The western mindset doesn’t freely embrace the concept of being cursed but are some people living out their everyday lives experiencing the effects of a curse without realizing it? What exactly is a curse? How are they activated or revoked? Are Christians impacted by curses? This podcast highlights seven major curses prevalent in scripture that can still influence our everyday lives. Fasten your seat belt because this podcast could change your life forever! Carl shares a personal testimony regarding a curse upon his former colleague and how speaking God’s word over the situation, produced a lifelong miracle!
Here is a complete transcript of the podcast…(below)
The topic today is curses. When most people think of curses, they think of fantasy, something that isn’t real. Perhaps Harry Potter comes to mind or maybe it’s something that people with pointy hats and black cats only carry out. To our westernized mindset rooted in Greek culture, curses are merely for superstitious folk or the ignorant or uneducated but not for the sophisticates who order chai lattes and don’t spare the double shot.
But the truth friend is that curses are indeed real because the Bible says they are. Not only that we know from the scriptures that invisible forces do exist, blind to the naked eye, working for good or evil behind the scenes. There are several dimensionalities all around us and angels and demons reside in these dimensions, even if we can’t see them.
Now, down the years I have been witness to some families and I’m sure you have too, that seemingly has one issue or calamity after another and is unable to shake loose from untimely and unfortunate events working against them. Most would put this under the label of ‘bad luck’, but could it be there are forces set in motion against them, that they’re ignorant of? Friend, blessings and curses are spoken of in God’s word very clearly, in fact a curse can extend its influence across several generations, as do blessings also. One of the more prominent curses mentioned in the bible is as follows and it concerns idol worship, Ex 20:3-5:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”
For those who do not know Christ, curses can be active in their lives without even knowing it and unless they’re broken by the blood of Christ, will continue unabated. According to this scripture, they extend to the 3rd and 4th generation. As I’ve said, curses can be evident over entire families, and one could argue the best modern-day example of a cursed family would be the Kennedy’s. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Kennedy family but did you know they’ve had several tragic and untimely deaths that alludes that they could well be under a curse. Their family history includes death by sniper fire, a plane explosion, a premature birth, assassination, car accidents, a trailer accident, amputation, a skiing accident, suicide, a heart attack, and several plane crashes. These events seem far too common to have occurred by chance to some 19 family members within a 70-year timeframe. Now we certainly wish no ill on the Kennedy family and we are sad this happened to them, but we’re just using them as an example for our study today. In fact when I was growing up I had an acquaintance in high school who broke some bone in his body for almost five years straight, you could sincerely say, this guy was accident prone, and a great candidate for being a stunt man based on his record.
We should remember that a curse must have a cause and scripture reveals this in … Prov 26:2, “Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, So a curse without cause shall not alight.” So, we know that a curse cannot be in existence unless there is a cause for it. Deuteronomy ch 28 is devoted entirely to the theme of blessings and curses. Within this chapter, Moses lists twelve moral and ethical sins, all of which provoke God’s curses. Blessings came to the people of Israel when they obeyed the Lord God and curses transpired as a result of their disobedience. Under our New Covenant, and thank God for it, just as under the Old, God offers the same two alternatives: either blessings for obedience or maledictions for disobedience. One great delusion which Christian’s love and Satan fosters this to his benefit; is there is a third alternative that lives within a “gray area”. This gray area promotes seeing just how close to disobedience we can get, or how far we can cross the line of obedience. Neither the OT nor the NT offers any such opinion. We must understand that if we sin, and ask for forgiveness, God will forgive us certainly. But few realize, even in the New Covenant that the law of sowing and reaping is still in effect (Gal 6:7). So, the consequences of our sin can still manifest in our lives; that’s why we need to flee fornication as the Bible says and any other gross sins that can impact our spiritual condition. Like I said before, we are all in the process of sanctification and God works with us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, in our daily walk with him.
Granted we are in a different dispensation to those in the OT certainly, we are in the dispensation of Grace, better known as the church age. But throughout all dispensations, we still remain in covenant with our Heavenly Father and the general terms and requirements for living in the covenant basically come down to us being obedient to God’s word, which brings blessings and disobedience will often result in oppression because we open the door to the enemy in our lives. In Deut 28:1-2 it says, “If, (conditional) you diligently obey the voice of the Lord,”, Friend, there are still conditional aspects to God’s word today. In the NT Jesus reminds us, we hear the voice of the Father in Jn 10:27. “My sheep, hear my voice”, so we still need to hearken to his still small voice and follow his path. Sometimes it takes effort to take the time to listen to Gods voice and often we are too busy to make this effort.
