Turning Curses to Blessings

by CARL L. FOX

Reproduced on the Internet with Permission

Published as a book by Christian Faith International
923 North Foch
Truth or Consequences NM 87901
Tel: 1-505-894-5691

ISBN: 0-9671353-1-1

Visit Carl Fox's Web Site

Dedication

I dedicate this book first of all, to my Father and my Lord Jesus Christ. Then I dedicate it to my wonderful wife, Sheila, who has been a great helpmate in life and ministry. Her prayers have broken down many barriers that needed to be overcome. Without those prayers, the book would never have been written.

Acknowledgements

My first thanks and heartfelt appreciation goes to Eli and Susanna Arvizu, who spent countless hours gathering copies of the classes I had taught, transcribing the classes from the tapes, sorting all the material, and continuing to spur on the vision of having the “Turning Curses to Blessings” class in a written format. Without their selfless service, we would not have been able to complete the manuscript.

Others who need to be thanked especially include, Elaine Liberio, for the God-inspired design of the book cover, Ed Johnson, for his untiring support and encouragement, and Paul Norcross, for his sharp insight and constructive comments. I also want to thank Jan Magiera who was instrumental in helping to finalize the manuscript.

There are many others to thank, too numerous to mention, who have helped with their prayers, love and financial support. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Introduction

The subject of curses and blessings is often unfamiliar to students of the Bible. Yet God has much to say about them. Surprisingly, despite the clear fact that Jesus hung on the tree, and became a curse for every man to redeem us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), we nevertheless must still deal with curses. How can I say such a thing if Christ finished our involvement with curses? Revelation 22, the closing chapter of the entire Bible speaks to this very question.

Revelation 22:3

And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

The fact is, curses are still with us. What Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross was this: He gave every child of God the freedom to get out from under curses. This was one of His final acts by hanging on a tree. But clearly from Revelation 22:3, curses still exist and must be dealt with in the practical Christian walk.

The same argument is true regarding healing. Though by His stripes we were healed (I Peter 2:24), are all Christians healed today? No. But can they be if they reach out in faith to receive what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross? Yes. So it is with curses.

The problem with dealing with curses is that up until now, they have been generally obscure and hidden from Christian thought. While various religions around the world have become professionals at using curses (such as witchcraft, voodoo, tribal witchdoctors and medicine men, etc.) against the people of God, Christians themselves are largely ignorant of how to deal with curses. All this despite the fact that Jesus clearly enabled us to do so!

The very opposite of a curse is a blessing. Not only can Christians, by the accomplishments of Jesus Christ, learn to claim their liberty from curses, but they can also learn to receive blessings in place of those curses.

In Turning Curses Into Blessings, Carl Fox shows how the Lord led Him to expose this gap in the Body of Christ. I know of no other minister in Christian circles today whose ministry is accompanied by such extraordinary miracles — even the big names of the day. Having ministered with him personally across both the United States as well as overseas, I continue to marvel at how God uses this simple, humble man to bring deliverance to God's people where many others have failed. It is not that one individual is particularly anointed over another, for we see too much such attention in the Body of Christ. But it is simply that the Lord has taught Carl this important field of turning the curses that plague God's people into blessings, so he in turn could teach to the rest of the people of God.

May the Lord continue to open the eyes of our understanding as we pursue our relationship with Him. And may your heart be as thrilled as mine has been to see how the Lord will turn our curses into blessings as we learn to obey Him.

Paul Norcross

Kingdom Faith Ministries

Charlemont, Massachusetts

Chapter 1 A Rude Awakening

“Do you remember this man?” asked a group of ministers who came up to me after a gathering in a university hall a few years ago. They pointed to a man in the group who kept grinning from ear to ear and waving at me. But I had no recollection of seeing him before.

It was a chilly fall night and I was in western Ukraine with a fellow minister who was teaching an accredited Bible College course. In those days in western Ukraine, nobody smiled and waved—they were still under great oppression, even though the Iron Curtain had already been lifted. What was there to be happy about in a place so devastated that many people died every winter from the cold and hunger? The government-run heating plants were broken down and the Communist governments that had held this nation in bondage since 1922 had taken all the spare parts when they departed in the 1980’s. The very young, the very old, and the unhealthy perished every winter.

A smiling, happy man just didn’t look normal for that environment. The men who had asked me to identify the happy fellow went on to tell me that he was the one they had brought to me for prayer the night before.

Not many people go to the western part of the Ukraine. It is very difficult to get into this part of the country, and there is no guarantee that you can get out once you are in. This area used to have a secret city where Russian spies were trained during the Cold War before coming to the West. The interpreters that were hired, avowed atheists and communists, had formerly taught English to the spies that came to the West. The Christian minister in charge of the translation work during the class had to monitor their work closely. But while helping with the translating, they accepted Jesus as their Lord and they started showing the fruit of the Spirit that had changed their hearts and lives.

The Russian Mafia has so much control there now that it is a bad situation and Christians are still suffering very much. This area is so different from most of Eastern Europe, because the Ukraine fell under Communism in 1922, not in the 40’s, like the rest of Eastern Europe. Right after World War I, Russia overpowered them and then they lost their identity.

Immediately after Russia took over, the Ukrainian language was made illegal and so was Jesus Christ. Anyone who used the name of Jesus was killed. The churches were required to support propaganda programs during the daytime, so people could hold church services only after 8 p.m. No young people were allowed and the name of Jesus and the Ukrainian language were forbidden.

Every church, even the Orthodox, had nicely-kept graves in the back for the martyrs who had refused to stop naming the name of Jesus. In our nation, the United States, we are very fortunate. People in this nation commonly use His name in vain or slanderously, but in the western Ukraine, most people have never even heard the name of Jesus, even as a swear word. So where do you start in a place like this to reach people with the name of Jesus and the love of God? We just had to trust the Lord to give us the way to do it.

At the hall, where we held evening meetings for the general public to tell them about Jesus and God, I stood in the back and offered to pray for healing and deliverance for anyone who was sick—something these Ukrainians had never heard of. The very first night we did this, things were slow, but once people started getting healed and delivered, they started bringing others to be prayed for. Even though they had never heard of Jesus, given the seventy years of their captivity in atheism, they knew about spiritual power with long experience with witchcraft. Witchcraft was the leading spiritual power over there. The man who was brought to me the night before had been cursed with a professional curse by witches. I guess that he figured in order to get rid of the curse he had to go to a clairvoyant, which compounded his problems!

The whole village knew that the man, whom I will call Slava, was cursed. They were familiar with that kind of spiritual power. No one would do business with him, leaving him without income. His mother-in-law had come down with a virus and was dying of dehydration. His mother had a stroke and was paralyzed. The whole family with all the children was living in a one-bedroom house with no food or money. And to top it all off, the roof had caved in on part of their house. When someone brought Slava to me for prayer, without thinking twice about it, I removed the curses from him in the name of Jesus, because I was confident that that was what God said to do. Then I went on to pray for the next person and many others, totally forgetting about the cursed man.

The next night when he showed up at the meeting, the people explained through our interpreter what had happened. I had prayed to remove the curses. He had gone home to find that his mother-in-law—who had been dehydrated, dying with a virus, and who hadn’t been able to eat—was up making cabbage soup! She was feeling great and was just hungry. They went to bed very late that night because there was great rejoicing in their house. When they got up the next morning, his mother, who had been paralyzed for months, was sitting on the edge of the bed working on getting her balance.

There was no real reason to hurry down to the shop, because nobody was doing business with him anymore. They hadn’t had this much rejoicing in a long while. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when he finally got down to the shop. When he arrived, people were lined up all the way down the street waiting for him to come. The strange thing was that nobody knew that things had changed in his house. Yet, there had been an about-face regarding everything in their lives.

When they told me about what had happened to this man, I thought to myself, “I’ve got to learn about this,” but we were so busy that I did not think that much about it again. That was a big mistake! I had no idea I would suffer consequences as a result of my lack of knowledge of how powerful curses really are. I was new to the whole idea and God was using this incident with the man to teach me. It turned out to be a very hard lesson, because without really thinking it out, I had stirred up the devils in the witches who had cursed the man.

