 This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. We are so thankful that you joined us for hope today and our hope is that you will find the strength of the Lord in all that we discuss, that you would be encouraged in who he is in you and for you. Rejoice is a choice. Today I am Angela Madden and I am here with my sweet friend Anna Frye and we are so excited about what the Lord has prepared on today's show. Anna, are you excited for this beautiful day? I'm so excited about today. I'm excited to be with you and all of you at home. Welcome, welcome to hope today. I tell you what, our guests today, our topic today, at least for me as a host, this is the first time I've been able to dig into this topic with a guest in. It's called Legacy the Lost Art of Blessing. And so we're gonna be talking about the power of speaking God's words, his blessing over ourselves, over our children, over our grandchildren, and just that when God's word goes out from his mouth, goes out from our mouths, it will not return to him void, but it will accomplish the purpose for which it sent. So I just wanna say stir up your faith today, stir up in knowing who God is and that he wants to accomplish his word in your life and in your loved one's lives. And it's just gonna be full of so much energy and hope and inspiration. And this weather is inspiring me too. Like I was just like, it's 60 degrees at eight o'clock in the morning, like praise Jesus, Hallelujah. That's the truth. You know, no matter whether the sun is shining over you today or you're in a dreary place, the Lord, the sun, the S-O-N, is shining over you and for you. And today I rest assured that the blessings of God, as we just dissect this a little bit more and as we begin to talk about it, that those blessings are gonna tangibly cover you and you're gonna feel his grace, you're gonna know that he truly is for you, that he's not just with you, but he is for you, actively working in your life. I know, Anna, there's so much that's going on in the world and we talk about it all the time. I mean, you can't really escape it, you know? So when we have special guests like this that talk about the blessing of the Lord and having that spoken over us, to me, it encourages me and it fills me with hope. It gets my mind fixed on the truth of who God is, not what my circumstances or what this crazy world is saying. Yeah, that's right because there is this, you know, we live in this reality of what's happening around us, but the truth is there's this whole spiritual, unseen reality where God is always active and he's always moving and looking to fulfill his word. And so we're gonna look at that. We're gonna, we have another extra guest that is I'm excited to listen to. So it's just a packed show. It is, it's a powerful show today. So don't you go away, you sit tight and listen to all that's gonna happen here today. Yes. And so tell us, Angela, Sydney has a package. Let's go there first, yeah. Let's go now over to Sydney, who has been joined by a very special guest. Our next guest is an award-winning actress, storyteller and independent film producer, best known for her portrayal as the eight-year-old prayer warrior, Miss Claire in the film War Room. Karen Abercrombie stars in Pure Flix's new rom-com, Heaven Sent, which follows the journey of three couples at different stages of their life as a journey through finding love, hope, and joy after loss. Take a look at the trailer. We've known each other a long time, right? When was the last time you had a man, Elise? Sometimes it is a good thing. God doesn't answer your prayers. When you least expect it, expect it. Between the shop and Derek, my cup is overflowing. Bye, grandma. Good night, best friend. And she's been gone for five years. I miss her every day. You've been out of the game for a long time. She wanted me to move on whenever I was ready. Welcome to singles night. Speed dating is the best way to break you back in. What do you do for a living? I'm a pastor. You matter. Can you help me? I'm a bit lost. Are you free? No. Lunch? Everybody's got to eat. Sure. So what's the date? It's just two people who have something in common. Don't tell me you finally let a man into that closed-off heart of yours? Should we say grace? It's been a while, and it's been a challenge. I need to find my faith walk again. Hey, y'all, my grandma brought the pastor home. This is getting good. Right? Derek needs me. He needs a life beyond you. Can I get an amen? Yes. Your love is a risk. Show me a sign. Come on. Love, rom, coms, Karen Abercrombie is with us. We're so happy you're with us today on Hope Today, Ms. Karen. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Well, it is such a joy. You're welcome. Wow. Ah, thank you. So, Karen, can you just talk to us about your role as Elise in Heaven Sent, which is right now streaming exclusively on Pure Flips? Yes. She is a woman who has taken over raising her grandson. And so she's put her dreams and everything else to the side to care for her grandson. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's so beautiful. What ways, how do you have to prepare for this role? Well, honestly, I've spoken to people, and I have met people. I speak around the country. And many times, women come up to me all different backgrounds. They are older women who were looking to retire and ride off into the sunset. But now they are taking care of their grandchildren for one reason or another. And I also speak to women who they've lost a loved one. They're widows or divorced. And some would like to try dating again. They don't even know what to do. Or they're afraid to or feel that they aren't up to the challenge that maybe because they're older, they're not as attractive or whatever. But so all of these things come into play with my character. Well, I love your heart and your passion of speaking into women who are in that place and time or just looking for love. And maybe they're older and they're seasoned. Can you just take a