Now I’d like to mention Derek Price at this point, in his studies down the years, he listed seven curses that were prevalent not only in God’s word but in his experience also, spanning several decades. I will list them for you right now:
- Barrenness or a tendency to miscarry or related female problems
- Mental and or physical breakdown (which includes repeated or chronic sickness, especially if it’s hereditary)
- Family breakdown, Marriage breakdown and family alienation
- Poverty (which is clearly defined as a curse in Deut 28, which Christ has redeemed us from)
- A history of suicides and unnatural or untimely deaths
- Oppression
- Being accident prone
Friend, if any of the curses on this list resonated with you when I read them out, know this, you are a Christian and you have been redeemed from the curse of the law (Gal 3:13), but I will add, that authority that has not been enforced by yourself, is equivalent to no authority at all. In other words, we need to claim the ground that Christ has granted us in the spirit realm. If these curses seem to be prevalent in your family or life, then you need to do something about it.
Friend, I will now tell you an account that happened to me in 2001 whilst living in Houston Texas, and what I tell you is the absolute truth with my hand on the bible and it involves the concept of curses. I was a young Engineer, working in the Western half of the city in the Westlake complex. I was working within a professional team that comprised of a financial manager and her name was Patsy. One day she walked past my room and noticed at lunch time I was reading my bible. She struck up a conversation, and one thing led to another, and we became good friends over the course of a few weeks.
She shared with me over lunch that she and her husband couldn’t conceive a child; they had tried numerous times to do so but to no avail, for ten years in fact. They even had several expensive fertility treatments at a local clinic costing several thousand dollars out of pocket with still no success. I could tell she was very frustrated to say the least and actually started tearing up in my office one time when she was talking about it. Now I was a pretty new Christian at this point. I had known the Lord for about two years but something on the inside of me was not happy that this woman struggled so much to conceive. One morning on the way to work, I was reading my devotional, praying and asking God why Patsy couldn’t conceive, after several minutes with no answer I was ready to pack up my Bible and leave, when I heard these words, “She has a curse on her womb“. I blew it off as kind of bizarre to be honest because I didn’t know anything about curses. But it came up within my spirit a 2nd and 3rd time, “She has a curse on her womb, and it stems from her mother”.
With that information, I went to work that day, business as usual but I couldn’t get this thought out of my mind for several days. I knew the Lord was trying to get me to approach Patsy about it, but I was kind of embarrassed about discussing the possibility of her womb being cursed. Now ever since I’d known Patsy, whenever the topic of her mother would come up randomly, she would get very upset. She would describe how her mother would always play her off against her siblings and belittled her in front of them. I could tell, her mother would verbally berate her, and it showed when Patsy talked about it. So, one day, I entered her office, sat down and said that I would like to pray for her. She agreed, and this is what happened.
I had read about how Jesus spoke to objects and even cursed them when he spoke, I recalled Mk 11:21 where Peter reminded Jesus of the fig tree that he cursed, and it was withered at the root. When we speak God’s word, we have the same authority. Knowing I had authority in Christ, I then proceeded to pray for Patsy in faith. I didn’t beg God to break the curse, no, I prayed this way “Father in the name of Jesus I command any fertility restriction over Patsy’s womb to be broken right now and command it to leave, I bind Satan and speak life over Patsy, and thank you for what you have done. In Jesus name I pray, amen“. Friend, that’s how I prayed, I spoke to the obstacle which was infertility and commanded it to leave. I left her office and went about my business. At the time I was working assets in Southwestern Colorado even though I was living in Southeast Texas, so I had to go on a business trip the next day. When I returned almost 2 weeks later, Patsy had the most amazing smile all over her face. She approached and said that she was indeed pregnant! She was in fact so overjoyed that she later name this child, “Christy” which has Christ in the name, because she knew that Jesus had given her the baby. Friend, let me ask you, is that a coincidence? I don’t think so, there was a hindrance to Patsy conceiving, and it wasn’t from God because he said in Gen 8:17 it is His desire for us to be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. In fact, Barrenness is mentioned as a curse in Deut ch 28 and it is not God’s will that we struggle with these difficulties.
Friend as parents we have to be very careful what we speak over our children because we have authority over them, and God will honor the words spoken. In Patsy’s case she was verbally scolded and belittled by her mother, and this had an impact on her womb, although this might be hard for us to get our heads around. In Prov 12:18, it says, “there is one who speaks as the piercings of a sword“. Think about it for a minute, do you recall how the Patriarch’s like Abram, Isaac and Jacob would gather their children before they died and proclaim a special blessing over them and in some cases prophecy over them? If words work positively in this manner, it will most certainly work in the negative also and curses spoken over a child in their formative years can have a serious impact over the child even into adulthood. Friend, curses are real but so are blessings…choose blessings today friend.
https://carljosephministries.com/podcast/why-does-god-allow-suffering/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1358&context=jams
Title: Are curses real?
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