You see, just being oblivious to something does not mean it can’t happen. You may say, “Oh, well, it won’t hurt me to step off this building.” But when you hit the ground, it’s still going to hurt you, even if you don’t know what gravity is—if you happen to live through it.

The consequences began while we were still in the Ukraine. We had an incident with the Ukrainian army, “the big guns,” and had a hard time getting out of the country. At the time, it never even occurred to us that anything serious was happening, much less that we had been cursed. I was caught in a no-man zone between the borders of Hungary and the Ukraine for hours. These countries usually have no-man zones about a block wide. It was a bitterly cold day, with no place to take shelter, and I was wearing very little clothing. We had given most of our clothes away before returning home. The weather had been warmer when we arrived in the Ukraine, but it had turned very cold by the time we returned to Budapest.

When we got back to the eastern United States, even stranger things were happening. I hadn’t slept for four days; I just couldn’t sleep. My wife was waiting for me in the Southeast and we still needed to drive across the country to our home in New Mexico. So I said, “We might as well go back home now, because I can’t sleep.” We took off. We were on the Interstate Highway 20 and it was raining so hard we couldn’t see, when both my back tires went flat. There was nothing we could do about it—we couldn’t get anyone to stop to help us. Finally, after sitting there for about three hours, still not able to sleep, I just started driving and prayed, “God, please protect our tire rims.” So, we drove thumpety-thump, two or three miles an hour for miles, until we reached the next exit. When we got there we found a mechanic’s garage, but the people wouldn’t help us. This really happened! I was getting very puzzled and questioning why this was all happening.

It was the middle of the night and we didn’t know if we should go on from that gas station. Then I remembered we had an Auto Club card, so I called them, and they came to help. They towed us about twenty miles to a tire dealership, where they dropped us in front of the garage doors. There we sat for a couple of hours until the workers showed up and even they were unfriendly! After we bought a couple of new tires, we got all the way home safely.

Finally, on arriving home in Albuquerque, I found out that my business had been totally dead for many days. Everything had just come to a complete stop. Everything! I found out that people, who had loved us before, now were being spiteful. The people who were going to help us financially with the trip did not come through with the money promised, so we were extremely deep in debt. I fasted and prayed until I received a word from the Lord. It consisted of one word only, “curse,” that’s all. I picked up the phone to call a friend and he asked me, “Were you messing around with witches in Russia?” I said, “No, I was not messing around with witches! And I was in Ukraine, not Russia!” Then I remembered the incident with the man who was cursed.

We went out to pray at the sand dunes near Albuquerque. The view there is amazing. From those hills of sand on the high desert, I could see mountain ranges all around us, some as much as a hundred miles away. As I prayed, I’d watch storms come and go and move around. In this awesome beauty, I would sense God’s presence very strongly. This was one of my favorite praying places, with the sand blowing like drifting snow. For two or three hours, we praised God and prayed. When we got back, the phone was ringing—boom! Business was flowing again. Out on the dunes I had prayed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, asking God to remove all the curses I had picked up, and thanking Him for blessing us even though we were hurting and our business had been shut down on us. The curses were broken, business was back to normal, and we continued to ask God for everything to work well. We started receiving blessings again instead of being cursed.

That incident started me on a quest with God to understand about curses and how they can be broken. Little did I know at the time that I would end up traveling all over the world teaching about this subject. I have taught the topic as a class called “Turning Curses to Blessings” over two hundred times and have traveled to three different continents. By God’s grace, thousands of people have been healed of diseases and bad health conditions. Many have been delivered from oppression. Blind people can now see and deaf people can now hear. People have been healed of back problems, heart problems, emotional problems, and economic problems. People have had marriage problems from generational curses. God showed them to us and we removed them in the name of Jesus. Then later those same people would tell us things like, “You’re right! I’m from a third generation of divorcees!” All of these miracles have happened as a result of finding the curses and replacing them with blessings from God.

Let me make something very clear. All this has happened to us, not because I’m such a great person, but because I have been willing to do whatever God asks me to do. I’m just an ordinary man (and not too good a one, at that), but God is extraordinary and awesome! The visions He has given me and the things He has taught me have tremendously enriched my own life. I have had to put up with a lot of issues in my life and now I know how to deal with them.

Now I understand how they can be solved and the authority that Satan had over me before has been broken. I want to emphasize again that this has nothing to do with my being a special person. All the glory goes to God for any time anyone is healed or delivered. The promise of God is: “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:13-15).

Let me tell you a little about my background. As a small child, I used to speak to and hear from God, singing, and talking to Him as I ran down the deer trails in northern Minnesota. My communication with God was good, until there were a series of incidents in the church that caused me to rebel against God. You see, I believed that the church represented God. As time elapsed, I drew closer to the Lord and I began to ask convicting questions – the kind that make some ministers nervous when persistent little kids ask honest questions. There soon came a time when I was rejected by the church. When they rejected me, I felt God had rejected me and I blamed God. It was then that I decided I was not going to have anything more to do with the things of God. I became intensely angry and rebellious. A lot of deep-rooted curses had come through our bloodline—all the way from Ireland! A curse of anger and other curses really affected us after my whole family left the church.

Prior to that time, I had a good relationship with my family members, but something happened that caused us to be driven away from each other. After that, family relationships deteriorated. Around that time, my uncle and my father got into a violent fight. No one ever saw my uncle again—ever! My brother and I didn’t have anything to do with each other for twenty-five years. Years later, once I understood how curses worked against our family, I talked to my brother and we prayed. We became the best of friends after all those years! These curses are real! And they happen all over the world, not just to the Irish!

After I stopped going to church, I no longer looked to God for answers. Life became very difficult for me. I was a rebellious teenager working as a hand on my father’s farm. I left home at seventeen to make my own way in life. I worked at all kinds of jobs until I finally started working as a life insurance salesman. I became very successful in business and I built up my own insurance agency. I was earning a high income from it, as well as from several other businesses I started. I had the world at my feet or so I thought!

Ever since being rejected from the church, there was always a thread of anger, hatred, and violence that colored all my actions. I never had peace in my heart. I was always on the offensive and experienced a lot of rejection in personal relationships. My anger curse didn’t help too much, either. Barroom brawls, fights, angry reactions, and revenges were a common occurrence. I was smart enough to keep good working relationships for the sake of business, but was forever restless, always looking for the next challenge, never satisfied.

It was not until I was about thirty years old that I finally made my peace with God again. At that point, I resolved to serve Him and do what He told me, in spite of the cost. This was a new beginning in my life, a time of new challenges and new things happening to me. I couldn’t even begin to tell you of all the times that God protected me, times when I was sure there were angels looking after me. I lived in many places, met many people, and talked to them about the mercy of God for them. I also met my lovely wife, Sheila. We were living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when I finally began to understand for the first time about all those unexplainable things in my life and in the lives of others.

EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE

There are so many questions we ask ourselves. Why are the Irish always fighting each other? Why are there so many poor people in certain countries? Do the gypsies always have to roam around? Why can’t the Israelis and the Arabs get along, when they are both descendents of Father Abraham? How come some people get sick and the doctors are never able to do anything to heal them? What does it mean when certain countries in the world just can’t seem to stop having revolutions and live in peace?

I’ve discovered that when we ask God these questions, He will always answer them so we can learn to live a life full of rich blessings, instead of one that is cursed and tormented. We have many questions in our own personal lives that seem totally unanswerable and people conveniently say to us, “You’ll just have to wait until you go to heaven so that God can tell you.”

I’ll tell you, I have asked Him many questions! Now I’ll ask you. Did you know that God curses people? Do you know that many times you curse yourself and don’t even know it? How about all the people who curse you and don’t even realize they are doing something so bad? Do you know about professional curses? Have you ever seen a man of God curse someone, in the name of God? Curses are powerful things and nobody wants them in their life.