moment even to speak, to give wisdom to a woman that's watching that is right in that situation, waiting on God, waiting for love. What would you say to them? I would say, dear sister, in the meanwhile, just continue to do the things that make your heart sing and trust that God, even though he gave you that first one, it may have just been amazing. Or maybe that first one wasn't so. But there's somebody out there who is waiting for you. So if you just trust God and you're brave enough to step up and step out, see. See, your age, you're beautiful at any age and stage. You have value, great deep value at any age and any stage. So trust those things that God says to you about you, beloved. Fearfully and once you may work apart, masterpiece, walk out of those things. I love that so much is this affirming what God says about us, because it's so true that we have to know our worth and our value that we are beautiful in his eyes. And I also love how you talked about prayer, just like waiting on him. And millions of people remember you as Miss Claire from War Room. And I wanted to say your role inspired me to have my own prayer closet. So I just want to ask you, what was it like to be part of that? And how did it change your perspective and shape even how you pray and you connect to God? Oh, it was amazing. It was amazing. Now, because I was playing an 80-year-old woman, I did my research and I wanted to bring this character alive where she was a believable three-dimensional character. But the challenge was because she was a prayer warrior. I prayed to God to strengthen me and give me direction and to help me be out of his way so that he could work through me, so that I could be a part of telling the story that he wanted me to tell. And before I played this character, I was quite afraid. But in this process, I learned that I had only been scratching the surface and that there was so much more. And there will always be so much more prayer. And so I am forever grateful for that opportunity for so many reasons. It strengthened my walk, taught me a lot about myself and about God. And it allowed me to use my God given gifts to spread the message of prayer around the world. We are so grateful that God has used you in so many amazing ways because it's spread so much hope and joy into all of us, like you truly are a gift in the body of Christ. And I just want to ask you, Ms. Karen, what are some projects that you have planned in the future? Right now, one of the things I love doing that I had to relate to the side was storytelling. Live storytelling. So I decided to pick it back up. And just this last Saturday, I did a dramatic retelling of the story of Queen Esther from the Bible. And so I'm going to do more of that. The woman did the well, and I'm going to take it on the road so your viewers can check my website and my Facebook pages to see where I will be when. Because it is encouraging and inspiring. And just to be able to be in a room with women, bringing those stories to life, that intimacy is powerful. Also, I've got a film that is in early, early pre-production and an episodic called The Healer. It's powerful. It's powerful. Briefly, it's a story about a woman who is a staunch atheist. She has a couple of things happening in her life. And then through a miraculous encounter with God, he gives her an atheist. So watching her journey as she becomes a believer is quite interesting, powerful. It will be moving. And I believe that it will speak to a large, large demographic of people, those that believe it will maybe hopefully strengthen their walk. But for those that don't believe, catch their ear and hopefully bring them in so they can see God from a different perspective, that he is loud and he is greater and he is, still sees God. So yeah. Well, I just love how bringing those God stories to life so we can be inspired and that we know that he is the creator. He is our hope. He is our all in all. Karen, thank you so much for joining us. And we just want to let all of you know, be sure to check out the rom-com we have been sent that is streaming now exclusively on PureFlix.com. And we'll also have a link to our website at ctvn.org. Miss Karen, thank you so much for who you are, the light and the light that you bring. You are truly an inspiration. Thank you. Hey, I'm sending you a big hug. Right back. Have an amazing day. You too as well. And we'll be right back. Stay tuned for more Hope Today. The gaming videos, the gaming videos, it's all boring. Oh, have you thought about subscribing to Cornerstone's YouTube channel? Cornerstone has a YouTube channel? Of course it does. Hold on, taking a pause to remind you to subscribe to our channel. Hit that like button and ring that bell for notifications. Now back to the video. I'll show you how to subscribe. Just search for Cornerstone Television Network and hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date getting filled with the Holy Spirit with consistent uploads every day. Keep up with your favorite moments and never miss a beat. Will you help us as we race to 100,000 subscribers? We can't do it without your help. The content is never ending with countless hours of entertainment. So subscribe to the Cornerstone YouTube channel today. Hope happens here. Speaking blessings over others is extremely important and very much needed in our world today. Releasing blessings over others can encourage and bring hope to people in a powerful way. Pastor, speaker and author, Devi Kiderman is our next guest and in her book, Legacy, The Lost Art of Blessing, she unpacks how we can unleash the full potential of blessings on our lives and on the lives of others. So Devi, it's great to have you with us on Hope Today. Anna, thank you so much. It's such an honor to be back with you guys. I love the idea of releasing a full potential of God's word and your book, The Lost Art of Blessing. Tell us why you decided to write this book in this day. Okay, well, the book that we're talking about today is