What Causes Blessings or Curses?

• In my talk yesterday, I shared some guidelines that can help you to recognize if there is a curse at work in your life. This is so important, I’m going to recapulate it briefly. First of all, a general picture. A curse is something like a dark shadow or an evil hand from the past oppressing, pressing you down, holding you back, tripping you up, propelling you in a direction you really do not wish to take.
• Or you could compare it to a negative atmosphere that surrounds you, stronger at some times than others. I suggested that the key word is frustration. You reach a certain level of achievement or progress. You seem to have all the needed qualifications yet something goes wrong. You start again, reach the same level, then something goes wrong again.
• This seems to be the pattern of your life and yet there is no obvious reason for it. This pattern may occur in various areas, business, personal relationships, a career, finance or health. If that is your kind of experience, if that is a description of the way you live, in all probability that dark shadow or evil hand is a curse over your life, perhaps going back many generations.
• In my talk yesterday, I also gave a list of some common indications that there’s a curse at work in a person’s life based on my personal observation. I’ll briefly recapitulate those also. One, mental or emotional breakdown. Two, repeated or chronic sicknesses, especially where they’re hereditary or without clear medical diagnosis.
• Three, repeated miscarriages or related female problems. Four, breakdown of marriage and family alienation, family breakup. Five, continuing financial insufficiency, especially where the income appears sufficient. Six, accidentprone. And seven, a history in a family of suicides or unnatural deaths. Today I’m going to share with you the kinds of things that cause either blessings or curses in a person’s life.
• It’s very important to understand that there’s always a cause for both blessings and curses. In connection with curses, this is what Solomon says in Proverbs 26:2. Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not elite. In other words, wherever a curse allightes, there’s a cause behind it.
• And in dealing with the curse, it’s often important to discover the cause. In this connection, we may distinguish between primary and secondary causes. In each case, the primary cause both of blessings and curses is very simple. Let’s look first of all at blessings. We’ll go to that chapter, Deuteronomy chapter 28, which is the key chapter on blessings and curses.
• In the first two verses, Moses states the cause for God’s blessing. And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth.
• and all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. There are the basic causes of blessings. Very simple. Listening to God’s voice and doing what he says. Let me repeat that. The basic cause of all blessing is listening to God’s voice and doing what he says.
• This is clearly exemplified in the case of Abraham when he offered up his son Isaac. God said to him, “In blessing, I will bless you and in multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven as the sand which is on the seashore. Your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.