I have seen how curses operate in different cultures with different people. Certain races of people have things in their culture or history that cause curses. One day, here in America, an Apache Indian from New Mexico came over to my house. He was drunk and upset because of what white men did to the Indians, including introducing them to alcohol. So I said to him, “I wonder who laid out the biggest curse, us or you?”

And he asked, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, the white man didn’t know anything about smoking tobacco, either—until they connected with the Indians. I wonder which caused the greatest problem: alcohol or tobacco?”

He got really mad at me and said that was not true. So I asked him, “Are you calling me a liar in my own home?”

He replied, “No, but it just is not true.”

I responded, “Well, you’re drunk and you’re not very polite, so hit the road. Get out of here!” He was belligerent.

A week later, he came back and he said, “Preacher, I have to tell you, I’m sorry.”

I said, “For what?”

Then he answered, “Because you told the truth and I called you a liar.”

The interesting thing about this incident is that we became friends. I discovered he was a medicine man. Over a period of time, I talked to him about Jesus Christ. He confessed Jesus as Lord and renounced all his practices of witchcraft. At this time, he was born again into the family of God, delivered from the power of evil, and healed in his body. He even brought several friends to me so they could get the “whole works” too!

But, when he fell back into alcohol, he came back to our place drunken and belligerent. I told him he had to leave until he sobered up. The next day we found feathers stuck all over our property in the manner of Indian witchcraft. He had laid curses on us, because he didn’t know anything else. That was just his way of doing things.

Have you ever wondered why American Indians have historically had a much lower tolerance for alcohol than white settlers? Many become alcoholics and don’t have to drink very much to get drunk. I believe the curse is in their blood—I say this with all respect, because I have dear friends who are American Indians.

There are also certain things that are unique about the Russians and the Germans, as well as other Caucasian groups. Here in the United States people tend to classify all white people together, but they are really distinct white races. These races come from different parts of Europe and you often encounter different curses on them. Some people wouldn’t want to call them that, but it’s true!

When I look at the curses that came on this land because of slavery, I see that they caused a war that we still have not recovered from in some areas of the country. I believe the bitterness is still there. Also, many blacks have not truly received freedom. The situation, in which blacks in Africa sold their brothers and sisters into slavery, and the subsequent enslavement in this country, brought many curses on them, both in Africa and America. We see this in the gangs on the streets of America today.

But what about the good things in life? Do you ever wish something would go right for you? How many times have you desired to have good relationships with people and something keeps messing you up? Have you ever read books about when bad things happen to good people? How would you like to read a book about how good things could happen to bad people?” God wants to turn the bad into good in my life and He wants to do it in yours.

My story is only an example to help you, the reader, understand that I am just like you—probably worse—and God has used me, and is using me, to help people come out of conditions that are out of control in their lives. There’s no way I could have been good enough to deserve His favor. If there is anything in this book that speaks to you, to your situation, and helps you to get free, all the honor and respect and glory belong to God and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only way to be rescued from man’s sinful condition! He is our freedom and our peace. Look for Him and you will find Him; ask Him and you’ll receive; open yourself up to Him and He will communicate with you and you with Him. God says that if you don’t ask, you don’t receive. So, what’s wrong with asking? Nothing! It’s great, because He does answer!

This book is all about turning bad to good and many things more! So, put on your seat belt and take a ride with me. I pray you’ll never be the same after this trip and you will walk in God’s blessings all the days of your life!

Chapter 2 The Journey to Blessing

I was out elk hunting on a nice, warm, sunny day. My gun was probably ten feet away from me, lying on the ground, because I was not paying attention to the elk. I was just having a good time talking with the Lord! I was enjoying the sunshine on that nice fall day in the rugged mountains of the Gila Wilderness near the Arizona-New Mexico border. Untouched by human hands, God had made the beauty that surrounded me. I could feel His presence there. At that point, in my ministry I was seeing great results when I broke curses, but I didn’t really understand a lot of things. I started talking with God about the issue of curses, where they come from, and what they are.

“Well,” He said, “a curse that’s causeless cannot land. However, if you’re in disobedience, that’s when you’re open to being cursed.” He stated that basically to stay away from being cursed you have to always obey. He asked me if I had ever met a Christian who always obeyed. “No, I have not,” I said, “especially me!”

He pointed out to me some buzzards that were circling. They had been circling for about an hour out over the canyon in front of me, in the air currents. Then He said, “That’s the way curses are. They’ll hang around for a long time waiting for a chance to come in.” He said, “Eventually they’ve got to go back to where they came from, if they can’t come in.”

Later, I found this verse in Proverbs that states this principle:

(Proverbs 26:2) As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

A few days later, I had a vision. In this vision, I saw a big wall between mankind and evil. As I looked, I could see evil spirits constantly coming and going through the wall. When I looked closer, I saw that the doors all had locks on them. I knew that those locks were God’s protection. So, how did the spirits keep coming and going? I looked even closer and saw that the evil spirits each had a key that let them through!

So I asked God, “Why do these evil spirits have keys?” He answered, “The keys are curses that give the spirits legal authority to come in. There are many kinds of keys: some are inherited—or generational—curses, some are self-imposed, others have to do with behavior, when people disobey the words I have given them.”

If you don’t want the evil spirits to have authority in your life, you have to make sure any curses on you have been broken. A curse can't land on you unless it has a cause. Fear and sin are basically the two main causes, which take the blessings out of your life. Sin definitely does that! When God says in the Bible to do something and you say, “Well, I don’t feel like doing it, I'm not going to do it,” you have left yourself open to sin which results in getting cursed. God will not let Satan cause us harm unless we leave a legal opening. The devil is a “legal beagle” (a legalistic being) and if you leave a legal opening for him to hit you, he will surely use it. It would be illegal to curse you without a cause. God would smash his head right in and the day will come for that!

People can’t understand why curses land and why they get them. Our society has come to the point where we have made sin so acceptable that we say, “I’m sorry,” on the run and do not really repent. Repentance means to turn away and change our actions. True repentance and confession of sin will allow God to protect us completely.

One other important point is that we’re not to be so curse-centered that we don’t see the blessings of God. We’re not to be curse crusaders! That’s not what God wants. He does not want us to be so curse-conscious that we don’t enjoy our fellowship with Him and don’t permit Him to have closeness with us.

But we have to realize that if we leave an opening for curses to come in, they are going to come in. We need to say, “Hey, I don’t want the curses. I want to be rid of them.” That’s why 1 John 1:9 is so very important, because “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous-ness.” Disobedience is a sin, so, by confession, you take away the key and the devil has no authority in that area of your life.

A CURSE MUST BE REPLACED WITH A BLESSING

When I returned from working in the Ukraine, my back was literally up against the wall. I didn’t know where to go, but as I pursued an understanding of the subject of curses and how to get rid of them, the Lord started turning things around very quickly. In place of the curses, blessings from the Lord began to flow to us. Many people encouraged me to teach what I was learning out of the Word of God. So I said, “OK,” and thought I would teach it once.

From the very beginning, I realized that this subject of turning curses into blessings was going to be hard to teach because there is so much in the Bible about it. So, instead of just waiting around until I had exhausted all research on the subject, I put myself on the spot by setting a date. Then I really did have to be ready!

I remember the day before I was going to teach, I was up on the mountain with a friend praying and asking the Lord for His help. A voice behind us said, “Whenever you remove a curse, be sure to replace it with a blessing.” We both turned around at the same time and there was nobody there. We had no doubt who had spoken. We both heard the voice!

I needed to document this in the Word of God before I could teach it, and I didn’t have time to search scripture to prove it, but God is so gracious! A friend called me that night and said, “Carl, since you’ve been studying this stuff about curses, you need to look at this scripture. It says that God will turn your curses into blessings.” Here is the verse that sets the foundation for the class and is the cornerstone of this book:

(Deuteronomy 23:5) “But the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the LORD thy God loved thee.”

This is where we hit a milestone on the journey in understanding. This is the biggest and probably the most misunderstood principle that God has taught us about this subject. Not only do we need to get rid of the curses, but also we need to put blessings in their place. The best thing about it all is that the blessings work much stronger and last much longer than do the curses!

