He said that his 16-year-old son asked him, "Dad, how do you know what to say in a blessing?" a few weeks ago which led to some thought and the decision to teach the lesson on this topic.
It was a great lesson. He borrowed a lot from Elders Oaks' talk given in the April 2010 conference on healing the sick. http://lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/healing-the-sick?lang=eng
Elder Oaks mentions 5 components to a blessing, all of which are important:
There are five parts to the use of priesthood authority to bless the sick: (1) the anointing, (2) the sealing of the anointing, (3) faith, (4) the words of the blessing, and (5) the will of the Lord.
A few thoughts that came out of the lesson:
1) a reason for the oil is it represents the blessings of the Lord being poured out on us
2) the sealing is to help the anointing accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish; it is not really connected to the words of the blessing
3) the faith of the person being blessed is the critical component in the blessing; for this reason it normally makes sense for the person being blessed to ask for the blessing; if they believe in the Savior and ability to heal, they will always be healed (assuming the will of the Lord is fine with the blessing)
4) the words are not as important as the faith of the person or the will of the Lord; the part of the lesson that stuck out to me most was the teacher saying, "the Lord will not constrain the love or desires of the person giving the blessing by keeping him from saying what he wants to/feels to". I thought that was a very nice way of explaining why sometimes the things we say will not happen.
5) the Lord's will will affect the outcome of the blessing. Some things asked for won't happen because they're not the Lord's will. I'm appreciative that God knows best and will intervene when he knows he should.
I appreciated our lesson today. Very helpful.
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