12. A Parent’s Privilege: Gifting the Faith to the Children by Counting Up
12. A Parent’s Privilege: Gifting the Faith to the Children by Counting Up:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. My cup overflows. From the fullness of Jesus we have received gift after gift, grace upon grace, one gracious blessing after another. So give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (Ps. 103:1-2; Ephesians 1:3; Ps. 23:6; John 1:16; 1 Thess. 5:18).
Day for Singing – Mission House (Live)
‘… And forget not all His benefits: The Hebrew word for “benefits” means blessings; acts of good will; deeds of kindness; divine favors; God’s graces; demonstrations of bountiful mercies. Counting up all your blessings from God is crucial in one’s faith and in one’s family life. Be thankful for your children as one of the vital, life-giving benefits a parent receives from Creator God. Children are acts of good will from a loving Lord, they represent divine deeds of kindness and mercy, they are living gestures of undeserved favor from the Lord that are unspeakable treasures.
“Certainly you can see, can’t you, that children are God’s best gift, that they are an inheritance that is both a gift and a responsibility? That the fruit of the womb is a reward to you from the Lord Himself? (Psalm 127:3).
Children are a gift, even when they’re a royal pain: Even in a world that so often considers children to be some kind of curse, parents, continue stubbornly in the truth that children are a profound blessing… When they wake you up in the middle of the night for the hundredth time; when they keep you up at night as you wait for them to walk through the door; when they’ve just soiled their diapers for the tenth time that day; when they are rebellious or unreasonable for no apparent reason; when they don’t reflect the moral values you earnestly attempted to instill; when they refuse to eat the food you nicely prepared for them; when they publicly humiliate you with their antics; when they push away rather than hug up; when they resist toilet training; when they disappoint you with their decisions and choices; when they reject what you hold dear. Yes, sometimes the children are gifts in disguise, but they are still a God-given gift of grace to you. A parent’s love is unconditional, which means kids are considered a gift whether or not they are acting like one. There are moments when a parent accepts the children as gifts on faith, trusting in the unseen. “So be thankful in all circumstances, for that is God’s will for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Count Your Blessings (by Johnson Otman, 1897).
1 “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Refrain:
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your blessings, see what God hath done;
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.
2 Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, ev’ry doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by. [Refrain]
3 When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings, money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high. [Refrain]
4 So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end. “[Refrain]
Children are Divine Acts of Grace to the Parent. “What do you have that hasn’t been given to you? Isn’t everything you have and everything you are a sheer gift from God? Can you honestly take credit for something you received as a free gift from above? Grace has given you everything about yourself that is good, so why do you boast as if it is something you achieved on your own? Why do you brag about the good in your life as if you earned it, that you deserved it, knowing full well it is all graciously given to you from outside yourself?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
A Word from our Gracious God. It’s as if God is saying… When I created this beautiful world, I was like a farmer drunk with joy, casting seeds of blessing everywhere with reckless abandon. For no particular reason, out of the goodness of My heart. Well, I do love beauty, and wholeness and truth. One might say that I initiated the world with grace, the free gift of life, and I invested Myself into the world from my storehouse of goodness. And then I topped it all off with the centerpiece of my created universe, mankind. I bestowed the gift of my very breath of life, and I graced the world with the human being made in My image, a free gift to every person. I give each image-bearer a conscience, an imagination, reason, a body that can do things, the capacity to love… All are graces at my initiative, to kick-start life on planet earth. Blessings free of charge, no strings attached. I loaded one blessing on top of another, and I still do, because I felt like it, because I am magnanimous by nature. My universal favor on the human race includes a key component of their nature… a spiritual antenna that will sense My call to them, that will open up their eyes to the way I choose to witness to everyone through my creation. Solomon called this placing “eternity in our hearts.” So it’s clear that it is a monumental grace for you to simply exist! And on top of that, I generously gave to each, in varying degrees, what was needed to flourish, the raw materials to succeed and achieve. So what’s this about being a “self-made man?” I would love it if every person would see the foolishness of that attitude. I gave them all these free grace-gifts, and they pretend to earn every blessing they get? Divine favor is not earned. No one deserves grace. They are blessings granted before you were even born. There is no such thing as self-sufficiency, or independence from Me. Let’s face it, I didn’t ask them for permission to lavish gifts on the human person, to give them life, and the capacity to flourish and experience goodness. It’s not like anyone deserves such an astounding gift. Everything you accomplish or achieve as you use my graces is actually after the fact. You’re way behind if you think you’re a step ahead of Me. I initiated everything before you saw the light of day.
There Shall Be Showers Of Blessing – Lor – YouTube
Counting Up Our Blessings. How can parents expect their children to be thankful people if the parent doesn’t model it for them? How can parents expect their children to grow in developing a grateful heart if they never see it demonstrated at home? Parents are thankful for countless blessings… For being given the profound privilege of being responsible to guiding and nurture a fellow human being made in God’s image; for the inestimable gift of a child’s mere existence; for a flesh and blood fruit of the womb that is chock-full of family genes and characteristics; for being given the awesome responsibility of providing a “goodly heritage” for their children that can be continued for generations; for being granted the God-given challenge of growing up to a higher level of maturity than one would have reached had not being given children; for being given new and unpredictable ways to acknowledge dependence upon God’s grace; for the opportunity to learn how to forget yourself for the sake of someone else who you love. When parents count up their considerable blessings within the earshot of the children, they are essentially announcing to them God’s acts of grace, and the children will soak into their spirit the fact that they themselves are a big part of God’s blessings to the parents. .
A Rhetorical Question Easily Asked by a Grateful Parent: “What can I give back to God for the blessings He has poured out on me? How can I repay the Lord for all the good He has done for me? What can I offer the Lord for all His goodness to me? (Psalm 116:12).
The UK Blessing UK (With Lyrics)