Too many people get offended when I mention that a lot of their problems could be the result of curses. They’ll say, “Oh, I don’t have anything to do with curses! That’s witchcraft and sorcery and I never touch that stuff. Besides, I don’t have any enemies that would want to curse me.” But the strangest thing is that when people who are Christians get mad at me, they quote the verse:

(Galatians 3:13) Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

They say that no curses could have any power because we are born again. Don’t they read the Bible? Jesus paid the price on the cross for our complete redemption, which includes being free from curses, but just as with everything else He made available, we have to claim it in our lives.

If you’re sick, what’s the first thing you do? You start finding out everything you can about what’s happening in your body—whether you go to a doctor, a specialist, read about it in books and magazines or talk to people who have the same symptoms. Some people even go on the Internet to find out what’s wrong. If you think you have measles, or pneumonia or cancer, and a doctor confirms it, even if you don’t like that sickness, you’re happy to have a diagnosis that will get you going in some direction for treatment and, hopefully, for a cure.

If bad things were happening to you, wouldn’t you want to know why—even if it was a curse like the one put on the Ukrainian fellow I mentioned in Chapter One? He knew he was cursed, because he was from a place where that sort of thing was openly known and talked about. His problem was that he got cursed twice by trying to get someone to go against whoever cursed him. He should have gone to God first, but he was glad to hear there was a solution to his problems—that God cared enough for him to offer him one. That’s why it is so important to understand what a curse is. That was the next thing that God unfolded to me in my studies in the Scripture.

What is a Curse?

A curse starts with an utterance. It is something that is said out of the mouth, whether a prayer, a word, an oath, an expression, or a pronouncement. The following are some dictionary definitions of a curse:

Britannica World Encyclopedia: An imprecation of evil, any profane oath; calamity invoked or threatened.

Webster’s Dictionary: A prayer that harm or injury may come upon someone; a word or an expression used in cursing or swearing;

American Heritage Dictionary: An appeal to a supernatural power for evil or injury to befall someone or something. To invoke evil, calamity or injury upon; to damn.

Wherever we see a lack of blessings, there is definitely a curse. A curse is intended to do evil to someone. It starts with an utterance—just as a blessing does. Blessings and curses both start with utterances, and the words are very powerful. God framed the world with words. When He wanted light, He didn’t build a power company, He spoke words, “Let there be light!” That light included all that we experience here on earth: color, life, and energy. Words have great authority. Negative words give Satan the authority to operate against us to steal, kill, and destroy, as in the case of Job. God acts upon our positive words to bring us a blessed life. That’s why we have to be really careful about what we say. When they are in trouble, many people make their problems worse by saying, “Oh, Lord! I’m suffering! I can’t take much more!” They are actually dumping curses on themselves (self-imposed curses) because of what they are saying. God’s instruction is to pray His answer to the problem and to confess the promises of His Word.

Whether a curse is intentional, put on you by someone else or by yourself, it always starts with words. Satan himself can’t curse you—he can only use words spoken out to bring on a curse. If a person says he can’t do something and keeps saying it, he never gets it done. If children are told that they are stupid many times and that is repeated to them over and over, they spend their whole life being stupid, even though they are actually very intelligent. Telling someone they are stupid is a curse because of the power of the words spoken against them. The power of the utterance is something that will go on and on throughout that person’s life. Those evil words entrench themselves into his or her mind and get even more embedded into their personality, unless something is done about it.

We will see in the next few chapters what God says about curses. But right now, let us look at the definition of what is a blessing. It is much more important to know the blessings He has for us if we believe Him and are obedient. He says in Jeremiah 29:11 that “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Too many times, it looks like bad things happen to us totally unexpectedly, but God wants to show us how to expect blessings. He is awesome! He wants to pour out His blessings to us in every category.

What is a Blessing?

A blessing also starts with an utterance. It is to speak well of or to praise God. You can bless God by your life, by loving Him and obeying Him. When we praise God, we are blessing Him; we speak blessings to God and to Jesus! Here are some dictionary definitions of a blessing:

Britannica World Encyclopedia: That which makes happy or prosperous; a gift of divine favor; a benediction; grateful adoration; worship.

Webster’s Dictionary: The act of one that blesses; approval; a thing conducive to happiness or welfare; grace said at a meal.

American Heritage Dictionary: An expression or utterance of good wishes; anything promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being or prosperity.

God also has blessings toward man. Some of His blessings are His goodness and promises and favor and mercy. We all need God’s blessings. God’s mercy is a blessing. Eternal life is a blessing that we have no idea how to comprehend. About a million years from now, we’re going to scratch our heads and say, “You know, this is a good deal!”

Because blessings start with words, when we speak the blessings of God to a person in the name of Jesus Christ, those things are imparted into their lives. When we speak blessings into a person’s life, these blessings have much more authority and power than do curses. When we tell our children, “You are a blessing,” “You are wonderful,” and “God brought you as a blessing to our family,” we are setting them up for happiness and prosperity in their adult lives. So many times kids are told that they were brought into the world as an accident and other things like that. There are even parents who tell their children, “I don’t love you,” or “You’ll never amount to much,” which causes them to spend their whole life living under the curse of those words.

Putting blessings into the marriage of a young couple is a very common thing. I won’t officiate at a wedding unless I get a chance to get rid of the curses first, so love can have authority in that marriage. That’s one of my requirements. Whenever I perform a wedding, I must be allowed to get rid of the curses. Just because two people love each other so much that they can’t keep their hands off each other, can’t say good night or think about anything else besides the handsome dude or the doll they are in love with, does not mean their marriage will go well.

As soon as they get married, the devil enforces the “one flesh” principle, which God says that when we marry we become one. The devil attacks the marriage right away and before very long, the lovers can’t stand each other. How? Why can he do that? Because they have each lived with their own curses all their lives. Each one was used to his or her own curses; but now they have their partner’s curses too. Because they are one flesh, the curses get exchanged between them. If these things are broken and the couple is liberated from their own curses without picking up each other’s curses, then you can talk about this union coming together and being powerful. A marriage that starts with the blessings of God can be a great example and blessing to the Body of Christ.

The Source of Blessing

by Carl Fox

All blessing originally comes from God. Have you ever heard the devil bless you? Can you imagine Satan wanting anything good for you? If he ever says anything like that, you can be sure it’s a lie. He’s trying to trick you into thinking he has your best interests in mind, so that you’ll fall into his trap. God is the source of all blessing and when He blesses, you’re enriched and you get no sorrow with it! Happiness, health, and prosperity are things that God wants for all of us:

(3 John 2) Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

There’s a great account in the Bible, which talks about a man who lived about four thousand years ago over where Iraq is now. This man really knew God. And because of him, you and I have received some great blessings from God.

(Genesis 12:1-4) Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee:

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing;

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

Did you see that? All families of the earth shall be blessed! That’s us! We’re all descendents of Abraham, if we have faith. He is our father of faith. Abraham is our father and because of this, God will bless us. This is a profound statement and a true one. “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those that curse you.” Abraham set the standard, because he obeyed the word of the Lord. This is something we can all have, if we obey. Obedience is the key! When we obey, we get blessed.

We are descendants of Abraham by faith and it is very important that we realize we do not have to fight against people. I tell those who want to be antagonistic towards me, “If you bless me, you’re blessed, and I’ll love you even if you curse me—but you’re still going to be cursed. Do you know why? Because Abraham is my father of faith. I have inherited this blessing.”

We don’t always have to be busy getting even anymore. It makes quite a difference! We don’t have to fight the battle. Before I turned to the Lord, I used to be the kind of man who would go out and get even. I was really into “Vengeance is mine, says Carl!” It wouldn’t bother me a bit to throw a man out of the car at 70 miles an hour on the freeway. That’s the kind of man I used to be! But now I really believe that “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). And now I pray that God’s vengeance will be that the person repents and comes into the family of God. It’s my business to love. It’s not my business to hate.

