with it he opens doors to our hearts, to the hearts and minds of those we bless,

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and even to turn enemies into friends.

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Just imagine how your blessings to your loved one might surprise them, make them suspicious,

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but eventually break down some barriers, open their mind and heart.

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In a previous episode, I told about one time when I was really angry at our prodigal, and

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God said bless him.

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And he had left because my words had probably driven him away.

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And so I went up to his room and I got all his dirty clothes.

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And I went to the washing machine.

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And I basically started by throwing each piece of his clothing into the washing machine,

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saying, I bless you, I bless you.

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And then with more gentleness and even with love and compassion, by the time I'd put all

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of his clothes into the washing machine and turned it on, God had turned my anger as I

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was obedient into love and compassion for my prodigal.

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And I had blessed him.

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And when he got home, because that was his job, not mine, he felt very blessed.

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What might you do to speak or pray or do a blessing to your prodigal?

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I would love to hear what happens, but do be patient.

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It may take time before they respond even to your good intentions to bless them.

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And God bless you.