What is a Blessing?

Chapter 4

What Is A Blessing?

A blessing..…to pronounce a wish of happiness onto someone, or to set apart for holy purposes, to praise or glorify God or the Lord Jesus Christ, to speak God’s goodness to one another.

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
(which used the KJV to
explain it’s definitions)

      God spoke a blessing over Abraham that affects every believer today. This is one of the first examples of a blessing in the Bible. Notice a blessing is a spoken utterance, just as a curse is also spoken. A blessing starts with words. It is real, it is tangible, it even carries visible substance.

It is interesting to note that everything in the garden of Eden was available to Adam and Eve if they did one thing – obey. When they disobeyed, a great curse came upon all mankind to every color, nation, creed, or religion. Obeying God’s Word without fail will always bring blessings. Notice each of the following blessings in Deuteronomy hinge upon hearing and obeying the voice of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 28:1-14
And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:
And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.
Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

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.

God Wants To Bless His Children

It is always God’s will that mankind be blessed. A curse can only come from disobedience. The first thing that God did for mankind was to bless them. Redemption of mankind was God’s answer for their disobedience. It started clear back in Genesis chapter three. Jesus redeemed us from the curse in Galatians 3:13.

Galatians 3:13
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

Even we, as born again Christians, cannot willfully disobey God and expect that curses will not fall upon us.¹³ The curse is the consequence of sin, iniquity, and transgressions. We as Christians must do our very best to walk as Jesus walked. But God knew us from the beginning to the end, so He provided us Christians with I John 1:9.

I 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.

In short, all of God’s goodness and promises are blessings. When we do not see those things happening, we must seek to find the cause. We want to have God’s fullness and be the kind of Christians that demonstrate God’s blessings which attract the lost world. If we ignore our right to receive God’s blessings because of traditional teachings (such as the one which says that Christians cannot be cursed), and the world can look at us and see that our Christian life has all the same problems as non-Christians (in contradiction to all the hundreds of divine promises of blessings in the Scriptures), what will convince them of the goodness of God and the salvation and deliverance that is available through Jesus Christ?

The promises and blessings of God should be both real and obvious to a dying world. A blessing is the opposite of a curse. A blessing sets someone apart for holy purposes, but a curse sets them apart for unholy purposes. We want to shine with God’s blessings!

In the fall of 2002, the authors were ministering together with a team of ministers in Romania. Carl was speaking at a Gypsy church in an inner city church in the capital city of Bucharest. That night, God moved powerfully to break the authority of the bastard curse off the congregation, and the results were astonishing. Recounting the incident later, he wrote:

I had taught on the curse of the bastard in the United States a couple of times. I was still in the middle of studying it and trying to figure it out. As I began to teach on this subject and build towards what the Word had to say, the Lord began to show me how these people were so badly affected by this curse.

The person who was interpreting for me told me that she refused to say the word “bastard”. I showed her that it was in the Bible in Deuteronomy 23 and in Hebrews 12, also. She still refused to say the word even if it was in the Bible. I asked her to just say the word “illegitimate” but she continued to refuse because these people, she said, had so much guilt in this area.

As we continued to have a discussion in front of the whole congregation, an elderly Romanian Gypsy woman spoke out, in Romanian, “You mean bastard, don’t you?” I do not remember exactly what the word is in Romanian, but it was quite clear that she had understood. At this point, others in the congregation got very excited and began waving their arms and saying to my reluctant interpreter, “You interpret what this man is saying. This is very common and nearly every family in the church has it in their bloodline.”

The elderly woman continued speaking. She said, “I myself never knew who my father was. Does the Word of God have an answer for this?” I said, “Of course it does!”

I continued to share and to teach them what the Word says about the bastard curse. When I was finished, I asked them if they wanted me to pray and get rid of that curse.

“Of course,” they shouted! “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

All the people hurried up to the front and we prayed to God in the name of Jesus Christ to break every curse of the bastard off each and every one of them, remove all the condemnation from it, and bless them so that they could come into the congregation of the Lord. We prayed that their fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ would be very sweet and that it would have the power that God intended for them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There was much joy and rejoicing. Tears were streaming down their cheeks. They truly felt the difference deep down in their souls. I then urged them to go home and get their families together and break off the curses in the name of Jesus Christ and speak blessings in His name. I told them to speak the blessing that they would come into the congregation of the Lord.

Within weeks I was getting e-mails from Romania telling of the excitement that was happening in the church. There had been a great outbreak of the gospel of the Lord Jesus and it was moving forward in the young people. The church was gaining in numbers every day, and at each service there were thirty to forty new people. This growth has continued. Many services have been standing room only, and the heart to evangelize has spread into the pews. The people were so excited that they were going out 2 hours before church was starting and winning the lost and bringing them to church. A new church has been planted from this work about 40 kilometers away.

When people are set free from their bondage, as from the bastard curse, they are set free indeed and the Kingdom of God expands!

¹³Proverbs 26:2
As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

Sin, willful disobedience, bring the cause. This is what enables curses to afflict believers when they sin.

Chapter 5 – Redeemed From The Curse

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