Giver Blessing 12: Generational Blessings

Beloved, I call your spirit to attention, and I invite the Giver portion to come explore how God has designed you to enrich the world in your unique way.

It was on the fifth day of creation that blessings came into the world. The first four days of creation were pronounced good, but it was not until the fifth day that God spoke a blessing over what He had created.

While all believers are permitted to share the gift of blessings with others, the Giver tribe has a special calling to impart a generational blessing of enduring expansion. God illustrated this when He blessed the fish and the birds with filling the sea and the air. The generation that was alive then would not be able to accomplish that. God was extending a blessing of expansion to each subsequent generation.

Abraham modeled that magnificently. He blessed the first two of his eight sons with a generational blessing of expansion, and both sons produced nations that have survived and thrived for millennia.

Compare that with other nations. The Philistines were well established as a nation before Abraham graced their region. Both the Moabites and Ammonites began during Abraham’s life, but none of those three nations can be found today. By contrast, because of one Giver’s generational blessing, both Jews and Arabs can be found in almost every area of the world because of that Giver’s earned authority to bless generationally.

Joseph of Arimathea accomplished the same feat through the church in England. He birthed the Body of Christ in England, imparting his redemptive gift to the church as well as blessing it.

Over the centuries, the structure of the church and its names and allegiances have changed. It has not always represented the best of the gospel message. Nonetheless, generation after generation, the church has expanded. It is difficult to be out of sight of a church spire in England.

It is fascinating to watch the power of the Giver’s generational blessing transcend the frequent ineffectiveness of the church. There have been seasons in the history of the church in England when being close to church meant being farther from God. At times one would expect the church to wither away due to the ineffectiveness or even brazen ungodliness of its leaders.

Yet periodically, because of the relentless generational blessing of expansion, the decaying church amazingly (albeit violently and involuntarily) births a new denomination which takes a revitalized message to the world at large. The Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists and Baptists have all emerged out of a reaction to the facets of the Body of Christ in England that were not functioning particularly well at that particular moment in history. The blessing compels birthing a new movement to continue the expansion of the message.

When it came time for the Great Century of Missions, the church in America had a vastly larger economic base and a larger pool of prospective missionaries. Nonetheless, it was the Body of Christ in England, with all its many faces and facets that dominated the expansionist missions work of that century even though some streams of the faith violently objected to foreign missions.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, the prophets of doom assured us that the branch of the Body of Christ in England that we call the Church of England was utterly moribund. People were leaving the church in droves and few young men were entering the seminaries to become priests. More and more churches had merely a skeletal group of worshippers on Sunday, and many parishes had no resident priest at all.

Ah, but they failed to take into account the blessing from the extraordinary Giver who brought the gospel to Britain. In the midst of the rubble on the religious landscape, the ancient generational blessing of expansionism burst out again. At Holy Trinity Brompton, a Church of England congregation, an evangelistic concept called “Alpha Course” was conceived and birthed.

It gained traction in a remarkable way, spreading far beyond the shores of the British Isles. Once again, the expansionary blessing of the church in England has touched many nations, this time through the vehicle called the Alpha Course.

Today the Church of England is embroiled in an international dispute over polity and property. The press is generally negative.

Curses are being hurled against the leadership from inside and outside the denomination. It is a sad reality that the best energy of this denomination is being spent on infighting these days.

But the bigger reality is that there is a generational blessing that has pursued the church for two millennia which will transcend the current turmoil.

Even now we watch sundry African people groups coming to England and finding themselves revitalized by the ancient blessing on all the Body of Christ in England. While one denomination is struggling, the blessing of expansion is manifesting powerfully in others around the nation as the church in England expands again with vigor and vitality, due to one Giver’s blessing which transcends all the vicissitudes of history.

So we welcome you to our midst, Giver. We pray that you will receive much from the hand of God and from our community. We will rejoice as you walk out your strange and marvelous relationship with God, weaving odd assets together in a fruitful environment, in order to earn an extraordinary quantity of natural and spiritual resources.

We hope and pray that you will develop sufficient spiritual authority that you will be able to release into our posterity a generational blessing as mighty and enduring as the ones God, Abraham and Joseph imparted. We will be mightily enriched by your presence if you receive in such a way that you can give that finest of Giver gifts.

You are most welcome among us as we wait with keen expectancy. We bless you in the name of our King, Jesus Christ.

American Airlines Flight 474
Airborne to Atlanta
October 8, 2009

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