This sermon emphasizes the power of blessings over curses, highlighting the importance of praying blessings over others, breaking curses with blessings, and seeking God's blessings in all aspects of life. It encourages a shift from negative attitudes to a mindset of blessing others, even in challenging situations, as exemplified by stories of blessings bringing positive outcomes. The ultimate blessing is found in Jesus Christ, who came to bless us with salvation and turn us away from iniquity.

Let's pray. Our Father, before we even go any farther, we want to ask you to bless this meeting. Bless these meetings this weekend. We ask that we would meet with you, and you would meet with us. You have ordained to use the weak things of the world to glorify yourself, and that's me. And all of us that would be used by you would come to the point, Father, that we recognize that we can't do anything, and you said without you we could do nothing. We ask that the Holy Spirit anoint the word, anoint our hearts, anoint our eyes to see, our spiritual eyes, anoint our ears. We ask that you rebuke the devil, the demons away from this place. We claim the covering of the blood of Christ over these meetings. We pray for any that might not know Christ, that you would open up their hearts to see that you love them, and you died on the cross for them, and you're waiting for them to surrender their heart to you, as you surrendered your heart and your life for them and for all of us. We pray for the Spirit of God to take and drill into our hearts, wherever we're hurting, or wherever we're needy, wherever there's maybe an area that we are stuck, and we just haven't got unstuck yet. We pray for the power and the anointing and the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ to be on these meetings, and that you would be glorified and pleased. We pray for your blessing on this area and this community, that the Spirit of God would do a mighty work in this area. Father, we don't look at the hard hearts and the callousness and the worldliness. We look at you, and remember that your word says that you're not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. We pray for our relatives, our families, to where some we can hardly say anything about, with their need of Christ, but the Holy Spirit can speak to them. And we ask you to do that this weekend, that you'd be doing a lot of work out there. Now thank you for this time here, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, after talking with a couple of the guys here, I think the idea come up to sort of focus on the family. Not to take that away from the focus on the family, but I don't know if they got a copyright on those words, but we're going to attempt to do that. And in attempting to do that, I am going to, I had some messages I just gave last fall on this, and I think it's an important subject. We have some young families here, and I am just probably going to draw out of my life of 45, almost 50 years of preaching, and just maybe try to give you some practical insights into this area, and just ask God to speak to you. I had a teacher, professor, he's in Bible college, he said not all these missionaries are great speakers, but just learn to get at least one thing from God from them. And so I'm going to start off with something that is very important in life, and that is the blessing. Let's stand and turn to Numbers, chapter 6, and I'm going to read you the blessing passage. Give you a little stretch, too, before I preach three hours. I won't do that. Keith might do it someday, we'll see. But Numbers 6, verse 24, the Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And there it is. I'm praying that the Lord would bless thee, and that he would keep thee, and that he would make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee, and that the Lord would lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. You may be seated. And all the little mamas with the little kids said, amen. I need some peace. We've got a new little granddaughter. Boy, she can really holler. Just learning to walk. She's not a year yet, I think 10 months or so, but she can shut everything down. The blessing, I've titled this The Blessing. And I want you to just try to get some, I'm going to try to bring out maybe about 10 keys to living blessed, and just go through some things. See if I can get my eyes to focus here. The book of Genesis, as I was going through here, and just thinking on blessing, I've looked through verses. After God did all that he did in the beginning in chapter 1 of Genesis, it says in verse 22, and God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply all the living creatures. Everything he made, he put a blessing upon it. Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowls multiply on the earth. And so God started off blessing in verse 28, after he's created all the cows and everything, and he created man in his own image in 27, and the image of God created he male and female, created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and he goes on. And the blessing is just there, it goes on, chapter 2 in verse 3, and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that he had rested from all his work, which God created and made. And so it just goes through, it just keeps on going through, in 5, chapter 2, there's blessing in Noah, in chapter 9, God blessed him. You come on to chapter 12, with Abraham, and God blessed him, and said he would bless those that blessed him, and so that's very important, I think. In 12.2, I will make of thee a great nation, I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Now the other side of the blessing is curses. So we've got blessings and curses that go along, so we're going to try to look at this area. There's a little boy that grew up not being blessed, at least he can't remember being blessed, but he grew up thinking he was dumb, and he grew up in the public schools, and just to help out his thinking, every summer of his school life, for 12 years, he went to summer school, every summer. He barely made it. In his first grade, he had several teachers, and so he didn't get anywhere in his first grade. So by the time he got to the second grade, it was hard. He didn't hardly learn anything, he was busy fighting with his other kids and things, and so that was the way he grew up, and he was compared with his sister and cousins, that they were smart, and how come he just couldn't get it. And so he grew up with this image in his mind that he was dumb. And also, it put inside of him a very bad image of himself, he called it an inferiority complex. An inferiority complex can actually be a focus-on-yourself complex. You got the superior complexes, where guys come in and they come in and they think, oh, you're