How to Overcome Absolutely Anything. Part two: Free from the curse! By Shayne Holesgrove.
God’s got much more for us…
We are looking at “How to Overcome Absolutely Anything” and before we can overcome anything we need to know that it is possible to overcome anything and that we can enjoy victory. That is what God wants for us. This blog post is part of a series and so if you missed my first post I encourage you togo back and read it..
1 Corinthians 15:55-57 The Mirror Bible, “‘O death where is your sting? O grave where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the law. Your victory is not a maybe, because of the magnanimous doing of Jesus Christ, it’s a given.” Magnanimous means very generous in forgiving, especially towards someone less powerful.
Your victory is not a maybe. God wants you to be victorious. He has made you victorious. He has set you up for victory. If you are experiencing anything less than victory, it’s not God’s fault. Too many people blame God for their misery not realising that He has set us up for abundant life, but we need to choose it. “Your victory is not a maybe because of the magnanimous doing of Jesus Christ it’s a given!” The Message says, ‘but now in a single victorious stroke of life, all three – sin, death, guilt are gone! The Gift of our Master, Jesus Christ, thank God!” Verse 58 (Mirror) says “for this reason you can afford to absolutely to be settled and rock solid in faith persuasion and always ready to go beyond where you have gone before. Your doing is now inspired by your knowing that you are in Him. If His resurrection is yours, then His victory over sin and death is equally yours.” If we died with Him, and Romans 6 to 8 talks about that, it shows us how His resurrection is ours – His victory over sin and death is equally yours! Your victory is not just a maybe, but because of what Jesus has done for you, your victory is secured! Your victory is definite, not maybe! It’s not definitely maybe. It is definitely!! Amen!
Let’s look at Deuteronomy 28, an exciting passage which a lot of people butcher. “ If thou shall harken 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 shall set thee high above all the nations of the earth.” How many of you want to be set like that? Set above all the nations of the earth? Scripture says that “all these blessings shall come upon thee and overtake thee.”Isn’t that awesome! Imagine blessing overtaking you, but what do most Christians in our circles do? They try and overtake the blessing! They are trying to take over the blessing! That’s simply because they don’t believe that they are blessed! God’s will is that all these blessings come upon you and overtake you. Then it says, “IFthou shalt harken thy voice unto the Lord thy God.” ‘If you will listen to the voice of the Lord your God’ – there is a condition. And now this is where people go pear-shaped. They start telling you what you need to do in order to be blessed by God: “How to live a blessed life”, No. 1: Tithe. 2: Fulfill all the law. 3: Make sure you don’t do anything on the Sabbath except Sabbath and go to church… And they just keep listing it… “Don’t smoke or drink. Don’t eat pork. Live holy” The truth is that you cannot do anything to attract God’s favour and blessing. Nothing you do will qualify you to be worthy to receive anything from Him. We’ll look at this a bit more in a moment.
Remember where this passage (Deuteronomy 28) is. It’s in the first part of the Bible. Everything we read in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, needs to be interpreted through the greatest event of all time – the death and resurrection of Jesus. That event changed everything, forever. Sadly most believers live and act as if Jesus changed nothing.
Verse 3: “you will be blessed, in the city, blessed in the field, blessed in the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, and the increase of your kind and the flocks of your sheep. You will blessed in your basket, blessed in your store” if you have a store. If you don’t have a store it can’t be blessed. A hundred times zero is………………….zero!!! “Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies that rise up against you to be smitten before thy face. They shall come in one way and flee before thee in seven ways” and it goes on to show how blessed God wants His people to be. Isn’t that awesome! It’s just that technicality of ‘if’. “It shall come to pass that it thy will not harken or listen to the voice of God, to observe to do ALL His commandments and His statues that I command thee this day, that ALL these curse shall come upon thee and overtake thee.” Now would you prefer to have blessings overtake you or curses overtake you? Blessings obviously! Everyone wants the blessing of God to overtake them!This passage of Scripture is saying: “hey, fail in one, fail in all!” And so if you make one mistake what’s going to happen is that you’re going to be cursed, not just with one or two of these curses, but all of these curses. All of these curses are going to come upon you and destroy you. We are going to read through all the curses, because it’s exciting (kidding), but we will get there in a moment. So, if you want the blessing of God, what do you need to do? The Bible says, in Deuteronomy 28 that if you want the blessing of God you must follow ALL His commandments, you have got to do EVERYTHING He says. And if you don’t want the curses you must not fail once! That’s quite a high standard. It’s like me pulling out a gun and saying, “whoever cannot touch the ceiling (about 10 meters high) in the next five minutes will get a bullet in their head. I’m going to kill you!” It’s impossible for you to jump in your own ability and touch the ceiling, right? That’s what Deuteronomy 28 is basically saying the same: You need a Saviour! You can’t do this yourself!
