The Importance of Speaking Life and Blessing over our Children

Words are one of the most powerful tools that we have. Being able to speak is one of the ways that we are created in the image of God. It was His words that brought life into existence during creation, and while our words are not on the same level as God’s, they do carry incredible influence and power.

We are told in James 3:10 that both blessing and cursing can come from our mouth. Proverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. That is HUGE. Do we realize that our words have that much power? Are we intentional and careful with our words so that they bring life and blessing, not death or cursing?

Blessing and Cursing

As parents, this is paramount to raising our children. In the book Raising Burning Hearts by Patricia Bootsma, she says that…

“Basically, blessing is God’s impartation of identity (who am I?) and destiny (why am I here?), and cursing is Satan’s impartation of identity and destiny. Put another way, blessing is empowerment to succeed in what is really important in life, under God’s favor and protection, and cursing is empowerment to fail.”

We should be the primary agents of blessing in our child’s life and we should be the shield that protects them from cursing. The impact of the words of an authority figure on a child is huge. As parents, our children take our words as gospel. We are the LOUDEST voice in their lives because they trust us. This gives us the incredible opportunity to release and establish them in truth or the terrifying reality of doing a ton of damage and creating a lot of confusion.

Our children are looking to us to find out if they are good enough, if they have what it takes, if they are accepted, and if they are valued. They will identify with and live up to (or down to) the things that we speak over them OR about them.

What Should We Do?

“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)

First, we must realize that there can be no excuse for careless or destructive words. This is a paradigm shift for many of us and that is OK. God is gracious to walk with us. But we cannot justify our words because we felt anger, frustration, fear, hurt, or were overwhelmed in a moment and “they just came out”. Even in those times, the Holy Spirit is more than able to help us with self-control if we recognize our need and submit to Him.

So, let’s repent and apologize where it is needed and determine to very carefully guard our mouths, especially in moments of intensity.

Secondly, let’s begin choosing our words carefully and deliberately. It’s not just that we don’t want to release cursing over our children, but we GET TO and should want to release blessing over them.

So, let’s commit to use our words to speak life and blessing over our children!