just blessed that they're there, and everything's got to focus on them, but the other way goes too. And so this poor kid just grew up like that, and even when he graduated and went on and got into the military and went to Bible college, and one of the professors there, the dean of the men, told his daughter that this kid, this guy, was the shyest guy he'd ever seen in his life, and what do you think about that guy? That was me, that was me. And that was at like 24 years of age. For me to speak in a crowd of two was a real problem, much less to get up in front of people. When I was, I think, 19, I was asked to preach in North Carolina, I wasn't even saved, I don't think, at that point. I got saved, I think, when I was 20. But man, I was nervous, 500-patient hospital sanatorium in Asheville, North Carolina, it just was terrible. But God can change you and me, and so for me to do this, you think, oh, it just comes natural. No, it doesn't come natural. What's natural is disaster. I have to just look to God, and so God can do, and matter of fact, when he was speaking to me about preaching, he said, no, God, you've got the wrong guy. I'm dumb, I can't remember, and I can't do this, and it's just, you've got the wrong guy. Look around, find somebody else. And I went through all these bad things, and he said, you're qualified perfect. That's what I want, a nobody that can't do anything. And as long as you'll stay out of the way, I can do something. Okay, let's look at this thing of blessing. Blessing means basically to request God to be the bestowal of divine favor on. We say bless this house, we pray for protection, and these type of things, and the root of it goes to kneeling, like you kneel down. A number of years ago up here at Waters Meet, we were over at a conference grounds, and I dropped my son off. He was 15 years old, I think that lake is called Anika, or something like that. Anyway, he wanted to fish, he liked to fish, and he wanted me to bless him, so he kneeled down there on the concrete, there's a runway over there, if you don't know it, about a mile long, and he knelt down on the concrete there, and I blessed him, and I prayed a blessing on him that he would catch a big fish. And supposedly, he got the biggest muskie that had ever been caught out of that lake. It was almost four foot long, and it took him and I, I was in the canoe with him, it took us 20 minutes to get him, we couldn't drag him up on shore, he had a 50 pound test line, so. But he was blessed with this fish, and finally we knocked him in the head with the paddle, and he was able to head back up and show his friends. But on the way, that fish came back alive, and he's carrying that thing. Blessing works, curses work. So let's go into this, and I might have to try to slip along here, so I'm not too late on you. In order to be an overcomer, you need to realize that you are blessed. In order to be an overcomer, though, sometimes you need some things to overcome, and it seems like life gives us plenty of things to do that. And so we thank God for the overcoming life. There was a pastor that told a story about a man that was basically pretty much like me. He, maybe, I think he was worse, maybe, because his dad was just nothing but critical of him all the time. And he just, he couldn't do anything right, and he was just never praised, and harsh criticism was his life. But finally one day, he did something right. He made a little birdhouse, and he painted it, and his dad came along and said, nice job. The first time he'd ever got a blessing. The guy ended up being a really great house painter. He said, oh, I can paint. That's one thing I can do. There last week, you'll have to forgive me, I've lost track of my days here. We just come up from south of Nashville. Last night we had a funeral. Last year we had my dad passing away, and this year we had a really good friend that just passed away last Saturday. And so we had to go over there yesterday, had a funeral service. And so before I left, the Saturday before that, Saturday, Sunday, and then we took off. There was a little girl in this house, and she was banging on the piano. You know how kids do that? Just, and she come over there, I'm talking to her dad, and I said, wow, you like to play the piano, don't you? I think you're going to be a great piano player someday. You're going to learn to play really good. Yeah, well a minute later, she's back over there banging again, getting ready, and her parents go grab her. But just something like that, you can come home, you noisy little rascal, quit that. But you come along and encourage them, this is what we have to do. We're very tender, we're very tender. Okay, Matthew 5, 44, I'm just going to need to move along here, I'm really going slow. Last year we did the Beatitudes. In 44, Jesus said, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. And that doesn't come easy. So he wants us to be a blessing. Are you giving blessings? Do you need a blessing? Do you feel like maybe you're living under a curse? You feel like there's something there? Ask God to use this little message tonight to maybe help you or show you how to help others. Were you ever hurt in the past about something? Can you just remember that just like that? You might have had something happen to you that put you under a curse and you just remember that just like that. You might need to forgive or something like that. Because some of these things I might share, some of the stories I did in the last couple of years, but I remember the day this school teacher died. She was my fifth grade school teacher. And my thought was a curse the day I heard she died. You know why? Because when I was a little guy in the fifth grade, my dad would cut my hair and we would go out in the storage building and he would get his clippers to put on the plastic thing and cut my hair. Well this time he'd come right up the center and he said, uh-oh, he forgot the plastic clipper. I had an inverted mohawk. He said, oh well, we might as well shave it all off. So I'm a baldy. But I'm very shy and timid and self-focused. And so you know those old airplanes, did I share this last year or the year before? And so I wore that old airplane helmet, that hat. And so she's the one, for two weeks she just couldn't stand it and ask and beg me to let her see it. And so when I did, she laughed. I just died. But she laughed. You know, if I would have just went to school, I probably would have started a fad, you know. And all the kids went home, dad, shave my hair off. But that's my thought. God, God, even with you. I was hurt and I was bitter and I was wounded about that. Without knowing it, we're just sort of fragile human beings. I'm going to share ten things, practically ten lessons of blessings. Ten lessons