Established.

1 Chronicles 17:23-24, 27
And now, O Lord, the word which You have spoken concerning Your servant and concerning his house, let it be established forever, and do as You have said.  So let it be established, that Your name may be magnified forever, saying, ‘The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, is Israel’s God.’ And let the house of Your servant David be established before You.  Now You have been pleased to bless the house of Your servant, that it may continue before You forever; for You have blessed it, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever.”

What a blessing it is to know that the blessedness of our lives did not begin with our birth. We are each an inheritance from the Lord, an extension of God's grace and favor in the lives of those who came before us, established to be blessed before we were ever conceived in our mothers' wombs (Psalm 127:3, Jeremiah 1:5).  What a mighty God we serve! The prayers uttered before God and the acts of faith performed by our ancestors, great grandparents, grandparents, and parents have allowed us to be born into a bloodline established by God to be blessed. Not one of us was an accident. We are each the answer to a prayer, and we each were born for a purpose to magnify the name of God through our lives (Romans 11:29, Proverbs 18:21). Our blessed lives are the products of people before us who declared, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." My encouragement today is that we thank God for the prayers of those that came before us, the faith that produced through us the lives of abundance that we have the privilege of living today, and the promise of blessedness for our children and future generations. Let us stop today and consider our own contributions to the legacies of faith that we glean from. What can we do to perpetuate blessedness for our families, and future generations?

Perhaps you don't perceive that you come from a bloodline that is blessed. Maybe everyone you know that is related to you are people who have not demonstrated righteousness or who don't have a history of magnifying the name of God. Maybe you don't feel like the life you are living is blessed at all. This is all the more reason to use the power of prayer to break the cycles of blocked and unrecognized blessings. We know that the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much (James 5:16). We have the power and opportunity through prayer with hearts of righteousness and acts of faith right now to contribute to and enlarge the blessed territory of not just our own lives, but the lives of our children and their children, and beyond (Deuteronomy 19:8, Hebrews 11).
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In the book of 1 Chronicles we find the genealogies of Israel beginning with Adam, and the covenant that God made with David to establish his house and bless it forever in 1 Chronicles 17. The blessed house of David later comes to include the life of Jesus, as God had always intended (Isaiah 11:1-3​, John 3:16). I want to encourage anyone today who may feel like they are not from a blessed bloodline to consider the mention of a man named Jabez, in 1 Chronicles 4. While the genealogical account of the family of Judah does not tell us who fathered Jabez, nor does it note his mother's name. All we know about him from the text is that "Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, 'Because I bore him in pain' (1 Chronicles 4:9). I am encouraged and empowered by the report that although he was labeled by his mother as one who causes pain, Jabez called on God with a powerful prayer of faith to have the hand of God be with him and for him to not be one who causes pain, and God granted his request (1 Chronicles 4:10). We each have the power through prayer to ask God to bless our lives and overturn any negative legacies handed down to us. 

Let us pray to God in the way of Jabez...
Oh, God of Israel, I pray that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!

I encourage you to modify this prayer to uproot and overturn any negative legacy on your life. 

Be Blessed!
​~Nina

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Declaration: As a Christian, I am established by God in a righteous legacy, my house is blessed forever.