Blessing One Another in God's Words

Admin Mon 21 Jul 2014, 12:31 pm

Blessing One Another in God's Words
“And they will put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” (Numbers 6:27)
Passages of Scripture can be characterized in many ways – some are laws, some are prophecies, some are songs of praise or worship. Other passages are prayers, poetry, and narrations of Biblical history. There are many, however, which are blessings.
One man, Scott Osborne, was so moved by the various blessings bestowed by God in Scripture that he authored a new eBook all about God’s blessings on this earth. “The Book of Blessings” follows God’s divine benediction and explains the significance behind each blessing.
Breaking Israel News spoke with Osborne on why and how he came to write a book full of blessings.
Osborne explained that his story begins many years ago when he and his family joined the Christian Assembly Church in Columbus, Ohio, which came under the pastorate of Doctor Samuel Farina in 1988.
“The pastor always used to conclude his sermons with the Priestly Blessings from the book of Numbers, and that was very meaningful to me and my family,” Osborne said.
Some years later he was introduced by some friends to the Jewish ceremony of greeting the Shabbat, and the requirement to rest on the Shabbat. Osborne and his family began to adopt some of the customs incorporated within Jewish rituals, such as lighting candles and making traditional blessings on Friday night.
“One time I wanted to say a special blessing over our daughters,” Osborne reminisces, “and I began using the blessings from the New Testament that Paul closes off each of his letter with. My daughters turned to me and said ‘Thank you that was very nice,’ so I kept on doing it.”
Osborne’s inspiration came from those blessings, as the weeks went by he made an effort to not repeat any blessing twice, so he was forced to keep coming up with new blessings, and documenting them to make sure that he didn’t repeat any.
“I began reading the Bible looking for blessings, and I found that there are dozens of them but not hundreds of them. I was at a loss of what to use for the blessings until I discovered that God has a certain language that he uses whenever the Bible discusses things or people that God cares about,” he said. “I thought to myself, if God talks about things that he cares about in a certain style and phraseology, then I can turn these into blessings for the things that I care about.”
The jump from tracking blessings to writing an entire book took place when Osborne felt a divine hand leading him in the direction of writing. “I had done this for over a year, and I began to feel that God was leading me in the direction to write a book about blessings. This was a very unique experience for me to have this thought and impression that just would not go away. I even argued with the thought, and said ‘Who am I to write a book?’ But in the end the sensation won out. So I wrote the book.”
Osborne said that his main challenge in writing the book was communicating these blessings which he had come up with for his own children, in a meaningful way that would resonate for everyone. He began to categorize the blessings, and each category became its own section or page in the book.
When asked why write a book about blessings in the first place if people could just look them up in the Bible themselves, Osborne responded and said: “I want to affect the world and equip people to impact the world by appropriating the word of God in the form of blessings. The reactions and testimonials that I have received has been overwhelmingly positive. People have told me that they have begun to feel the effects of the blessings. Whereas people would pray for one another before, they now turn their prayers into blessings or having included blessings of others in them.”
Blessing One Another in God's Words DEUT_29.4

Blessing One Another in God's Words DEUT_29.4

Excerpt from “The Book of Blessings”
Besides for helping people connect with God’s blessings, Osborne explained that he seeks to promote a new discourse in modern society. His book is an effort to change the way we communicate with one another on a daily basis.
“In today’s society, it is not uncommon to hear people cursing, or to hear a curse on one’s self during a regular day,” he said. “If people begin to bless instead of curse, then we can begin to impact the lives of people and their environment, and society, in a positive way.”
The “Book of Blessings” was originally published in 2007 and has been inspiring people ever since. Osborne says of his own daughter, who went through a very difficult time in her late-teens, that the constant presence of blessings helped her through the roughest of times.
“My daughter who went through a difficult time, came to me and said, unsolicitedly, that she was able to make it through this rough period in her own life because of the blessings that she had been receiving so consistently.”
Osborne takes his cue from the Bible itself which says “And they will put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” (Num. 6:27)
“There is a specialness whenever we speak god’s words, form the kohanic blessings we learn that when the priests spoke the blessing God was the one who did the blessing. That is something which we can still do today. If we bless each other with God’s words then hopefully, he will fulfill the actual blessing itself,” he said.