like over 17 years in the making. I started, the Lord started talking to me about blessing back in the early 2000s and I was gonna write a book and then I put it on the shelf and then I disqualified myself and then I wrote several other books and then he said, now is the time to release this book because the Lord's heart is about legacy and it's about like redeeming the things that we have forgotten about. And so when I was like the working title was not Legacy, The Lost Art of Blessing and just as I was writing the book and in the process of writing the book the Lord just said, I want you to title it, Legacy, The Lost Art of Blessing because blessings are really a lost art. We miss the importance of what it was in the scripture to the Jewish people and really what we can do for generations and our families. And so as I was writing it, the Lord, I mean, he just kind of downloaded a whole bunch of new information and I'm so passionate about this. I love blessings. Yeah, so in your words, tell us what is a blessing? What is a scriptural blessing? Right, so a blessing really is an active declaring favor or goodness on another person. And I don't know who doesn't need God's favor or his goodness on a daily basis, right? So when we intentionally, I mean, there's different levels of blessings. Like we probably are blessing people and we don't even realize it. It's like kind of when we speak kind of affirming words that is a way of speaking blessings. Like we recognize somebody or somebody's kind so we speak something kind to them. And then we can be intentional and we can say, I wanna be purposeful to speak blessings over people. And even the word God, the words God bless you is a blessing to people because the Holy Spirit showed me that when we even say that, that we're opening a spiritual door for a Holy Spirit to target people for good. So we can add God's name to these kind affirming words even as simple as God bless you when somebody sneezes to open spiritual doors. And then we can be intentional to say, God, what do you wanna say? I love blessing babies. I just love it. I'd love to take their name. I look up what their name means, their spiritual connotation. And then I write blessings based on what the Lord tells me about who he wants them to become. And then I give it to the parents so the parents can read it and pray it over their child. You mentioned Debbie, how it's very popular or used a ton within the Jewish culture. Can you share with us how they use these blessings and really what does it look like in opening what you said spiritual doors? Yeah, absolutely. So if we look at even the Old Testament and into the New Testament, it was very important for the Jewish culture to speak and release blessings over the future generations. And in fact, when they would do it and we can even look in Numbers chapter six, I'm sure people have heard of the famous Aaron's blessing where God said, if you'll do this, speak this and put my name on it, I'll be intentional to bless people. And so when I'm talking about opening spiritual doors, if we're intentional to say, may God do this for you, that God will then heed our words as a prayer and he will begin to intentionally zone in on that person and target them for good, right? He wants to do that. He even said like, if you dive into that Numbers chapter six, it's just a couple of verses with Aaron's blessing, but there's so many things that God says he's gonna do for the people. And then at the very end, he says, if you'll put my name on the people, I will do it. And that's where the Lord started talking to me about if you'll be intentional to release blessings, even if you say, may God rain his peace down upon you like the warm spring rains. Like if I'm intentional to do something like that, God's gonna be intentional to rain peace down on people because I'm coming into agreement with him and I'm speaking his name over them. I love that. And I think it's so powerful what we declare how it does open up these spiritual doors within the Jewish tradition. And you talked about the future generations. Are they doing this on a daily basis? Is this something that they're like, even I think about the greeting Shalom, you know, is that intentional within all of their conversation or how does that function? That is a very good question. So I actually thought like, this is one of the reasons why I didn't write the book right away is because I thought, oh, I'm missing this piece. And I was, I have to say, when I wrote the piece on the Jewish tradition and culture, I had it in my mind to be something else. But this is where the Lord began to speak to me that it was a lost art. Because when we read in scripture, they were intentional. The way they greeted people, the way that they released blessings over their children and their children's children, it was intentional. But today they still do it. Some in Jewish tradition and culture, they still do it. But it's kind of more like we speak this blessing. And so it's kind of like something that's almost by rote. It's not so much as it's driven by the Lord, but they still set aside a time where it's important to you. They bless their children. May you be like Ephraim and Manasseh. May you be like Esther or, you know, they speak these things, Rachel. And, you know, they speak them over their children at night. It's a blessing that they leave with them. But it's kind of like, you know, when we read the Psalm 23rd prayer, it's similar to that. It's something that has been written out that they've committed to heart, but they're intentional about doing it because they know the importance of the blessing. And so they want to release that. But it's not like it was like in the Old Testament, even Paul in the New Testament, at the end of each letter that he would write to the church, he would leave a blessing with them. And kind of driven by the Holy Spirit and what God wanted to say. And that's the part that's the last start that we as the church need to