For example, one time I prayed for a lady who had a brain tumor and was due for surgery two days later to take it out. When God healed her of the tumor and she told the people of her religious denomination about it, they said to her, “That man heals with the power of the devil!” I was so mad that I went out into the wilderness and started screaming out to the Lord about it. Guess what Jesus said to me? He said: “You should have heard all the things the religious leaders said to me and about me!” So, what was I going to do? I needed to repent and ask the Lord to forgive me. Then I could pray for those people.

It is great how God has things set up. You don’t need to go to the Ouija board or crystal ball to figure these things out. It’s here in black and white in the Bible! You have, through our father of faith, Abraham, the ability to be blessed—to know that if you bless someone and if you obey, you’re blessed. And when people bless you, they are blessed. These are principles God established from olden times, and they are still relevant to us in the age of grace today.

Was Abraham disobedient when God told him to get out? Did he say, “I don’t feel like leaving. All my relatives are here. I'm staying here. Get lost, God?” No, he didn't. He left Haran as the Lord spoke to him. Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left his home and family. This is a straightforward example of God blessing those who are obedient to His instruction. Even if His command does not make sense to you, when you obey it, you are blessed. How about letting Him prove His word to you? How about being simple about obeying as He instructs? Sometimes people with all the religious theology and doctrines don’t have a clue about how to obey. The first sin in the Garden of Eden was about knowledge. It included the knowledge of good, not just of evil.

BLESSINGS COME FROM GOD BY OBEDIENCE

God loves to bless us when we don’t hold back anything from Him that He has asked us for. Abraham not only obeyed God down to the letter, but he didn’t hold back his son for whom he had waited for so long. He was a hundred years old and his wife was ninety and they hadn’t been able to have any children. So, when they finally had the promised son that God had spoken of, God turned around and asked him for his son back—sacrificed on an altar! I don’t know if I could have done that. You probably already know the story, but just as he’s ready to kill his son on a pile of rocks, and angel of the Lord calls out of heaven and stops him.

Abraham changed all of our lives—he was an example of God and his son was an example of Jesus.

(Genesis 22:15-18) And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,

And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:

That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

There’s nothing here about going to war, is there? Is not that amazing? It says we shall possess the gates of our enemies. Do you know how this happens? By obedience, just like Abraham.

Obedience is a very important key to avoid curses. If God says to do something, who do we think we are to sit back and wait for Him to talk us into it? How many times do we just put something off? Abraham didn’t do that. Isaac was no twelve or thirteen year-old child at this time. I believe that he was about thirty years old. That would have made his Papa one hundred thirty years old. He could have said, “Hey, old man, you’ve had your life—let’s barbecue you!” Isaac knew the power of obedience, just like his father did. He knew that if he obeyed God he would be all right, because he knew that God did not lie when He made promises. If he died on that altar, if he died in that fire and sacrifice, there would be no promise. That is how we obey God. If He said it, He really means it, even if it looks impossible! They traveled for three days and Abraham didn’t carry anything with him to sacrifice.

I’ll bet Abraham had some doubt to deal with! And don’t you think that about an hour into the journey, Isaac was starting to wonder, after he had been taking inventory on what was loaded up into the four-wheeler? “Just a second, Dad! We don’t have any lamb here!” If we will believe God, we can overcome doubt. We don’t have to figure out how He’s going to do it! We don’t have to! If we start trying to figure out how God is going to do something, that’s exactly how we don’t get it done! We can set aside the doubt and do what God asks. The results will follow.

I get called into situations in which I have no idea what’s going to happen. I just try to be obedient to the Lord. I remember there was one time with a poor girl who had been seeking deliverance for ten years. She had so many devils in her life, and her daddy was a pastor. It was a tragedy in that family. When she started to get rid of the devils, what happened was amazing. There were people standing around watching and praying, so I told them to start singing praises to the Lord. Satan does not like that and God does! Also, it attracts the angels and we needed some help. Then Satan said to me very clearly (he does not usually talk to me): “Look at these people, they think you really know what you're doing!” I just told him, “No, but I know who does!” That is the key. That girl got delivered and to this day, she’s delivered. And the church changed because of what happened that day in the girl’s life. It was not the praise that delivered the girl; it was obedience to the revelation of the Lord.

It is God’s heart that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of Him. That’s a real blessing that God wants for mankind. We don’t have to get into difficult theology about what is God’s will in this matter. If the heavens are like brass, I know a quick way to get brass to melt—with heat and with praise! Just start praising God! Praise is always God’s will.

I learned a lesson about praise one time. I went to pray for a man who had cancer. He was bedridden, in agony, a sack of bones. His wife was down the road in the office trying to keep the business afloat. So, not thinking, I went into his room and asked him, “Hey man, what’ve you been doing all day?” As soon as I asked the question, I realized it was very insensitive of me. But as I asked it, I looked into his eyes and saw a man with so much life in him. He answered, “What can a man in my position do? I’ve been praising God all day!” Now, that’s the sacrifice of praise!

We obey God by continually praising Him. There are so many intercessors that spend so much time doing warfare and very little praising God. If they would praise God more, the warfare would go quickly. You’ll draw so many angels around you. Angels “encamp around those who do warfare,” right? No, that’s not what it says; it says, “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them” (Psalm 34:7). Real warfare is fearing God, praising and respecting Him. He’s the General, the Commander in Chief. God’s love is more powerful than a nuclear bomb. God’s love takes away envy and jealousy. His perfect love casts out all fear. This is the kind of blessing that God has called us all to impart in Jesus’ name.

Obedience is warfare. If God tells you to do something impossible, you should do it, because you’re going to experience a miracle. Obedience presupposes that we make every effort no to sin. Those who say they have not sinned make God a liar. Do you want to face God with that in the Judgment Day? This is Scripture written for those of us who are already born again:

(1 John 1:9) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The blood of Jesus was not just there to get us born again. It’s there to keep us in fellowship with God Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, to have that sonship relationship. He wants to be a Daddy to us. He wants us to be so honest that when we sin we just come up to Him and say, “Father, forgive me.”

We have sins that are habitual but sometimes there are also curses there that make us keep doing them. We can ask God to give us the strength not to do that sin anymore. Religion often excuses sin by saying, “That’s not really a sin! Come on, man, we’re living in the 90’s!” But God is not fooled. What are we going to do with what God says, “I am the Lord and I change not?”

We have a responsibility for our lives, and that’s how we’re going to be blessed, if we learn to walk in the Spirit (which means to love), to stay dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ. To me, “Lord” means “Boss.” In Romania, they say “Chef,” which means boss. Jesus is a good boss; He’s got a good health insurance package (3 John 2). You don’t have to worry about social security. He gives you eternal life and He’s not going to stick you into some rickety rest home. He’s up there preparing mansions. By the way, He’s not a Jewish carpenter. He’s a church builder and a mansion builder. He said, “I’m going to prepare a place for you.” We have a lot of reasons to serve God, a lot of reasons to let Him have lordship over our lives.

Our real freedom of will is not doing as we please and slowly changing our minds. Real freedom of will is doing what the Bible says. We have been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. We belong to Him! We deserve to be his slaves. He loves us and He changes us by loving us. Christianity is not a hard, miserable thing to do. It’s like ice-skating, once you get on the ice, after learning how to do it, then you don’t get tired. You just move smoothly all over. That’s what Christianity is supposed to be for us. We just move with the Lord and He gives us the strength. He’ll give us the answers, too, even if we think we don’t need answers.

Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac and he loved God so much that he was willing to obey. God will bless us when we obey His word.

(Genesis 22:18) And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

It just does not matter what your skin color is, because the flesh is dead. The nations of the earth are blessed because we are God’s children by faith. We fit into this picture. God’s blessings are so profound that when we obey His Word, especially when it is something we don’t want to do, that’s when the blessings are the biggest.

If we want blessings, we have to obey God’s voice. If He says don’t do something, we must not do it! If we can’t quit, an addiction, for example, we tell Him, and He’ll give us the strength to quit. We cannot have God’s blessings if we are out there doing as we please. We will be cursed at every turn. Not only that, Deuteronomy proves it will bring curses on our generations to come. The Bible says that the curses go on to your children forever.

(Deuteronomy 28:45,46) Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:

And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.