of blessings. And the first one is we have to learn to be a conqueror. If something is thrown to us that's a negative, that's a curse, we've got to cast it off and don't receive it. Because we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. And for us to be Christians, we should be not living under the curse, but on top. We should be the ones, and this is what Jesus said. If they curse you, you bless. The blessing breaks the curse and stops it. And you know, I don't know how they got along in the Bible days without all the counselors. How did they do it? I mean, these people, they're thrown to the lions, they boiled in oil and all these things. And they gave their bodies and they were rejoicing in the Lord and they didn't even need all these counselors and psychologists to help them out. They understood the cross. They understood the power of the cross to be crucified with Christ so nothing hurt them. They're going to throw you to the lions, that's fine. I'm not going to deny my Savior. And so nothing thrown to them could hurt them because they'd gone to the cross. Have you gone to the cross? Are you crucified with Christ? And so Christ can live through us. So be a conqueror, that's the first one. And here's a principle I want to throw out to you. Maybe one of the most important ones I'll give you tonight. Whatever you don't conquer will conquer you. Whatever you don't conquer will conquer you. And God's going to come along, you know, He's come along to help me get unwound from all the stuff that happened to me and probably I deserved all of it and maybe created a lot of it. All right, here's the second one. Be open to advice. Be open to advice. And I have some verses, I won't read them. You can go to Proverbs 1 and look at the verses there, how we're supposed to listen to instruction and give wisdom and all these different things. But be open to advice. And I want to illustrate this with a story. There was a pastor, he just arrived at the church and he's going up to the building and another man comes and confronts him and he came to see the pastor and he wanted to sell the pastor some land that was next door to the church and they needed that land. And so he'd come there, he said, I want you all to buy this piece of land. And the pastor said, almost without a break, he jumped right into cursing his wife. And he had a list of things that had happened in his life and I wrote them down. He said, I used to be a pastor, but I was kicked out of the church because they wanted a full-time pastor and I had got into business and he actually became, he was in Texas and had got into the oil business, became a millionaire, but he still wanted a pastor, but they wanted a full-time. He was all over this business and everything. So they said, no, we want a full-time pastor. You can't do both. But he was bitter about it. And then the second thing, he said he was cut off from his daughter. He wasn't communicating with his daughter and blasted her, blasted the church. And then he said he's got a partner that a man that he brought in and he made him a partner in this. And then he was trying to backstab him right at that time. And he just jumped into this with the pastor and he said, on top of that, there's a man trying to steal my wife. And so he's cursing that man. And then the pastor, he said, wow, you're a cursor. And he took him inside and he gave him some material on blessings. He said, you take this and you read this, you look at this. And the story goes, the man came back within 24 hours and the pastor said, you quit all that cursing, you just bless him. And he came back within 24 hours and he said, you won't believe this, but he works. And he went right down, except for the church, he didn't hear about the church. But he says his daughter called him up and asked him to forgive him and their relationship was established. He said his partner came to him and confessed what they were doing behind his back and asked him to forgive him. That was made right. And then what he had to do about the man that was trying to destroy his marriage, he just began to bless him. He began to feel sorry for him and began to bless him. And he was released from his cursing state to be a blesser. And so be open to advice. That was just some, I had to learn that years ago. I think I'd shared that when my, after learning something, if I, if my dad said something to pay attention to it and do it, you know, going traveling home and things, he'd say, take this different route. Here's the third one. He said, we need to see our problems by faith. We need to see the things that hit us by faith. So many times we're looking with the flesh at a problem and everything. Proverbs 28, 20 says a faithful man shall abound with blessing. And you could take that, that a man that's living by faith is going to abound with blessing. He's going to see life through the blessing glasses. He's going to see things in a different way. And a faithful man shall abound with blessing. The same Hebrew word is Exodus 17, 12. His hands were steady, a steady, steadiness is going to be in our life when Moses' hands were held up. And there was a lady by the name of Marvita. Her family was a mess. All the siblings were going after each other. They were just all tied up in an inheritance problem. There was a lot of money and land and stuff involved and they could not get anywhere. And the lawyers couldn't even straighten it out. And she came to the pastor and said, you know, we're a mess. We're just, we're fighting and arguing about all this. And then there again the pastor said, why don't you just bless your siblings? Just give them blessings. And she came back and a few days later and she says, it's all getting straightened out. Once I started blessing my brothers and sisters, it just seemed to all start getting straightened out. And so see the problems by faith and listen to that. Recognize the fourth one, recognize that God has a blessing in your trial. God has a blessing for you with you, you know, there's been a lot of bad, negative things thrown at Christians, but they don't receive it into their heart. If they do, then they get cursed and they get bitter and they get angry and they get, and we worry about it and all these things. But I've got a friend down in Louisiana where I was raised. He's a doctor, well known, but he sent me a text one time and he said, your blessing is just beyond your obedience. Usually whatever happens, when we get a trial, when we have something hard, that's really hard, God has something for us to do. And our blessing will be just beyond us obeying God and doing what he wants us to do. Recognize that God has a blessing in your trial. Now, if you were Joseph, your brothers just, you know, almost killed you and then they took your coat and threw you in a pit and sold you off as a slave. Hey, Joseph, how's your day going down there? Oh, praise the Lord, I'm being blessed. We don't really look at things like that, do we? But there was never any negative come out of his life. He wasn't going to receive any kind of cursing. And so years later, he's the one that has this wonderful verse that said, God meant it for good. God meant it for a blessing. God means your trial, your curse, your thing that maybe has hit you very hard and that you're wrestling with, he's meant it for a blessing. But you got to look at it and receive it as a blessing for it to become a blessing. So we get hung up on these things. Here's the fifth one. Watch your tongue. I was maybe a lot better off back when I was shy and wouldn't talk and say anything. I got into less trouble. But watch your tongue. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18, 21. Just like with the little kid. Just like that. That little kid banging on the piano, you come over, you can just wound that tender spirit. You can just blow them out of the saddle. We're tender. We're sensitive, especially little kids. And Jesus really, one time when the little kids, the disciples trying to keep them awake, he got really excited about that. He was very upset. And what'd he do? He said, bring them to me. And he put his hands around and he held them and he blessed them. He blessed them. I've got a couple stories about, I didn't know where I would share them. I'll go ahead and share this one. This man was known as the singing postman in St. Louis. The first time I saw him, we were at a conference, a revival conference back in 1985 when we'd had a revival in our church. And one of my buddies, a preacher buddy that pastored another church about 36 miles away, he pointed at this man walking across the platform and he said, there goes Jesus. And that man was Jesus living in his life. He was raised very hard. I should have went over the story again, but I think I can remember how it goes when he's just a little bitty boy. His mom didn't want him. His mom didn't want him. And the grandmother took him. And he thought, what's wrong with me? Are my feet too big? Or whatever. He's just like five or six years old at this point. His mom didn't want him. And they were at the lawyers and she is legally giving up the rights of her son to the grandmother. And the lawyer said, do you understand what you're doing? This boy will no longer be your boy legally. His name's going to be changed to Bill Orr, William Orr. Not your name anymore. And she said, I understand, I understand. And the lawyer said, any more questions? And the mother said, yeah, do I get any money out of this for this? And Bill said, I've got a dollar. And held it out to his mother. And she took it. And that was it. He grew up bitter against his mother. He became, he got saved and he was used to reach probably over 40,000 children. He was like a pied piper. He just drew children. He was known as the singing postman in St. Louis. And they'd say, here comes the postman down the street, there'd be kids all over the place coming down. And he would tell them stories, he'd sit down and tell them stories about Jesus. And he led thousands of children to the Lord. But he said, and he would go to the, he got involved in the Canadian revival that happened back in around the 70s, if you know about that. And he would go and sing at these and share testimony and stuff. But he said it was always like what he was doing bounced off the wall. Because God kept saying to him, what about your mother? Bill, what about your mother? And he said, God, we can talk about anything you want to, but not my mother. She didn't want me. She didn't want me. She didn't care about me. There's a lot of kids in this world like that. And finally, he was up in New York at a crusade and God got a hold of him, finally, after many years. And God said, what about your mother? And he met God in revival, going to these revival conferences. And he went down, I think it was to North Carolina. And he looked up his mom, she was in a trailer. Went up to the door, he says, the hardest thing he ever did in his life, knocked on the door and there's his mother he hadn't seen for a long time. And she opened the door and she said, Bill, he said, mother, would you forgive me for my bitterness? And she says, sure. And their relationship was re-established. He had kids. This is their grandmother. But he never did want anything to do with her. He was hurt. He was hurt. We're sensitive little kids. And so, we need to watch our tongue. We need to watch how we speak and watch how we do things to people. Speaking releases the blessing of the curse and speaking gives out a curse. When David was leaving Jerusalem and his own son, Absalom, is coming in to take over and he's fleeing, what do we have over there on the side of the road but oh, Shimei. Remember Shimei? Remember what I said about Shimei? And Shimei's there throwing pebbles at them and throwing dust up in the air. And David has these mighty warriors. And one of them said, hey, king, why don't you just let me go over there and relieve this guy of his head? It won't take long. And David said, let him curse. Let him curse. Maybe God has told him to do this, let him curse. And this Shimei dug his own grave with his own tongue and his own cursing because later on after David was going to die, he told Solomon, you know what to do with him. And Solomon told Shimei, you leave town, you're going to die. And then he went after his mules and then he died. Usually when we use our tongue in a negative way, we're going to just hurt ourself more than we hurt the person that we are cursing. There was a man that was coming down the highway, him and his family were going to go on a little leisure drive, a little leisure trip. And he's going down the interstate and he gets boxed in with the traffic. And he went into road rage. You know, he just began to rant and rave, he couldn't get where he wants. And then finally he just made a break and stepped on it and hit this car and spun their car. He had his family in there around and got hit by another car head on. It killed his whole family except him. His ranting and raving, his road rage and his cursing everything just brought death, just brought death. I was working in 1968, I think it was, or 69 in Omaha, still in the Air Force and going to Bible College part-time. And that was a big stockyard area there. And we were working, I was working for some guy, and tearing down this building where they had had the sheep. And there was another man there and we had sledgehammers taking the rafters apart and he was just cursing up, asking God to damn this and that and he just was ranting and raving with his cursing. But then