get back. Okay, so for somebody who's watching today and they're thinking like, I really want to learn practically and intentionally how to speak blessing over my children and my grandchildren or over myself. Can you just share with us a little bit? How do we begin? Like where in scripture do we go? How do we start constructing this and doing this? Yeah, absolutely. And I have, like I am a show me how to do it type person. So, and I'm so glad that you asked that because I can read about it and I can watch somebody do it. But until I actually put myself in it and I put boots on the ground and I do it, it's kind of hard. So I always tell people, and I have activation exercises at the end of every chapter to really activate you in doing this. But really like think if you're wanting to release something over your children, I always say start with their names, right? Your children or your grandchildren start with their name and what does their name mean? What is a spiritual connotation of their name and what scripture goes with that? And then you can begin to write a blessing based on their name. So for example, my name is Debbie. I never really liked my name growing up. My mom was like, well, can we call her Deborah? And my dad was like, no, my mom's like, well, at least it's biblical if it's Deborah. And he was like, no, but my name means honeybee. And I didn't really like that at all. And then it also talks about leadership, which I ran from leadership my entire life. Except for the fact that God had called me to this and really what the connotation of that is is new era of leadership. And God was calling me into doing things. I was always a trailblazer, always like doing things. I'm like, you look at a picture and all these things go together, but something stands out, that would be me. And yet it was who God created me to be. And so when I began to realize that God actually had a hand in naming me and it was part of that, I began to actually, I wrote a blessing for myself based on what was going on, but really it took a younger person that had written out my name because we were doing an outreach for children and they wrote my name and they put something on there that kind of like the Lord had told them to write based on my name. And that awakened something inside of me to really step into my purpose. And it was because she was blessing me based on my name. And so I think that's a really easy way for parents and grandparents to begin to bless their children. And it's simply, for me, may you step into this new era of leadership that God is calling you to, may you fulfill all the plans and purposes that God has ordained before the foundations of the world. So we pull scripture in, we talk about God's heart for that individual and we step out into releasing that and speaking and declaring it over the individual that we write it for. Oh, thank you. Debbie, that's such good practical advice to be able to help us start writing out those blessings. Like, what a cool idea even to like start keeping a journal of it to give to our children as a gift, something that they can keep for a lifetime. So Debbie, thank you for your heart and for obeying the Lord in his calling to write this book, Legacy, The Lost Art of Blessing. May we all pick this art back up. So Debbie, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much, Anna and you too, Angela. It was an honor to be with you and your viewers today. Thank you so much. We are excited to declare a blessing over you today just as Debbie spoke and shared with us the importance of this. Do you know the power of your words? Do you know the power of speaking blessing and not cursing over your life? Today, Anna and I wanna encourage you by speaking to you today, scripture of blessing. Receive this into your life. It comes from numbers six, 24 through 26. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. May the blessing of the Lord be yours, may it cover you, may you feel his grace, may it fill you. In Jesus' name, what a powerful interview. I love that she reminds us that even our names can declare a blessing over our life. I know the words we have to remember that words hold so much power. Like when God created the earth, when he created you, what he spoke creation into being. It says in Proverbs that life and death are in the power of the tongue. So we can create life with our words. We can create death with our words. Like we have the choice. So today, whatever situation you're facing, if you're feeling discouraged, if you're feeling fearful or full of shame, remember to speak God's truth over you that you are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for the good works that he has for you. If you're facing something hard, remember that he goes before you, he's behind you, he is all around you, he sings over you, he delights over you, he adores you and he is pursuing your heart today. If you need prayer, if you need someone to speak blessing and scripture over you, remember that our prayer line is always available at 888-665-4483. If you've never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, today is your day, his word holds power. When it goes out from his mouth, it will not return to him void. His promises are yes and amen for you. So we just adore you here on Hope Today. We love that you're a part of our family. When we see you out and about and you say hello to us, it brings so much joy to our hearts and so many of you have the gift of encouragement that builds us up with your words and so we just wanna say we love you too. Thank you so much for being with us on Hope Today. We just pray that as you go out into your day, that you will experience the full abundance of God in your life. Have a great day. On tomorrow's Hope Today, providing insight into Iran and how it impacts the U.S. Dr. Hormoz Sherriot shares his spiritual journey out of Islam to Christianity and how Iran fits into biblical prophecy. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.