In contrast, God is the source of all blessing and as we are obedient to His word, all the blessings shall overtake us.

(Deuteronomy 28:2) And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.

Chapter 4 Overflowing Blessings

The gypsy mother and her daughter smiled from ear to ear as they hurried out, wiping the tears from their eyes. Momma was healed! Her daughter, who was in her thirties, had all she could do to keep from laughing out of sheer joy! The heaviness was gone. Something had happened to her body, too. They could hardly wait to get home to tell the family what was going on. Their steps got lighter and lighter as they walked and ran and walked again. They felt as though a strong wind was blowing them on. It seemed as though it would blow them away with joy!

Earlier that afternoon, the wife of a gypsy pastor had brought these two women, a mother, and daughter, to me for prayer. They looked so depressed and oppressed and in terrible health. As I prayed, the Lord showed me I should take off some curses and then showed me which blessings to put in their place. As I ministered first to the daughter, she began to receive health. As I broke off a curse, she started to fall down in the spirit. (I quickly checked with the Lord to make sure if it was a devil or not, and it was not.) But it was interesting that when I went to catch her as she fell, she really didn't have any weight. I just guided her so that she would fall onto a couch. I believe there was an angel holding her up so she wouldn’t get hurt when she went down! During that time, much deliverance happened to this young woman. Then I knew there was something going on with the mother. I questioned her and she admitted that her son-in-law was abusing her daughter. She then went on to admit that her husband had also abused her! I told her that a generational curse had just been broken. She agreed, because she now had freedom instead of fear, and could talk about it for the first time. Then she said, “My mother and her mother also had abusing husbands.” Then referring to her son-in-law, she said, “That man has hurt my daughter so much, I hate that man! I curse that man!”

Immediately I had to teach her that we are not to curse, but rather we are to bless. As soon as she realized it, she repented and tears fell. The whole atmosphere and situation changed. When the two women got ready to leave, I prayed for Momma again and this time she got complete deliverance from her past. It was a great time!

The key to these women getting delivered and receiving blessings was their repentance before God and their forgiveness of those who had cursed them. As soon as they were able to bless their husbands, God’s blessings began to be poured out on both the mother and daughter. They were totally bowled over by all the peace, the joy, the healing, and the restoration—all in one package deal! They were obedient to forgive their husbands and they got the blessings. God is awesome and merciful! I was crying inside at the beginning as they painfully told me their stories. But when it was all over, I was ready to dance right out the door with them to celebrate all the blessings that were overtaking them.

God is our Father and the blessings He has reserved for His children are tremendous. All we need to do is open the gates of Heaven with obedience and forgiveness and faith, and He pours it all out on us.

The Blessings of A Father

In Chapter 3, we saw how Abraham is our father of faith and his blessings are passed down to us, if we’ll receive them. Now, to get on with the story, along came Abraham’s grandsons, Isaac’s twin sons. Their grandfather was dead and their father was already very old. Esau, the twin who was minutes older, was the firstborn. The boys (actually about seventy six years old by then) got into a squabble about the inheritance. Jacob, the other twin, connived with his mother to make sure he got the blessings, instead of the older son. Here you have the sin of one parent loving one child more, and the other parent loving the other more. This brings into the bloodline a curse of division. The blessing of a Hebrew father for his first son is still very important, even to this day.

(Genesis 27:27-29) And he came near, and kissed him and Isaac smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed:

Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

This blessing gave to Jacob the position of head of the family and protected him from the curses of others, as well as giving him all the blessings. Those are powerful words! And guess what? They were spoken to the wrong son. But Isaac had a problem; he favored one son over the other. Parents please don’t favor one child over the others, because it is sin and it causes destruction. I have five children and none of them will ever tell you that I love one over the other. Loving one child over another is a sin and it brings curses upon you.

When I was a child, I learned this the hard way. I was abused, because my father didn’t want me. I used to have so much pain that I would sneak away to my favorite place out on a hillside. In northern Minnesota during the day, when those clouds started moving, you could see every shape imaginable. At night, you could reach right up there and grab the stars of the Milky Way. One night at midnight, when I was about seven years old, I sneaked outside so my father wouldn’t see me. My father’s anger toward me hurt so bad that I didn’t even want to live. I lay there and looked at those clouds and the stars and just prayed. God talked to me, as He often would do. I just looked up at the sky and said, “God, some day I want to be a daddy, but I don’t want to be the kind I’ve got!” And God told me, “I have a lot of kids and I love them all the same. Do not ever favor one above another. Each of them has things that you can appreciate more and you encourage them in those things, but you love them all the same.”

I’ve never forgotten that. He said one other thing, and that’s my excuse for being childlike, “Never forget what it’s like to be a kid!” At fifty-six years old, I can get down and play with the kids just as much as when I was six years old. Children are a great heritage.

Esau and Jacob had a problem because Esau was Daddy’s favorite and Jacob was Momma’s boy. This cost Momma her life and it caused all kinds of destructive things in their lives. This is an important thing that we have to watch carefully. The wrong son got the blessing because of deception, at Momma’s suggestion. There are curses that come from deception. Deception won’t pan out. It takes truth if you want to be blessed. If you are going to get the greatness of the blessings of God, you have to tell the truth.

There was not truth there. How did the younger son get the blessing? The older son was very selfish. He sold his birthright for his belly’s sake. He had set himself up. He had self-imposed curses. Self imposed curses are on the types of curses we need to deal with in our lives—our confession, the words we say. Have you ever heard anybody say, “Well, I’ll be damned?” Whenever I hear anybody say that, I say, “No! No! Be blessed!”

Our words set us up for curses or blessings. Did you know that angels have no authority on this earth? Our words give them authority because we come from the dust of the earth, the “dirt connection,” all the way to the heavenlies. There are two kinds of angels: God’s heavenly angels and the devil’s angels (those who fell by disobedience). They all listen to our words. We have the uniqueness of having the Spirit of God in us, so when we speak we have power. We’re going to face judgment for all idle and evil words. We send out the devils against people, by speaking evil of them or even of ourselves. We say things like, “I’ll never be able to do that,” or “I’ll never understand this.”

James, the brother of Jesus, talks about the power of the tongue very clearly in the third chapter of the epistle.

(James 3:2-5) For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.

Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.

Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

I would admonish each of us that what comes out of our mouth is what is in our heart. The tongue is a little member, but it can bless or curse us.

(Genesis 27:33) And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.

It was very important for Esau and Jacob to get a blessing from their father in this situation, but the whole thing was set up for evil and to cause curses to come on people. It was a total set-up! Isaac realized that he had given the blessing to the wrong son. The father couldn’t take back the blessings he had already given to Jacob. Did you know that blessings are irrevocable, that the only person who can revoke a blessing is the receiver? That’s why, when someone says, “God bless you,” it’s there for eternity. Don’t let go of it, and even more so if we say, “God bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!” It is a powerful thing. The same permanence occurs when a person speaks a curse on someone. If it’s not dealt with, the curse stays there.

(Genesis 27:37) And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?

A blessing means the giving of all. When God blesses you, He’s giving you all His greatness. It’s really interesting that the Father’s blessing does not hold anything back. If you are not receiving God’s blessing, it is because you’re not doing faithfully what He says or you’re not obeying, because God does not hold back.

(Genesis 27:38) And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept.

Isaac didn’t have anything more to give. He had given all the best to Jacob. That’s why when someone says lightly, “Bless you, brother,” I say, “Yeah, right.” That’s just like someone saying, “Merry Christmas,” or “Excuse me.” It’s more than just a greeting or salutation. It’s something that we have mutilated by not recognizing the greatness of it. Who do you think is behind that? Satan!

If you have been a victim as a child of being favored or not favored, it is necessary that you forgive your parents so the curse can hold no authority. If you are a parent and have been guilty of this, it is necessary to repent to God and then ask your children to forgive you also. And of course, you need to forgive yourself.

(Genesis 27:39, 40) And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above;

And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.

