Blessing and Cursing

What comes to mind when you hear the words "blessing" and "cursing"?

If you are anything like me the word "blessing" brings up mental pictures of an old lady praying counting her "blessings" before God. In this case "blessings" is kind of synonym for "nice things that have happened to me".

The word "cursing", however, doesn't bring up a Christian image at all. Rather childhood fairy stories come to mind of wicked stepmothers putting a hex on the hero or heroine.

If we look closely at the Bible, however, we find that blessing and cursing are at the heart of human history. You don't even get past the first chapter of Genesis before the first blessing appears;

"So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems … God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.'"
(Genesis 1:21-22, NIV).

God also blesses mankind in the same chapter. Blessing it seems is clearly how God desires to respond to his creation.

Sadly, in chapter three it all goes wrong and, after Adam and Eve's disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, cursing enters the scene. God curses the serpent, he curses relations between serpents and people, he curses womankind, he curses relationships between men and women, and he announces to Adam and Eve that because of their disobedience, the whole eco-system of the earth is now under God's curse. Finally God curses all of human life by limiting it and making death a part of the human experience (see Genesis 3:14-19).

Throughout the rest of the Old and New Testaments we continue to see countless examples of incidents of blessing and cursing performed by God, and also by people. This continues right through to the book of Revelation, where find that finally, in heaven, the cursing side of things are going to disappear once and for all;

"No longer will there be any curse."
(Revelation 22:3, NIV)

If blessing and cursing are so much a part of the human experience, it seems to me that it is rather important that we understand what they are and how they work. This is a very large subject with many different areas to study, however what I would like to concentrate on in this study is the particular way in which blessing and cursing operate in the life of the Christian.

God Relates to His People Either By Blessing Them or Cursing Them

The blessing and cursing dynamic in relations between God and his people are revealed in Deuteronomy chapters 28-30. The terms of the covenant relationship between God and his people are such that God promises to reward obedience and faithfulness by blessing, blessing which touches every area of human existence. The flip side of this covenant relationship is that disobedience and unfaithfulness will not only mean that we don't experience God's blessing but, worse than that, we will experience the curse of God. 

It is vital to note that God's cursing of his own people is not his desired way of treating them. It is what the Bible terms "His strange work, his alien task" (Isaiah 28:21). God undertakes this unpleasant and disagreeable business solely in order to bring us back into a healthy relationship with him - the purpose of cursing is always remedial. It is God's strategy to bring us back to a place of blessing (Hos 5:14-6:2).

I trained as an engineer, and as such certain foibles remain part of my character (sorry!). One of which is an unhealthy attachment to flow diagrams. Flow diagrams are very useful for modelling processes.

The following is my attempt is to show how the process of blessing and cursing are designed to work.

OBEDIENCE?

Experience Blessing of God

Deeper Relationship with God

Experience Cursing of God

REPENTANCE?

Remedial Class of Cursing

YES

YES

NO

NO

If we consider this flow diagram, it should be clear that cursing from God need never be a part of a Christian's experience. Obedience to God's general will (his baseline for human behaviour, revealed throughout the Bible) and his specific will (God's will for an individual's life) should lead to a blessed, continual growth in the quality of a person's relationship with God. It is only disobedience that can upset this particular applecart. 

If we choose to ignore either God's general will, or some aspect of God's specific will for our lives, we can then find ourselves in the remedial school of cursing.

God's love for us is too great for him simply to be willing to let us 'drift away', or 'backslide'. He will take steps to try to bring us to a place of recognition of our disobedience, repentance and restoration - in short, back to blessing.

God's strategy with our disobedience is to actively give us over to the life of disobedience we have chosen for ourselves (Rom 1:21, 24-26). This ultimately leads to us becoming a certain type of people (Rom 1:29-31). Instead of the fruit of the Spirit being present and growing in our lives, it withers and dies. But what remains is not just an absence of the fruit of the Spirit, but actually fruit of death begin to grow (Rom 7:5, Gal 5:19-21).  The frightening and tragic process is designed to get our attention, to draw us to repentance, to re-establish us in a blessing mode of life.

