The Power to Bless: How to Speak Life and Empower the People You Love

A Brief Review of THE POWER TO BLESS. How to Speak Life and Empower the People You Love by Alan Wright There is a dangerous trend at work today among evangelicals as well as mainline denominations and those in the charismatic and Pentecostal camps. It makes one look spiritual and powerful, and all too often its ineffectiveness seems to be overlooked. I speak of the personal and sometimes public “word of prophecy”. Although I will not deny that God can give men today such insights and messages (See Bill Cahusac’s book THAT GENTLE WHISPER, for instance), for more than 99.99% of us, prophetic gifting just will not happen. So what can we do to help our loved ones tap into the Lord’s grace and power, and to do so ourselves even? What messages can we give that will strengthen Christian service? How can we speak to others so that they find success and victory? Pastor Alan Wright has an answer. He claims that all of us can speak truths that will meet important needs in others. One of his theses is that all of us long for our parent’s spoken blessing. Without it, he contends, people fall into shame, pretense, aimlessness, loneliness, and relational failures. With it we find joy, energy, and vision of the future. He then goes on to tell how we can give blessings to others and even to ourselves. Wright uses the blessing found in Genesis 48:17ff. as his prime example of the concept of blessing. In Chapter 7 titled “Blessed to be Favored”, he goes into more detail of what it means to be blessed, not because one is worthy, but because of God’s favor. Wright maintains that Jacob had the favor of God on his life but did not realize it. He was struggling to get what can only be given, not earned. Page 128. Once he learned this truth, Jacob demonstrated it in blessing his grandchildren Mannaseh and Ephraim. On page 124 Wright says that Jacob’s crossed-arms blessing announced God’s unmerited favor on the younger son. The blessing goes this way: “May your life be fueled by grace and filled with blessing beyond your deserving because you are highly favored.” Wright claims that God crossed His arms to bless us when He allowed His Firstborn to hang on a cross for our sins. Page 133. We are ultimately blessed in Christ purely by God’s grace and unmerited favor. Wright uses real-life examples as illustrations of the principles he explains. Many are truly touching. In the closing chapters, the book contains simple instructions and even worksheets on how to properly prepare a blessing. These are simple but powerful. He ends with an appendix that provides many short Bible-based blessings for specific people or occasions. Some noteworthy statements in the book: Page 44 “Though any Christian communicator should believe in grace, most preachers communicate a mixed message.” Page 47 “God blesses us in order to make us faithful, not because we’ve proven ourselves faithful already.” Page 48 “Under the power of blessing we don’t work hard in order to have hope—we work hard because we have hope… we excel because we know who we are.” Page 61 “Blessing is more than occasional, verbal affirmation. Blessing is a consistent commitment to help others gain godly vision of their lives.” Page 65 “In one sense, the whole biblical narrative revolves around the question, Will God’s people believe God’s vision for their lives, or will they live according to their own blurred perspective?” Page 74 “Fourth graders don’t understand the complicated dynamics of divorce, so they assume they aren’t fully wanted. The unblessed, orphaned heart always feels insecure.” Ephesians 3:1-5 Page 77 “When you bless people, you help them envision how much God has always wanted them, and you remind them how far He traveled to claim them.” “People don’t need you to make sense of their adversity—they need you to help them see God in the midst of it.” Page 101. “The mended life we have in Christ isn’t a cover up of our troubles—it’s a restoration j