Esau’s blessing was a curse. Isaac didn’t have authority to bless him; he’d already given the blessing to Jacob. In his trying, he literally spoke a curse. When you try to bless someone with the wrong heart, you can literally curse him or her. It took a matter of about twenty years before these brothers got back together, and then it was very timidly. It had all started with deception and favoring one child above the other. It’s amazing!

(Genesis 27:41) And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.

Curses set up evil. Esau’s father was a wonderful man and you would think he would be concerned and mourning for him. Esau literally didn’t care what happened to his father. And because of the hatred that rose up in him, he was willing to commit murder. “As soon as they get done mourning him and all the traditional stuff that the church requires so they don’t talk about me, then I’m going to kill my brother.” Unforgiveness will cause death. It opens a door to more and more evil. Hollywood makes great movies of this. They portray the image that it is honorable to carry out vengeance. It is not honorable at all!

A very important key is that you remember to forgive the people who curse you. Forgiveness is everything and we are responsible to forgive, whether people deserve it or not. When we forgive, we’re in God’s grace and mercy and love. Of course, some people don’t deserve it. Did we deserve to be forgiven? No! But God sent His only-begotten Son to die on the cross so that you and I could be forgiven. It’s a very important thing to get curses out of our lives. God sets things up so that we forgive, but it’s not an easy thing to do. The more we forgive people, the more we appreciate what Jesus has done for us.

If you have areas of your life that are not under control, I would bet that you have a curse. And I’d also bet that when that curse is gone, your life will change. I know this for a fact, because I had curses on my own life and didn’t even know it; I couldn’t figure out why things didn't work out in my life. When the curses were removed, it made all the difference.

It is not my purpose to get everyone focused on curses to the point of fear, because this is not the heart of it. I do believe that when we expose the snare of the devil, the devil loses his power and we all want his power gone, right? That is the heart of this book and all the classes that I teach. It is to cause the devil to lose his power in your life and in my life. We can touch hundreds of people’s lives with these simple keys and then we will see the devil’s dominion being broken more fully. There is so much we can look forward to if we obey God. His blessings are overflowing and He is ready to pour them out at any time!

Back a few thousand years ago, there was a man named Moses who was God’s friend and His servant. He was chosen to lead Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt. They were called Israelites after their great-great granddaddy. Did you know why God changed Jacob’s name to Israel? Because God changed him from a cheat and a “supplanter” into a “prince with God.” Jacob may have been very cursed, but the day came that he repented before God and asked Him for forgiveness. He also asked his brother Esau for forgiveness. Guess what? The curses were broken and God blessed him with tremendous blessings.

Moses finally got these people (three or four million of them) to the borders of the Promised Land, promised to them by God Himself. There he told them that on that day they would cross over the River Jordan. He told them that they would have to take the land. They would have to claim that which God promised them. We have a common thief that steals away our “land” (John 10:10). And we too have to make the good fight of faith for the promises of God.

(Deuteronomy 11:26) Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse;

God reminds them of all the commands of God and then tells them all about the blessings they will receive if they obey God.

Blessings will overtake you

(Deuteronomy 28:1) 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:

God gives us responsibility. He says, “If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God.” Only we can do this for ourselves. Then God says what he will do. He will set you on high above the nations. But this is only after the big “if” we do our part.

At one time, we in the United States were blessed, but we’re not there anymore! Wake up America! Why do you think our country is faltering? Because we did not obey the voice of the Lord! I’m talking to Christians here. It is not the army that keeps the nation free. It is the obedience of God’s people. The army is important, but it’s the people of God who make it free. We did not listen to God’s commandments diligently and now we’re in big trouble!

(Deuteronomy 28:2) And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.

Do you know what? It’s amazing to me that Christians are running everywhere looking for blessings! Have you ever been “crying in your beer” because of things going wrong in your life? The key is that if you obey God’s voice, blessings will overtake you—you won’t have to look for them. All these blessings will overtake you; they’ll catch up with you. When I was in high school, I liked to play football. I had a good arm and was fast on my feet, but the taller boys tried to overtake me. When you’re overtaken, you can’t get away! You can have the blessings so much that you can’t get away from them.

In saying, “all these blessings shall overtake thee,” to Israel, it was because they were His people. Today we as Christians are God’s people and so we can have these same blessings overtake us. God took it from the nation to the individual, because the nation is made up of individuals. Now, there are only two nations I believe the Lord works with directly in this day: the nation called the Body of Christ and the nation called marriage, because a Christian marriage is to be the example to the Body of Christ and the world of our relationship one to another.

The Christian marriage is what rises up the next generation of the Body of Christ. One of the effects of a Christian marriage is that it stops the continuance of generational gaps. It is never God’s will that we have a separation between the generations. Generational gaps are the fruit of sin in our homes and in our churches.

The Christian marriage and the Body of Christ are the two groups that God works with today. He does not work directly anymore with the nation called Israel like He did be in the Old Testament. He works with His people through the Body of Christ and through Christian marriage. Of course, He does work through single people because they are part of the Body of Christ.

Have you ever stopped to think why marriages receive such strong demonic attack? Just like the Body of Christ, attacks are relentless to keep people from seeking the Lord. They are relentless against the marriages to prevent the Word of God from being transplanted into future generations. I recently heard that Christian marriages passed the fifty percent mark in divorce rates. But when both the marriage and the Body of Christ put God first, then Christ can be the head in both and blessings will be the fruit.

(Deuteronomy 28:3) Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.

The issue is not where we live, the issue is, are we blessed? If we were not, blessed it does not have to do with where we live, but whether we obey God.

(Deuteronomy 28:4) Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body,

What we have to do to get the blessings of God back in our children is to hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord our God and to obey His commandments. God is bigger than civil and national governments. We have a King whose name is Jesus and his nation is the Kingdom of God. This is the eternal nation. It is not falling apart; it’s getting stronger. The fruit of your body can be blessed.

…and the fruit of thy ground,

Look at all the floods. We either have floods or droughts, floods or droughts! In the spring of 1998, the Red River Valley in northwest Minnesota flooded. My brother-in-law flew over it and discovered it had flooded to over forty miles wide! That’s how bad the flood was, the distance from here to another city forty miles away! That’s a big lake. This area is the breadbasket of the United States, big potato, and sugar beet country. Those aren’t blessed fields, are they? What about the Mississippi Valley? They are having the five hundred year flood every other year!

…and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

What about the mad cow disease? Such events are not without a cause, and they are not coincidental! Blessings from God flow because of obedience!

(Deuteronomy 28:5) Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.

Cupboards full! Did you know that there was a time when America had enough food stored to feed the free world for two years? That was in the 1950’s. Then the government came up with a program called “Soil Bank,” in which they paid you not to farm. Now people are wondering what’s going to happen in the year 2000!

(Deuteronomy 28:6) Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

Nobody knows whether they are coming or going anymore. It does not matter whether you’re coming or going, you’ll be blessed if you obey the Lord. That’s awesome! Even if you don’t know which way you’re going, you’ll still be blessed!

(Deuteronomy 28:7) The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.

I love this! I used to be a fighter. If an enemy flees seven ways, it will have to be in seven pieces, two men in three and a half! What chance does your enemy have against you if you hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God? They don’t stand a chance. We can save America. It does not have anything to do with deserving it. God says that if we’ll repent, He’ll save the nation.

When I was in the Ukraine in 1994, the people who were our interpreters were of the communist government, whose bosses had changed their system. The government didn’t need interpreters anymore. All of a sudden, these people were out of work. These were people with Ph.D.’s who knew English very well, because it was their job to infiltrate America. They came to me and said, “Russia is not disarming. They are still building a new submarine every month.” (Now, their nuclear submarines are so silent that we can’t detect them. They are still building them!) They asked me to talk to the President when I got back.

Do you know what? The leaders of our nation already know this. They are helping to break our nation. But, it’s not the politicians that are going to save our land. If I’m stepping on your heroes, change heroes. I’m going to keep stepping. The Bible says I can step on his (the devil’s) head! We can make our enemy flee. Honestly, we can turn around our nation so that we are blessed nation again. Get a picture of this! Get the picture: we can change things. Organizations are not the answer; they are just like another church. It’s not the church; it’s the people in the church, God’s saints getting together. We can change this!