In considering blessing and cursing in the life of a Christian, I would like to look at a little known passage in the book of Jeremiah. A passage which I believe will help us to get a handle on this whole process. This passage highlights what I believe to be the key area in which Christians get into trouble in their relationship with God. 

“This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives. "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."”
(Jeremiah 17:5-8 NIV)

As we read this passage we discover that God reveals that there is a basic choice in how people live their lives. Trusting in man, or trusting in God.

Trusting in man means living our lives based upon common-sense and human wisdom to the exclusion of faith. It is vital that the latter part of this sentence is included. The Bible does not say that Christians should not be wise or sensible in how they manage their affairs and how they run their lives. Of course not. In fact quite the reverse is true, the Bible has whole books devoted to the promotion of such life-skills (e.g. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes).

What God curses here is an attitude that prioritises human wisdom and common sense and uses them as the sole means of directing a person's life. Such an attitude is cursed by God. God demands that it is he alone has the right to set the course and tenor of our lives. It is from him alone that we must seek the visions and goals which will direct our future. It is in obedience to his general and specific will that we must live and move.

There are several reasons why this must be so.

Firstly, we are not our own, we belong to God. As Jeremiah elsewhere reminds us, the clay does not have the right to tell the potter what to make of it (Jeremiah chapters 18-20). Thus at a merely hierarchical level it is insubordination for us to usurp God's prerogative to direct our lives.

Secondly, God already has a plan for the redemption of the universe. A plan that he has been working out for millennia and which he is bringing inexorably to a conclusion. As his people we need to find how he wants us to fit into his plan. 

On a purely logical level, would we actually want anything less? Would we really choose the mundaneity of our petty hopes and dreams over the chance to be a part of the greatest project in the history of the universe itself!?

How sad would it be if God actually allowed us to choose our own course? For all eternity to have to look back over our lives and see how we had wasted our chance for eternal significance and meaning, a chance to be at work with God!

The third reason that "trusting in man" is precluded by God is because it undermines our relationship with him. God's primary desire, through any activity he invites us to participate with him in, is to deepen our relationship with him. If we 'trust in man', we do not need to trust in God. We will set our goals and plan our activities based around what we believe we can achieve without the intervention and activity of God. This will naturally and unavoidably lead to our relationship with God being side-lined. We just don't need him.

In summary then;

'Trusting in Man' leads to 		a man-centred approach to life
(focussed solely on human activity)

					a man-sized vision (limited in scope)

Whilst 

'Trusting in God' leads to		a God-centred approach to life
(focussed primarily on God's activity)

					a God-sized vision (infinite in scope)

Let us now look more specifically at how this passage reveals to us how God responds to our choice to trust in man or to trust in God.

1	The Curses of Trusting in Man:

As highlighted above, a vision achievable without God will be attempted without God. This will inevitably lead to our side-lining of our relationship with God, a coldness of heart and a loss of passion. This is the loss of the blessing of obedience. Above and beyond this will be the curses of disobedience.

Curse 1 (v6a)		Spiritual Destitution

God uses a picture familiar to the desert peoples of Palestine to explain the difference between trusting in man and trusting in God. He describes someone who trusts in man as being like a bush in the desert wasteland. 

The wilderness is a tough place to live. The resources which support life are in short supply. Life exists on a knife-edge. Very little thrives or does well, it is a place of existence, not abundance.

Such is the image that God uses to describes people who trust in man. They are like desiccated, scrub bushes barely managing to eke out a survival existence.

The word translated 'bush' actually is an unusual word which appears only twice in scripture. In the other place where it appears it is translated 'destitute'. This is the core idea of the word. 'Lacking the means of subsistence', 'totally impoverished'. It speaks of isolation from the place where the means for abundant life can be found i.e. ultimately from God, or at a secondary level, from the community of his people.

The only other place where this word appears is in Psalm 102:17.

"He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
He will not despise their plea."

This is a wonderful expression of the heart of God. In God even the place of 'destitution' is meant to become the place of 'restitution'. If only we turn in prayer and repentance to God.

