How To Bless

[00:00:03] Welcome to Become A Competent Biblical Counselor. I'm Dr. Dave Jones and today's episode is entitled

[00:00:26] Bless You. And we're talking about 1 Peter 3. We've looked at many things here in Ephesians

[00:00:34] 5, things that we haven't talked about concerning the Christian home before, but things that

[00:00:40] are very vital and very essential to having the right kind of Christian home.

[00:00:46] We're talking about not returning evil for evil or insult for insult. Now we're going

[00:00:52] to talk about the rest of that, the positive side of verse 9, but giving a blessing instead.

[00:00:58] I think that this is the most important thing for us to understand. A blessing is not what

[00:01:04] a lot of people have turned that we're good word into in our day. I've heard people

[00:01:09] say, you know, I'll bless him all right. Man, what a perverse society we live

[00:01:13] in to take such a marvelous word as the word bless and to use it to mean just the opposite

[00:01:20] to mean I'll give him an insult or I'll give him evil in return for what he's done. Just

[00:01:25] the opposite of what Christ is saying. Nope. What does the word blessing mean? Giving

[00:01:32] a blessing to somebody who has done evil to you, to a wife who's done evil to

[00:01:37] you, to a husband who's insulted you. How do you give a blessing instead? And what is

[00:01:43] this blessing anyway? The word blessing of course means something that you do for another

[00:01:48] person that's positive and good and wonderful. To speak a word that's good to the other

[00:01:54] person. Actually though, there's a deeper meaning than that too. And all the passages

[00:02:01] in which we read the words of Christ about returning blessing for doing evil and that

[00:02:05] kind of thing in the Gospels, we read sometimes the word blessing and sometimes the word praying.

[00:02:13] Praying for those who despitefully use you and that kind of thing, you see, pray for

[00:02:17] those who have wronged you. So the blessing really has two aspects. It is praying that

[00:02:23] God will do good for the person who has done evil toward us while it is also saying

[00:02:28] something good to the person himself. So it has a God word aspect and it has a

[00:02:34] man word aspect. Our words and our attitudes are both included then. We say

[00:02:40] something kind instead of the insult that we leveled against us. We say something

[00:02:46] kind to the person who was insulted us, and we think toward God as we pray to

[00:02:52] God, Lord help this person. Obviously there's something wrong in his or her

[00:02:58] life that needs help. And in the home what a difference it would make if we

[00:03:03] did return that kind of blessing instead of insult when we are insulted or when

[00:03:08] someone who has done us evil. Your wife does something wrong to you. Your husband

[00:03:14] does something wrong to you. Instead of getting all furious about it, instead

[00:03:19] of focusing upon what has happened to you, if you put his or her interests

[00:03:24] first as we were saying humility means back in verse 8, then what you will do

[00:03:30] is focus on the other party rather than focus on yourself. Here's my wife doing

[00:03:36] something wrong to me. There must be some real problem in her life. There must

[00:03:40] be some real need in her life. There must be something going on in her life

[00:03:46] that really, really needs to get squared away. I better speak exceptionally

[00:03:51] kindly to her today if she's that way and Lord will you help her out?

[00:03:56] There's something wrong with her when she acts this way toward me. You see,

[00:04:01] that's the kind of thing that Jesus is talking about and Peter is talking

[00:04:05] about when they talk about giving a blessing instead. In other words, asking

[00:04:10] God to help the person and do good for the person and saying something

[00:04:15] kind and sweet, a soft answer to the other party. In Romans 12 where we

[00:04:21] have an echo of this sort of thing, we have a very interesting additional

[00:04:25] comment that's made. In that chapter we read that in order to do this we

[00:04:30] must have to do something else. We read in verse 17, never pay back for evil

[00:04:37] to anyone but respect what is right in the sight of all men and the word

[00:04:42] respect is not a good translation. The best translation is planned for

[00:04:47] what is right and what is fine in the sight of everybody. Now what's

[00:04:53] Paul saying there? Well he's saying in Romans 12 17 that if you really want

[00:04:58] in the heat of battle when somebody has insulted you or done something wrong

[00:05:02] to you, if you really want to obey this commandment not to return evil for

[00:05:07] evil but to do good rather than evil and overcome evil with good

[00:05:11] and to give back a blessing instead of an insult,

[00:05:14] you're going to have to plan ahead to do it. You know that's so

[00:05:20] true. What we do on the spur of the moment, what we do in the heat of the

[00:05:24] battle is usually very poor. It usually comes out the wrong way.

[00:05:30] You know how many times you kicked yourself afterwards for what you said

[00:05:34] quickly on the spur of the moment or what you didn't say or how you

[00:05:38] said something or how you failed to say it.

[00:05:42] You know those spur of the moment decisions, those spur of the moment

[00:05:46] words are really very poor. How are you going to overcome that?

[00:05:51] There's only one way. You've got to sit down and take the time and the effort

[00:05:58] and think through what it is you're going to say when you get into the

[00:06:02] clinch the next time. That's the only way that you're

[00:06:06] going to make a difference when you do. The only way to come up with good

[00:06:10] solutions is to plan them, plan them ahead of time.