When we pray, God often puts his angels to work to make things happen. Have you ever seen an angel? The closest that we have figured out is that there are about 30,000 angels per saint. I use mine and some of yours that you’re not using! They hate unemployment. In America, we believe more in devil spirits than in angels. But it is the angels that are really impressive and the devil spirits that are just a joke.

Let me give you an example from something that happened in Romania. We had a foot washing in one of the communion services we did. It’s not a religious thing. I’ll tell you, if you have trouble with someone and can’t get along with him, try washing his feet! Why do you think Jesus did that foot-washing experience with Peter in John 13:3-12? Because it took the arrogance out of Peter. It humbled him. It was a very humbling time. What we taught on in Romania was being worthy to receive communion. “Discerning the Lord’s body” is not just picturing Jesus getting beat up for your healing. What it’s talking about is that if I have a problem with you and I have bitterness towards you when I take communion, then I’m cursing myself. When I was done, the pastor told the people (about 250 of them) to get on their knees and repent so we could have communion, and boom! There were 250 people down on their knees repenting out loud. It sounded like a honeybee hive; it was so beautiful and productive. The Holy Spirit was in this because they were all talking and repenting and all of a sudden without any cue, everyone stopped talking.

As these people were on their knees repenting, all of a sudden I saw that the place was filling up with angels. As the people repented, the angels walked right over, cool and effortlessly, and grabbed devils. The devils were skinny and not very tall, distorted, twisted and ugly, biting and growling and kicking. They were doing everything they could to get loose, but the angels had them by the seat of their pants and by the nape of the neck and just walked out of the church with them. The devils could no longer hang on to the people because they had all repented of their sins!

So that I would not cause offense, I was not going to tell these people what I saw. The pastor turned to me and said, through the interpreter, “You have received a vision for this church and you’d better tell it.” So, I told them what I saw. The faith of these people was strengthened and encouraged. Usually, after a meeting in a church that size there would be lines and lines of people standing to be ministered to, going on for two or three hours. This day only seven people came up for prayer, five of whom wanted prayer for their relatives! The rest had received their deliverance during the communion service.

That was the power of repentance! Those angels are there to serve us. It’s quite an experience to see them at work. They have a ministry toward us in which we pray and they go out and do. We could pray something totally impossible, because to God all things are possible. Angels are ministering spirits sent to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation (Hebrews 11:14). They are our servants, there to carry out God’s purposes in our lives. It’s their job. They are the ones who can scatter your enemies in seven directions. They are the ones who can do things to cause submarines to bump into each other, to blow up, or whatever it would take to stop our enemies. We’re talking about war and war is not friendly. I’m not a terrorist. If I didn’t have Jesus, I’d be a terrorist and I wouldn’t blow up buildings. I’d blow up people! Praise God, I don’t do those things, but I do understand the reality of warfare. When you have an enemy, you have to come on full force. God has made available to us seven times more protection over the size of the enemy coming at us.

Unfortunately, there are people who just can’t accept the blessings God has for them. One time I was ministering healing to the associate pastor of a Pentecostal Church and he started getting healed. He started getting new bodily parts put in, because his intestines had been taken out and all he had left was a sack. He felt new organs being put in, and even commented to the Senior Pastor that he could feel them being put in. He felt the heat but as soon as I took out a spirit of infirmity, I was kicked out of the church. In this particular brand of church, they do not believe that any Christian can have devil spirits. All of a sudden, doctrine had become more important than deliverance. The man lost his healing as a result.

(Deuteronomy 28:8) The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

When God commands something, you can’t stop it. Right now, America’s food surplus is just a few weeks. If you don’t have some extra rice and beans stashed away, just a scare would cause everything to be grabbed up quickly. The warehouses would be out of food quickly. I’m not saying this to scare you. Wake up, America! It’s not a sin to be prepared. Joseph took all the wealth of Egypt of the day and prepared it for the children of Israel.

(Deuteronomy 28:9) The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.

If we obey God’s commandments, God will establish us. Do you know what it means for God to establish you? There could be a whole army coming after just you and they would not succeed. He can cause nuclear warheads to turn around and go back to where they came from, like a homing pigeon does! We don’t have a problem, if we do what God wants. If we won’t obey, we’ll have a big problem.

(Deuteronomy 28:10) And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.

The people of the United States of America, used to be greatly blessed. Other nations feared us. We have authority in the name of the Lord and need to use it. Now other countries are making fun of us. I travel on a lot of airplanes. Do you know what I do when I get on one? I walk down the ramp and before I get on the airplane I say, “God bless you, airplane, in the name of Jesus Christ!” There’s power in that. I had a stewardess tell the pilot what I had done and then he came back to where I was sitting, shook hands with me and said, “God bless you, sir. Thank you. I’ve never had anyone bless this airplane.”

If you say, “God bless you,” you’d better mean it and expect to have it. When you obey the voice of the Lord your God, you have authority. When I pray for you and say, “God bless you,” guess what happens? God assigns angels and whatever else it takes to work so you will be God-blessed. It’s not because of our greatness; it’s because of the power of Christ in us, the hope of glory. It’s something very real. It’s the same when you tell me that God may bless me. I’d love to see this nation get to the point where all the people of the earth shall see that we are called by the name of the Lord.

(Deuteronomy 28:11) And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

Israel was an agricultural society. But this could be interpreted for our time, to bless our work and our businesses. And, instead of our children being a cursed generation, they could be a blessed generation, and continue to serve God.

(Deuteronomy 28:12) The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.

You see, if you hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God, He shall do it! He takes upon Himself this responsibility. America is so indebted that the American dollar has very little value overseas anymore.

When we were in Amsterdam on our way back from India, we had nine hours to wait in the airport for our flight out to the USA. After twelve hours of travel from India, we were looking forward to going to a restaurant and having something good to eat for breakfast. We shopped around and they were charging $30 to $40 dollars just for a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and toast. Now is the time we should be considering investing in God’s work before the dollar loses its value totally, unless we have a big turnaround.

When our nation stood on godly standards, we lent and did not borrow. Now our nation is so indebted that the farmland is owned by foreigners, the manufacturing, the oil, and most of the things that belonged to Americans are now owned by foreign investors.

(Deuteronomy 28:13) And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them:

I like this verse! I have a T-shirt at home showing a dogsled in Alaska and it is captioned: “The scenery is great in Alaska—as long as you’re the lead dog!” Guess what the second and third dogs get to look at? God will make obedient people into being the head, not the tail!

(Deuteronomy 28:14) And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

This is what is happening in America today! How much clearer could it be? You might say, “Well, but you’re reading in the Old Testament.” I can find every one of these things in the Church epistles, and so can you. What we need to do is to obey God and repent, and His blessings will overtake us.

After Moses told the Israelites about God’s commandments and the rewards, or blessings, for obeying them, he went on to tell them what would happen if they disobeyed God. Then he instructed them that after they crossed over the Jordan River into the land of promise, they were to have a very serious ceremony. God set it up so the people would never forget. (That’s what ceremonies are all about. We have weddings so the vows and the pictures and the witnesses will all remind us that we made some very serious promises to our husbands or wives. It’s also good for the kids. They look at our photo albums and recognize something much more important than just a birthday bash.)

On that day, God told the children of Israel that half of them were to stand on Mount Gerizim and call out God’s blessings. Then, on the other side of the valley, on Mount Ebal, the other half of the Israelites were to stand and call out the curses from God for not obeying His commands. Can you imagine what that must have been like? A million and a half, or two, people calling out blessings and over yonder, another one and a half or two million calling back with the curses? Man, if I had been there I’d never have forgotten that day! I would have thought twice before I disobeyed the commands of God. Don’t you think that if our children heard even two hundred of us on one side of a gully and two hundred on the other responding, that they’d take us a lot more seriously? God loves to bless us, but He is not to be mocked. He is serious about it. We had better get serious, so we don’t get cursed by God Himself!

Chapter 5

Does God Curse?

Chapter 4

Overflowing Blessings