Galatians chapter 3 verse 13 says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.” He has taken you out of the curse of the law! Isn’t that awesome! That’s Good News! Praise Jesus! “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is writing, ‘cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.’ The blessing of Abraham…” now think about what the blessing of Abraham was and is. This scripture is saying that Jesus did what He did so that you could get the blessing of Abraham! “…that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ…” and I will put in there, ‘not because of their hard work’ “…that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith…” not works. Many believers think that blessing is something we have to achieve; that there is something we have to do. But the Bible is very clear there: Jesus did it for us; He was obedient for us because He knew that we would not be perfectly obedient.
So you thinking you are great? You’ve obeyed the Ten Commandments and you have got it altogether… “surely God should bless me?” You could not be more wrong! God doesn’t bless you because of your behaviour. He doesn’t bless you because you are good. He doesn’t bless you for any reason except that HE IS GOOD . It’s not about what you do, but what Jesus has done for you. And that’s the message which we have to get out! This is the gospel (good news) of Jesus!
Too often people use Deuteronomy 28 to bring condemnation on people. Well-intended ministers just pile on the to-do list! But Christ took the curse for us! Amen! The message of Jesus is good news that you do not have to strive to be good and right with God. Jesus came and made us right with God. If our gospel is not good news it is not gospel. Verse 16 continues, “Cursed shall thy be in the city, cursed shall thy be in the field, cursed shall be thy basket and thy store,” so now this is saying that it doesn’t matter how much you’ve got in your store, it is cursed. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the wealth of the world, it is cursed. This is why for some people things just keep going wrong. Verse 18, “cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land”, this is quite depressing but I want to get through it, “The increase of thy kind, and the flocks of thy sheep, cursed shall thy be when thy comest in, and cursed shall thy be when thy goest out.” You know the first half talks about being sandwiched in the blessing, and the second half talks about being sandwiched in a curse. It’s terrible! Verse 20, “The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexations”which is confusion, destruction, trouble and rebuke. “Cursing upon all thou settest thy hand to do, until thou be destroyed.” So the blessing is that you can put your hand to anything and it prospers. When you put your hand to something does it prosper, or do things just seem to never work out for you? That’s a curse and it doesn’t belong to you! God wants you to put your hands to things and see prosperity!
If you’re in the place where things don’t seem to be working out, then pray with me: “Father I thank You that You are good and that Jesus did what He did so I could be completely free from the curse, and any curse! I resist, rebuke and break the power of the enemy in my life and declare ‘thus far and no further!’ I am blessed. I am prosperous. Everything I put my hand to is prosperous because I am a child of the most High God and He lives in me! I speak life and prosperity over my life in every area, in the Name of Jesus!”
So we have said, ‘…until though perish quickly,” not just perish slowly, “because of the wickedness of thy doings” this is a nice one, “The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until He have consumed thee from off the land – where you go to possess it. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption.” Consumption refers to a progressive wasting away of the body. Something that causes you to waste away is not God. It is a curse. And then it goes on to say, “with an inflammation, (redness, heat, pain) with an extreme burning, with a sword, with blasting(blasting is sudden, violent winds – talking about nature not your stomach! But if you’re suffering with the latter we will pray with you.) It goes on to say, “and with mildew…” (this is any kind of fungi, usually grows on plants or any organic materials. It also refers to mould in your house from dampness. I have heard many testimonies of people rebuking the mould in the homes and it goes away!)
We have been redeemed from all of those curses! If you’ve identified anything in your life, along those lines as being a curse in your life I have good news for you: it is not for you. Don’t except the devil’s unhandy-work in your life. Don’t just accept things as normal, when God’s Word shows us that we have been redeemed from perishing (John 3:16)!
If you’ve identified any work of the enemy in your life and want someone to pray for you, then please send us an email and we will get back to you! You can also contact us if you’d like an audio copy of my teaching: “How to Overcome Absolutely Anything!” Email us at info@gracelifeministries.co.za. Part three coming soon…