[00:06:14] That's the way it is. You know with child discipline.

[00:06:18] Here's a little child comes walking in over your newly waxed floor with muddy

[00:06:21] feet and you get all upset and you scream and you said

[00:06:25] you're not going out of this house for a week.

[00:06:28] Well now who in the world have you punished?

[00:06:32] If you haven't punished that child, you've punished yourself

[00:06:34] and you're going to give in within two or three days

[00:06:37] and let the child out anyway because it was a bad decision,

[00:06:41] a bad punishment and it came out of the heat of the battle.

[00:06:45] It wasn't well thought through but if you have your rules, your regulations all

[00:06:51] thought through and your discipline all thought through ahead of time for that

[00:06:55] child, you're going to know what you're going to say

[00:06:59] at the next time. You're going to say this was

[00:07:02] thoughtless on your part and you know what happens when you're

[00:07:05] thoughtless bend over and then you're going to go get

[00:07:08] a switch and you're going to give it to them or whatever it is that you've

[00:07:12] determined to do at that point and it may be you have to even

[00:07:16] write out those rules at times in order to remember them

[00:07:20] until they become a part of you instead of the foolish things that you

[00:07:24] might do otherwise out of the heat of the battle.

[00:07:27] The same is true in answering another person back.

[00:07:30] You may even have to think it through, write it down,

[00:07:34] keep it in your pocket and pull it out on a piece of paper if necessary

[00:07:39] and you read it to yourself before you say what you're going to say

[00:07:42] but you think through what you're going to say ahead of time.

[00:07:47] There's no other way to make the change because at that time when the

[00:07:51] emotions ride high, when your anger flares up,

[00:07:55] when you respond emotionally in such a violent way,

[00:07:58] violent things are going to come out unless

[00:08:01] you know how to respond differently. But you know you won't even begin to have

[00:08:06] the violent emotion anymore if you begin to think this way

[00:08:09] and you begin to do things, you begin to focus on the other person rather than

[00:08:14] the hurts that have been centered toward you

[00:08:17] and you say there's something wrong with that person,

[00:08:19] there's something wrong in that situation and there's something wrong

[00:08:23] there. What can I do to be a blessing in it?

[00:08:27] And ask God to bless that other party and then try to say something kind and

[00:08:31] conciliatory or loving to the other party, realizing there's

[00:08:36] something wrong there. It's going to make a tremendous

[00:08:39] difference in the relationships at home. All right,

[00:08:44] wife you're listening at home right now, your husband's going to come home

[00:08:48] tonight, maybe he'll come in out of all that

[00:08:51] traffic and all that fuss and fuming that he's had to do on the way

[00:08:55] home or that he hasn't had to do but it's done

[00:08:59] and then you're ready to get your head bit off the minute you open your mouth.

[00:09:03] All right, what are you going to do if he bites your head off?

[00:09:08] What are you going to do if he says some nasty word?

[00:09:11] Or husbands, when you come home tonight your wife's had a rough day

[00:09:15] with the kids, maybe she's had her period just came yesterday and got

[00:09:19] all kinds of problems from that and you've got all kinds of difficulties

[00:09:23] and you're going to walk into that house like going into

[00:09:27] a lion's den. And what's she going to do? She's going to growl at you like a lion?

[00:09:33] How are you going to respond? You think it through in traffic coming home

[00:09:37] tonight instead of getting all upset, you think about how

[00:09:41] you're going to respond to her and you have something ready and nice to

[00:09:45] say, hey it would be great if both of you

[00:09:48] did that, if you're both listening in and nobody said anything wrong,

[00:09:52] because you've been concentrating on how to say something nice.

[00:09:57] And you know the more you do it that's exactly what's going to start happening

[00:10:02] when both parties start doing it in the home.

[00:10:05] One of the additional things is true in a discourse like this is that we get

[00:10:09] into habits of responding, we get involved with the

[00:10:14] trickery mechanism that causes us to blow up.

[00:10:18] Well the way to overcome that, the way to change the way in which you are

[00:10:22] responding is to rehearse. You know what you anticipate that he or she's going to

[00:10:27] say? You rehearse if they do that. The important

[00:10:30] thing to understand too is don't be so concerned how your spouse

[00:10:34] is supposed to respond. You concentrate on you. You shouldn't

[00:10:41] say well if I do this he's still going to do that, he's

[00:10:44] still going to complain, he's still going to do on, on, on, or on.

[00:10:48] It doesn't matter. You do what you should do. So many times

[00:10:53] we'll say I'm not going to do that because if I do that he's going to do that

[00:10:56] because she's going to do that. That's not the point. The point is

[00:10:59] what does God want you to do in a situation like this? How does he want

[00:11:02] you to respond? You respond the way that God wants you to

[00:11:05] respond. God will take care of the response from the other person

[00:11:10] which you just honor God first. I hope that helps. We'll talk to you soon.

[00:11:15] Bye.