all of a sudden he missed and he fell 15 feet face down. The last thing he said, he was just cursing God, how are you going to do falling 15 feet straight down? 40 years of sheep manure, he hit that and bounced up. He got up, grabbed his sledgehammer, he came back up and never said a word anymore. All this cursing, he just about could have killed himself there. And so a life of cursing just brings death and tragedy. So we need to be careful about our tongue. I might ought to just go over and just read a little bit, just so we make sure this is sort of biblical. James 3, verse 6, I've got James marked back here somewhere on these little tags. James is really, he's a good preacher. When you come to James 3 and he gets going about the tongue and he's got all these verses here and 5 he says, even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things, behold how great a matter a little fire can lit, and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. So is the tongue among our members that it defileth the whole body and setteth on fire the curse of nature and it is set on fire of hell. Back after we had a revival in 85 and I started traveling around the country for the Evangelist psalm going here and there, most all the problems started off with this little thing inside between behind our teeth and we go in there and the Evangelist wouldn't go anyplace unless it was really bad and they were really desperate and he wouldn't go unless they got me in there first to go in there and check things out and I'd be there a few days or a week and preach and just sort of let them know what the situation was there. A little tongue, a little word, and it goes on, for every kind of beast and seven and the birds and serpents and things and sea is tamed and hath been tamed in mankind but the tongue can no man tame, is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God and even the father and every curse we men which are made after the simitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing my brethren these things ought not so to be. So if there's a Christian and he's throwing out curses on somebody or whatever Monday through Friday and then Sunday comes to church and he's singing praise God, what do you believe? You believe what goes on out of the mouth through the life and it's hypocrisy and it's some tough stuff. I just thought of a story, maybe I'll share it later on. Here let me give you another one. The reason I won't share it with you is I just forgot it but I got a lot of stories with this but here's a hard one. Here's a hard one and it's this one, keep your promises. Keep your promises and here's how this one works. There was a very busy father and he didn't spend that much time with his little boy and that was one thing, my dad and I, we'd go fishing. That was our, we may not say five words for the whole trip and if they were it would be a pass of worms, you know. We just, he didn't talk, he didn't share about what went on in his life. If we got anything about his past, we had to dig it out of him, he was sort of locked up. Are you locked up somewhere? Do you have something? And so dad had some hard things happen in his life and but anyway, this little boy had been promised by his dad that he'd take him fishing. Oh, dad and I are going to go fishing, wow. That time together, that's a blessing for your children. He was going to be, he was looking forward to that and that day came, that Saturday came and the phone rang and he heard his daddy say, no, I don't think I have anything to do today. Yeah, I can come in, I'll be there in a little bit, hung up and his little boy's spirit just dropped and here's the thought, I'm not that important to daddy. He didn't even remember. He's going to go do something else with me and something happened inside. Has something happened inside of you? Jesus can set you free from that kind of stuff. It's really hard and people, people heard us, Isaiah 2, 22, see she from man. We got to be focused on the Lord. Think about Joseph. He had these things happen to him. He went through the thing with Potiphar's wife, went back into prison again and heard the visions of the butler and the baker and whatever and then the butler got out and then what'd he say? Remember me. And he was forgot, he gave the visions and he forgot. And you just think, you know, he's forgot. Hope deferred, make it the heart's sake and it means wound and be grieved. But he, this is the thing though, Joseph always had the testimony of what? Of God being with him. Nothing touches you unless God allows it. And so if God has allowed a very bad and some very bad things can happen to it, but God has meant it for good, but he's going to give you something to do to obey him and get out of that. We've got, I've got, I got a friend that specializes in counseling and helping people. We pastor churches together. I was in Wyoming in the same fellowship of churches and God is really using him to help get people unlocked. John McGeer is his name, Carrying Heart Ministry. Somehow or another, we need to be crucified with Christ because we can't help somebody else unless we are free. And the truth will set you free. Might make you mad at first or whatever, but it's going to set you free. And so we need to be careful and keep our promises. Here's the seventh one. Honor your parents. Honor your parents. And this can be really hard. I'm reading a book written by Bertie. Bertie is a really good friend of the widow who we just left behind down there in the Nashville area with their, with their 54 year old husband that died last Saturday. Really good friends of ours. They were in our church about 13, 14 years before they moved down there. And eight children, don't know what's going to happen now. But honor your parents. Honor your parents. And those children were raised, those eight children have a powerful testimony of honoring their parents. And they're going through these things. Let me read you a verse in Proverbs 30, 11 through 14. I think I got that marked. Proverbs 30, 11 through 14. There is a generation that cursed their father and doth not bless their mother. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. There is a generation, oh, how lofty are their eyes and their eyelids are lifted up. There is a generation whose teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men. We're going to be looking at some things in relation to the family the next couple days and focusing in more a little bit on some different areas of children. I have a cousin. I don't even know where he's at. I haven't been able to find him for probably a year and a half now. But he grew up spoiled. They wouldn't spank him because he had a sunken in chest, but he just was spoiled, rotten. He would talk back to his parents, terrible, just terrible, just arrogant. You can't tell him anything. I don't know where he is now. He's just like a hippie, be a 60-year-old hippie, I guess, now. I don't know where he's at. But I just remember growing up, he just had curses for his parents. And you couldn't say anything to him or he'd get mad and get angry or whatever. It was just terrible. But if we look at the scripture, if we look at the scripture in this area, and I'm going to flip over to Ephesians, then I'm going to share a story with you on this. Ephesians 6, this is a scary thing. If they're children, it's a hard thing to raise them up to honor us and whatever because inside of them, they've got a little nature that's going to be a rebel all their life. And they're going to, you know, Johnny, take out the garbage. Why doesn't my sister take out the garbage? And this, and that, and this. And so it's a really hard job to raise up these children to where they will not turn out like my cousin. But here's the scripture, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment would promise that it may be well with thee, maybe a good research project. Look at those that live long lives and see if they honored their parents. It might be interesting because it may bear up scientifically that they honored their parents. I don't know. I don't have time to do that. Maybe you can do it. That it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth and you fathers provoke. By the way, my cousin in his fifties looked like he was older than his dad. If you look at him, you'd think my cousin was the old man. His life of rebellion showed. That it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth. It goes into fathers not provoking. It is so easy to just not pay attention to little details in lives of our children. We're going to go through a few things and I'm not an expert on this. We raised seven children. When we got our first, my first one, my son, he's now 41 and I didn't know anything. I went to school. I didn't know. I didn't learn anything about babies or kids. I really didn't pay much attention to babies to stay out of the way. They're a little noisy and they squeak and they can be messy and stink and stuff. I had to learn. Praise the Lord. I had a good wife in there. I mean, he's two weeks old. I remember sitting on the couch, yet he's sucking on this candy cane. We're getting, we're having a good time, you know. I think mama come along and busted that up. I don't know. They like to suck. Let them suck on it, you know. Flunked. Baby's 101. There was a very wealthy man and he promised his son a sports car when he graduated. Remember that one? Okay. Either your memory's bad or whatever, but the day came and he graduated and he went into his dad. His dad was in his office there at his desk and his daddy called him in and he had promised him a sports car when he graduated and so his dad had a nice Bible there and he handed it to him. He said, congratulations, son. Remember now? Here's your gift. And he said, with all your money, is this what you're going to give me as a Bible? And he slammed it back down on the desk and went off. I don't think he ever saw his father again. I'm not for sure on all the details in the story, but the story went like this. Years later, he got a phone call that his dad had passed away and he needed to come home and take care of the estate. And you know how the story went. He went in there in the office and there was that Bible laying there on the desk where he left it. Did he honor his father? Was he grateful? No. But it was sitting there and he picked it up, opened it up and out fell an envelope and inside of it was a key to a sports car. All those years. All those years. When we are self-focused, we bring upon ourselves curses. And the thing that really draws people, like Jesus, he was full of joy. Nothing stuck. I mean, you know, one time they're trying to kill him and he just walked through the middle of them and walked off, you know. He lived under the blessing sprout. I got an evangelist friend and we gave him $100 one time. He was so grateful. This was $100 a lot. We went to town. He wanted to buy me something, bought me a little New Testament, a little Cambridge New Testament. He wrote in there a verse on blessing and then he wrote under there, stay under the blessing spout. Stay under the blessing spout. Because as God pours blessings into you, those blessings will go out to other people. They'll just go out and you can't be a blessing until you receive blessings. And God designed us to be blessers. He wants us to be blessers. Here's an eighth one. Here's an eighth one. Break curses with blessings. I was reading on this book on blessings and I got another one I wanted to read. And this one, you know, we get in our political scene, we got the right and we got the left, the communists and all these other guys that want to destroy our country politically. We got both sides. Well, in the religious realm, we have some that are really conservative, whatever, and then we got some over on the other side and maybe you're over on one side or the other and maybe you're in the charismatic area and whatever. So this book I was reading on blessings, this guy was over in this charismatic area a little bit. Okay, I'll see what he says on blessings. And I'm reading and I got a couple of stories here. But he got into this one, I said, now this is really interesting. And he shared these stories and I got, he said there was a man that was in Amarillo, Texas, and he was having problems with gophers. Anybody have trouble with gophers? Boy, our yard looks, that's terrible. Gophers and moles. No kidding. I need to take my lawnmower and lower the deck and spread the dirt. But he was given instruction, go out there and bless those gophers. So he did. He went out one morning and he said something like this. He said, you know, all you gophers, I don't know what God made you, but I don't think God made you to tear up my yard. And I blessed you to be gone to other pastors. And he said he'd come out the next morning and there were no fresh gopher mounds. Now, I did try this before I left. I haven't had a chance to check it out. Hey, are you guys kidding me? Where's the Bible verse on that one? But then he said, I know I wasn't destroying my lawn, so I bless you to fulfill the purpose for which you were created and I release you to go to greener pastures. But then he said there was this, they told this pastor was in a prison sharing. And so he talked to the prisoners about blessing. He said, I want you guys to start blessing your guards. Quit cursing and doing all this thing and start giving blessings. And so they started doing that. They started blessing. And this is wild, but they said they were just, they were blessing. And