Curse 2 (v6b)		A Place of Barrenness

Parched places - no growth, no fruit, no development, no improvement. All effort to achieve any of this is wasted. A curse of unfilled potential. On the side of a mountain in Provence, France I saw oak trees which were very small with trunks no bigger than a man's arm, yet they were decades old. The reason being that there is very little rainfall, and what little there is runs straight off the mountain without soaking in. So trees that might have been lush, mature oaks were scrubby little bushes, so dry and brittle that a man can break off a branch with his bare hands. What a contrast to the mighty English oaks I remember climbing in my youth.

A salt land - Land of no use, no value, a specific curse of the covenant (Deut 29:23-25).

Curse 3 (v6b)		Sidelined by God

You will not see prosperity when it comes - God will bless and work through someone else. You cannot thwart the purposes of God but you can place yourself outside of them.

If we therefore sum up the curses God places on his people when they choose to direct their lives on the basis of 'trusting in man', we have a somewhat sobering picture. 

We have the picture of a man or a woman growing cold and distant in their relationship with God. As they focus more and more on the human means to achieve the vision they have chosen and planned for themselves, they look less and less to God for his input into their lives. The passion cools, the flame grows smaller, the light dims.

We also see a spiritual 'withering' in their lives. Where once we saw the shining presence of the Spirit of God in their actions and attitudes, we now see a cold dullness. We see less and less of the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control). We actually see the saddest thing that one can ever see in the life of a Christian - ordinary human-ness.

Furthermore, we see a failure to live up to spiritual and human potential. We see people who should be leading, but who are still following. We see no growth, no development, no change. What we also see is an increasing spiritual fragility. The slightest thing seems to knock them out of whack in their relationship with God and the community of believers.

We also see a person who is not being used by God to impact the lives of others. A person who is of no help, no blessing, no strength to others. We see uselessness personified. It lives, it breathes it walks - but it achieves nothing in the kingdom of God.

2	The Blessings of Trusting in God

We now move to a much happier consideration. What happens when someone places trusting in God at the centre of their lives?

Again God uses a picture drawn from nature to explain what trusting in God is like. The person who places his trust in God at the centre of his life is compared to a tree in the desert wilderness, but a tree planted beside a life-giving stream.

The first thing to note is that the outward circumstances of those blessed and cursed are the same. The same harsh environment exists with it's heat and drought but they don't have the same effect on those in different relational circumstances with God. Why? Because those in a relationship of trust with God have access to the resources they need to face the difficulties, to endure them and to overcome them (see 1 Jn 1:3-5).

Blessing 1 (v8a)		Access to Life-Giving, Life-Sustaining Resources

The first blessing of having trust in God at the centre of our lives is that we now have access to resources we never had access to before. The tree sends out its roots into the moisture laden soil. The deeper they go, the greater the vital force they can draw upon.

As we 'put our roots down deep with God' we too develop our capacity to draw strength from him. This is one of the reasons why God allows those trusting in him still to face the difficult conditions of desert life. If you plant a tree in well watered soil its roots stay shallow. They don't do the hard work of digging down deep, they don't need too. But such a tree is in a potentially dangerous condition. Should drought come it has not the capacity to draw from the deeper, more secure reserves of water in the ground. 

It is a spiritual principle that times of hardship draw us closer to God (James 1:2-4). Therefore God allows difficult times to come into our lives to encourage us, even to force us to go deeper with him. To grow and deepen in our understanding of him and our love for him. Then when hard times come, our faith does not wither and die under the onslaught. We draw deep from God, we stand firm.

Another encouraging consideration is the greatness of the resources available to us. How big are God's resources? Infinite. Therefore what difficulties can we face with Him? Anything (Philip 4:13).

Blessing 2 (v8b)		Freedom from Fear in Difficult Times

Be assured, that on this earth we are living 'in the desert'. This is our time of pilgrimage, we are not in the safety of our eternal home. Therefore we can be certain that times of intense heat will come. But we can also be confident of God's resources helping us to endure it. Fear is the opposite of faith. If you are trusting in God, if your life is in line with God's will, then there is no room for fear. Whatever the circumstance, whatever the trial. You can make it with God. The tree's leaves are still green. The heat doesn't harm.

