I am so thankful that I have some amazing leaders, men of God, and pastors that I have submitted my life and accountability to. I thank God everyday that I have these individuals in my life as mentors, spiritual dad’s and examples of faith! As I began the process of planting a church, one thing that I learned from them and knew for a fact would be taught and practiced in our church is the idea of “Blessing”. One truth that scripture teaches us about ourselves is that the power of life and death is in the tongue and we have the choice as to which one we are going to give (Proverbs 18:21). I personally have chosen to give life with the words that I say and I want my church to be taught that they can give life with their words too. As I previously mentioned, I have learned from some amazing leaders on how declaring these scriptural, edifying and uplifting words over people can truly inspire and motivate them to walk and live at an unimaginable level with Christ and in relationships.
My desire is to create a culture of blessing in our church. What does this mean? The word “culture” simply means, a way of life. “Blessing” simply is speaking and declaring scriptural, edifying and uplifting words over people. I want this concept of blessing to not be so much of a concept or just a practice in our church, but I want it to be a way of life! Where we just naturally flow in and initiate the power of the tongue to give life! I believe John Kilpatrick said it best, “prayer is prayer, prophecy is prophecy, and blessing is blessing”. This is not a moment of prayer as some people might think, but rather it’s a time for me as the pastor to declare God’s best over the people in my church and use the power of life in my tongue by speaking those words over them. Since this is not prayer, I ask our people to keep their eyes open, extend their hand, and receive the positive life-giving words that are being spoken. This will usually happen at the close of every service and will not be pre-fabricated or rehearsed. My wife and I will stretch our hands to the people and begin to let God inspire us to send our people back into the world with a blessing from their pastors!
We did this on Sunday and let me just say, so many people came up to us saying that they felt it was the best part of the service! That doesn’t really surprise me because let’s be honest, we hear negative and degrading words spoken to us a lot throughout our lives, don’t we? So for people to know that their pastors are intentionally declaring and speaking uplifting, encouraging, and spirit-filled words over their lives, I think let’s them know that there is someone else other than God who cares about them and their life! We want people to live a God-inspired life and this idea of blessing helps people understand how important that is!
LifeStone Church will be a house of blessing!
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