they came back and they said, you know, we had a real problem with roaches in this one part of the prison and they're all gone. So they said, we believe the roaches were, they left because we were blessing. There was another story he said about a lady that had a beaver problem. Now, my wife, her dad's got a ranch in Western Nebraska and they've had beaver problems because they'll dam up the ditch and then the metals don't get drained so they can hay or whatever. But she had this and she went, she went out and said, you beavers, I blessed you to find another pond. Then she thought, well, wait a minute. I don't want my neighbors to have these beavers. So he said, I just bless you to be gone to the heavenlies or be gone somewhere. Now what she had done is she had, she had, she had made an appeal to the extension department and they said, lady, you're 55 on the list for us to take care of beavers problem in that part of the country, wherever it was. And they called after she prayed that prayer over her beavers. The next day they called, they said, lady, I don't know how it happened, but your name is next. We're going to come get rid of your beavers. Now the closest I can find in the scripture to this is this. I thought this is wild, but it'd be worth a try with my gophers and moles and this thing is that Daniel was told to quit praying. And so he kept on praying three times a day, gave thanks and got thrown in with the lions and the closest I can find for scripture on it and the lions wouldn't eat them. Now this is wild, but here's the point. Sometimes we are busy cursing. Our moles were cursing, our beavers were cursing this and that, and Jesus cursed the fig tree and withered up, but God didn't design us to be cursers. And what happens sometimes, your car won't start, you have a flat tire, you kick the tire or your washing machine or this or whatever, and we are cursing without realizing. You dumb washing machine, I just fixed you. We just cursed our washing machine. Our children pick up our attitudes towards our problems, towards our neighbors. Remember Ms. Lindsey, my neighbor next door? That put the roses on our fence so I wouldn't jump over and go get my ball? Ah, she lived in her kitchen sink, I said looking out to see if I was going to get in her yard. She was, sometimes we would risk it. She wanted us to come around, knock on the door and she'd take us to the garage so we could go get our ball. She didn't want us to jump over our fence and go get it, but she lived bitter. She was a bitter old lady, and to me I think that's living curse, they curse life. And so we need to break curses with blessings. And I don't think when Daniel went down in the lion's den, he was mad and angry and whatever, he was still focused on God and not focused on even the guys that are trying to, he always, always, those that live under the blessing are always able to let God have the problem. Because whatever problem you don't give to God, whatever issue you don't give to God, it's yours, you're responsible for. God showed me that a number of years ago. He said whatever I don't deal with and give to him in prayer, he said you're responsible for. But whatever you will give to me, whatever, and release it to me and give it to me in prayer. This is maybe why God says pray without ceasing. You have a problem, an issue or something that you really haven't given to God and surrendered to God, and it's eating your lunch, it's irritating you, it's draining you, or whatever. It could be a financial problem, physical problem, whatever. But whatever we commit to God releases us to be blessed. And so we can spend the night with the lions. It's not going to bother us. Here's number nine. Prayer brings blessings. And I was thinking about this area in some physical areas, because sometimes we can be, you know, we can be sort of quick on the trigger. I can. You think about this. Here's supposedly a man of God, minding his own business, and he gets confronted by this bad dude, Balak. Balak confronts Balaam, this prophet, and wants him to curse Israel. And he's not going to do it. And God gives him specific instructions not to go until he tells him to go. But one morning he gets up and he salutes his donkey and he goes without being instructed. And you know what happened? The angels are trying to block his donkey. And he got very mad, beginning to curse his donkey, and he even told his donkey, talking to the donkey, donkey, have I been a faithful donkey? Yeah, you've been a faithful donkey. You know, well, why don't you go? Can you imagine how stupid that looks? You're out there talking to this donkey, and the donkey's talking back. And then he finally said, if I had a sword, I'd kill you. And he's saying all these things. Whenever we're in the will of God, we don't have to try to kill our donkey. And God blesses us when he tries to stop us. Maybe you're trying to get something done or go somewhere and whatever, and you're getting blocked. And he said, man, I just can't get this done. It never dawns on us, hey, God's got some angels up there in front of you. And Balaam, it's God that's stopping you. Just something to throw it out in practical areas. You know, we need to pray, pray about it in the spiritual. Matter of fact, I shared this message, I think it was last Sunday at church. And I said, this is just the practical aspect of that. And I started doing a little study on the theological aspect of blessing. There's a lot in the Bible on this subject. But just in the practical area, in the spiritual. Let me share one more story with you. Before I do that, here I brought with me a blessing that one of the men in our church, he's always blessing. We had a young missionary there last Sunday, I think it was. At the end, he wanted to be a missionary, go to Africa and work. And I had a couple of men come up and bless him. And one of them was the man that wrote out this blessing to our family a number of years ago. I've still got it. And I'll just read you a little bit. Here's how it works. So we get into some practical. He said, Dear Corville family, may God's rich, abundant mercy, grace and peace fall upon you. And may you be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and understanding. And may you walk worthy of the Lord and to all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glory's power and to all patience and long suffering with joyfulness and that each would know the redemption of his blood and his wonderful forgiveness of sins. And then he starts on us individually. That was a blessing for our family. And sometimes I'm doing this with strangers when I meet them, and I wrote out a blessing. We stayed in Chicago last night trying to get up here, dropped off a daughter at the airport. And so I wrote out a little note to the lady that was going to clean the room and left her a couple of dollars. And I wrote out a little blessing for her just there in a little gospel tract. Brother Don, may God bless you with forgiveness and determination and humility. And he's got verses for all of this. And he's got all these blessings. And then he wrote out on this page, definition of humility. Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves unto the other. Cautiousness, thriftiness, wisdom, a boldness, a tenderness and contentment. He put down verses, but godliness with contentment is great gain. He gave definitions for the blessings that he wrote out for our family. For my wife, may God bless you with flexibility, living with me. She probably needs that. And determination and humility. For my oldest son, Joshua, may God bless you with decisiveness, faith. And he's got verses for all of these. James 1, 6 through 8 for decisiveness, faith, Matthew 17, 20. May God bless you with cautiousness, 2 Samuel 5, 23. The idea being that David cautiously sought God in how to attack. And God showed him the new battle plan. Whenever, we bring curses upon ourselves. Whenever David didn't seek God, he got into trouble, didn't he? He brought a curse upon his men, brought a curse upon his family. And oh, did he, you know, but whenever he sought God, he was blessed. So we, we, we dig our own holes. Most of the time, we dig our own ditches. We created a lot of our own problems. But he said, the idea being that David cautiously sought. But my oldest daughter, Jennifer, may God bless you with enthusiasm. Genesis 46 through 7. And notice they were sad and encouraged them. And Joseph was expressing joy by how he went about his task. And security and compassion. Another daughter, may God bless you with creativity. How to love those who disagree with, with us. And tolerance and different things. So he went through all seven of our children. The one I, the son that I blessed with the fish. By the way, week four last, he started a new job. And I sent him a blessing on a text every morning for his first five days. On his new job. He's out in North Carolina. Is there somebody you don't like? Somebody you're having trouble getting along with? Maybe I ought to give him a blessing. Is there a relative or whatever? Practice. Practice it. Try it. Maybe we might have some stories by Friday afternoon, Friday evening. Just think about someone you need to give a blessing to. And John, he said, may God bless you with persuasiveness, honor. 1 Samuel 2 30. Them that honor me will I honor in obedience to obey as veterans sacrifice. So just in the practical area, I'm going to close up with this. It's so easy to, to get stuck somewhere. And maybe God spoke something to you about something. Maybe you hadn't, you didn't get spoke about anything. But if he did, the reason that I'm starting off this little series on the home is because there may be something there you never even realize. They go through these messages that God wants to talk to you about. And he might have already said something tonight about an area that you need to maybe bless or bless someone with. I'm going to close up with this, this, because this family went a long time before they blessed. Again, another pastor and his family were sued. And it was very hard and very bad, very hurtful to this family. And it was not one of those good deals. And he said that they went, I think it was like 20 or 22 years. And they, they bore this pain that they had to go through. And then they began to think about this, that they had never really given this family a blessing because they'd been really hurt. And so they decided to do it. And so they began to pray blessings on this family that did that to them. Would you believe that in a few days, this family called them up and asked them to forgive them for what they'd done to them? And also asked the family if they would help them. They had a problem. Try it. Try it. I want to read you one more passage. Then we'll close. It comes from the book of Acts. It's in chapter three. And it has to do with blessing. Unto you first, God having raised up his son, Jesus sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquity. Jesus came to bless you. If you're not saved, you've never given your heart to Jesus. Or maybe you're listening to this CD or DVD someday, somewhere, whatever, you're here. Jesus came to bless you. To bless you with eternal life. Christ came and he died on the cross for your sins. He went through all of the pain and the agony and the suffering and the rejection to bless you. His mother Mary went through all those years of being thought that she played the harlot. The scribes and pharisees said, we'd be not born a fornication. All of the pain and the suffering that he went through and Mary went through, all that, he did it for you. He did it for you, for you to get saved. And then also for you, once we're saved, to live blessed. Unto you first, God having raised up his son. He's speaking to the Jews here, I think, when he says first. Raised up his son, the power of the resurrection means that we can have blessing, we can have salvation. That Jesus conquered sin, he paid the price for our sin. Jesus sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. Living a life of giving curses and whatever is, God wants to turn us from that. Let's pray. Lord, this is sort of a tender subject because we could have touched some areas tonight that are very painful. Like me and my fifth grade teacher. That was not right attitude. So I pray that as we go through these meetings, you would help us to realize that maybe we have attitudes that are lined up more under the cursing side than the blessing. Maybe there's something you've been trying to get through to us for a long time. And this weekend, you're going to hammer that nail really hard. And I just pray that you would work in our hearts, work in my heart, work in all our hearts. That when we leave here tonight, we'll know that God has spoken to us. When we leave Sunday evening, we'll know that God has met with us. We're needy. David said, I'm poor and needy. And we cry out, Father, we're poor and needy. But we're coming to you and we're asking you. We started off asking you to bless us. And so I'm thanking you by faith that you're going to bless us. Now, Lord, you know, many times I don't deserve blessing. I'm a rascal to the core, just a real rascal. But that's our old man that lives inside of us. And you don't want us to have him drawing us into negative attitudes and curses and grumbling and complaining and criticalness and all these things that we'll talk about some of these things. So I'm praying that the blessing of God, which is to abide upon these meetings here. Thank you now, Father, in Jesus name. Amen.