Blessing 3 (v8c)		No Worries in Times of Drought

Drought is a blight on all living things. In such times access to water, the very basis of organic life, is stripped away. But the one who trusts in God can face even this circumstance. You won't 'dry up' in times of drought because your needs are not being met through external circumstances, but through the resources of God. It is the relationship with God that sustains. As Jesus said,

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." 
(John 17:3, NIV).

It is in knowing God that the very basis of eternal life exists. Our very relationship with him makes death a non-event. As God cannot die, neither can any being with whom he has a relationship. Our place in God's heart is our guarantee of eternity .
Above we considered how drought can be an incentive to growth. In times of drought plants push their roots down deeper into the soil. What this means spiritually is that we can actually emerge from these times of difficulty not weakened but strengthened (Heb 12:7-11)!  Such is the amazing economy of God that the worst of times can leave us strengthened not weakened, enriched not impoverished, advanced not retarded.

Blessing 4 (v8d)		Consistent Fruitfulness

We see that the negative outward circumstances have no negative effect on the fruitfulness of the tree. This is the opposite of the natural world. As someone who grows his own vegetables I can attest that you can normally only expect fruit when all the external circumstances are beneficial e.g. temperature, rainfall, soil conditions etc. However, for those trusting in God, they can be fruitful under the most disadvantageous conditions. 

I have found this to be true in my own experience. I have noticed that it is often whilst undergoing trials that people make the most spiritual progress, evidence the most divine grace, and impact others the most significantly for God. I have seen many instances when people, instead of emerging from difficult periods spiritually crippled, emerge spiritually strengthened, with new maturity and a greater depth (see Gen 50:20).

Note that the tree produces fruit and leaves all year round. In scripture fruit speaks of food and leaves speak of healing. It is important to realise that both are for the benefit of others, not for the benefit of the tree itself. We live to serve God and to be used by him to bless those around us. Our obedience leads to others being blessed. As the fruit of the Spirit is increasingly seen in our lives God can work through us to build and strengthen his Kingdom.

The Communal Dimension:

This passage places before us some very clear teaching about the wonderful rewards of placing our trust in God at the centre of our lives. It also warns us of the consequences of doing the opposite, and of choosing instead to trust in man. As we have considered this, however, we have focussed very much on the life of an individual Christian. However, we must remember that this principle applies equally to Christian institutions and communities. 

Churches and organisations also need to place their trust in God at the centre of their life and work. In some ways it is much more difficult to do this at a community, or organisational level. Seeking God's direction for an individual is a reasonably straightforward affair. Trying to do so as leader of an entity that comprises tens, or hundreds, of people is much more problematic. 

Seeking to operate an organisation on a daily basis in a way that keeps open the possibility of responding to the moment by moment direction of God is very hard indeed. I would go so far as to say that unless faith has been conscious structured into every decision and every activity, the mere application of the principles of human wisdom and common-sense (good though they are) will quickly exclude faith from the life of the organisation.

I believe that this is the number one challenge that confronts Christian leaders. How do we keep faith at the centre of the life of our organisations, churches, institutions?

Sadly, as I survey my experience of the Christian world, I find few examples of this being consistently and successfully done. I have a great fear that innumerable churches, organisations and institutions are actually living under the curse of God. They are cold in their passion for God, spiritually barren, fragile and fruitless.

This life is our one-time opportunity to restore the relationship with God for which we were created, and to develop that relationship through the experience of being involved with God in his work. Let us each and all set our hearts to place our trust in God, rather than a trust in man, at the centre of our lives. May we experience the blessings of deep spiritual resources, freedom from the fear of circumstances, sustenance in trials and consistent fruitfulness for the pleasure of God, the blessing of the nations and the strengthening of the kingdom.

As more general reading on the subject of blessing and cursing I recommend the following books;

'Blessing or Cursing - You Can Choose' by Derek Prince, Derek Prince Ministries, Hertfordshire, England, 1990.

'The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare' by Dr Ed Murphy, Nelson, Nashville, USA, 1992.