Page 143 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 8

Foundational Discussions in Christian Psychology
a clergy/layperson model. The priestly role is
fulfilled by a small number of leaders or clergy,
while the so-called lay people listens to them
(Dawson, 2008). This is not Jesus’ model.
We find His model in Ephesians 4:11-13
(NKJV):
11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles,
some prophets, some evangelists, and some
pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping
of the saints for the work of ministry, for the
edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all
come to the unity of the faith and of the know- gramme was developed around Jesus’ instruc-
ledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to
the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ;
So we see that God has given people with five
types of gifts to equip the saints (all believers)
for their work of ministry to edify (or build) the
body of Christ (the Church) to perfection. Eve-
rybody is in ministry and are priests and kings
in the Lord’s kingdom.
Even where believers realise their role as kings
and priests they are not always sure what to do
about it everyday.
One of the things they can do in their priestly
role is to ask God’s blessing to be on the people
around them. There are off course many other
roles that the priest has, which is not within the
scope of this article.
Introduction to the faith-praxis of blessing
others.
It is one thing to understand from the Scriptu-
res that I as a believer am a priest in God’s king- We can summarise these by saying that God’s
dom. It is entirely a different matter to have the
faith to act out my knowledge in practice where
I move everyday.
To gain understanding of how Jesus instructed
his disciples on living their faith and pronounce
blessings, we can look at Luke 10:1-9 where He
send out seventy-two disciples ahead of Him.
Amongst other things, He says
5 But whatever house you enter, first say,
‘Peace to this house.’
(Luke 10:5 NKJV)
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This greeting is in the form of a blessing. It is
used in the Old and New Testament (see also
John 20:19, 21, 26; Judges 6:23; 19:20).
In the next verse in Luke 10 Jesus gives a glimp-
se of the powerful impact of this blessing:
6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace
will rest on it; if not, it will return to you.
(Luke 10:6 NKJV)
In order to find a way for a believer to act out
his/her faith in ordinary day life a lifestyle pro-
tions to the disciples in Luke 10. It is called Luke
10 Transformation (www.luke10t.com). It con-
tains four simple lifestyle actions, namely to ask
the Lord blessing on people; building relation-
ships with not-yet-believers; meeting the needs
of the people around you daily and lastly to tell
not-yet-believers about the gospel of Jesus.
We will now further investigate the first action,
that is, how a believer can make the asking of
God’s blessing on other people a lifestyle, what
Scripture says about it and what people report
as the impact of living this lifestyle.
What is God’s blessing?
There is a number of places in Scripture where
God speaks His blessing over people or a na-
tion (Gen 1:28 (Adam and Eve), Gen 12:1-3
(Abraham), Deut. 28:1-14 (Israel)). We see that
sometimes He just use the word “blessing” and
sometimes He spells out what the blessing will
entail and sometimes there is a condition.
blessing is the most wonderful thing that can
happen to a person, city or nation.
There are different types of blessing and di-
rections for blessing. Asking God’s blessing
for ourselves (for example praying the “bles-
sing of Jabez”), blessing God (for example Ps
103:1,2,20-22; 104:1,35) or other people (for
example “bless you” used loosely even when
someone sneezes) directly or doing a prophetic
blessing of people are not within the scope of
this article.