Blessing your children

This past Sunday, a visiting pastor spoke on the subject of fatherhood, as typical on a Fathers Day morning. His main challenge to our congregation of young parents was to "call forth each of your children's destiny's." My first inclination was to think, "oh no, hear comes someone else telling us to tell our children who & what to become." But, this was not what he was saying at all. He told us to look within our children and find their unique strengths & talents and to name them out loud to each child. The verse in Proverbs 22:6 which says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he gets old he will not depart from it" supports this claim. The phrase "in the way he should go" signifies in the way that this particular child of yours is bent. In short, the way God has uniquely made your child. Not the way you want your child to go, but the way God wants your child to go in life.
We, as parents, have a profound impact on our children's lives. I was reminded of this when reading a story just a few minutes ago in a great book by Brennan Manning, "The Furious Longing of God." Brennan tells a story of a young college student named Larry who was unattractive and had a very low self esteem. He said that Larry would spit in the mirror every morning when he would look at himself. While on Christmas vacation, he was riding on a bus with his father who worked at a factory- with whom he did not have a very close relationship with at the time. Some of his father's friends at the factory were standing at the bus stop and started saying mean remarks about Larry being a fat pig and a slob. Brennan goes on to write about his Father's response to these mens mean remarks...
"for the first time in his (larry's) life, his father reached out and embraced him, kissed him on the lips, and said, 'Larry, if your mother and I live to be two-hundred years old, that wouldn't be long enough to thank God for the gift He gave to us in you. I'm so proud that you're my son!'
Brennan then explains the transformation that takes place in Larry when he arrives back to college after Christmas break..
"he remained a hippie, but cleaned up the best he could..began dating a girl..and became president of one of the fraternities. He became the first student in the history of the university to graduate with a 4.2 grade point average."
Larry's father called forth the destiny in his child. It wasn't too late but could you imagine if he would have been doing this since Larry was young? His words were healing balm on his son's life. Larry needed to know who he was in his father's eyes. How are we calling forth the beautiful strengths in our children? Many times, we, as parents, are so focused on disciplining that we forget to encourage our children's little hearts toward their destinies. Not that we need to stop the discipline- we just need to balance it against looking at their unique bent in life. May we choose the road of blessing as we steer our children further out into the world more & more everyday.