How Can We Recognize if a Curse is Operating in Our Lives?

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Hey, I'm Dr. Ray Self. Thank you for listening to my show today. Self-Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self. I’m going to do a very serious show today. I'm be talking about blessings and curses. Are they real? Can they happen to you? Are they happening to you? And I have to admit, yeah, they are. This is going to be an informative show. This could be a life-changing show. I'm gonna give you scriptural principles that can have a serious effect upon you. Thanks for being a part of this. This is episode 232. Cannot believe I've done 232 podcasts. It is an honor, and it is a privilege. Thank you for being a part of this. The show is sponsored by my college, International College of Ministry, icmcollege.org. Thank you for being a part of today's show. Let's get into it. God bless you.

So here we go. I want to read a scripture to you, and in the book of James verse 10, verse, chapter 3, verse 10, James says, “From the same mouth both blessing and cursing.” In other words, they come, “My brethren, things ought not be this way.” So he said out of our mouth comes blessing and cursing. You know, growing up and uh, we used to have this thing. I guess we still have this thing that we talk about, and somebody says a, a dirty word, we call it a curse word, but is there truth to that? Or are we actually speaking curses? And are we actually speaking blessings? Are blessings real? Are curses real? Well, according to scripture, yes, they are. I want to give you a couple of quick– blessings and curses are mentioned a lot in scripture. As a matter of fact, the word bless or blessing um, and curses occurs over 410 times in scripture. So Jesus referred to curses, and Jesus referred to blessings. The word curse itself is just, is mentioned 230 times. Okay. 

So, you know, is this real? And I don't want this to become super spooky, magical, mystical. But what I am saying is I believe, uh, very honestly, that what we call a curse is speaking words into the air that give demons permission to operate in our life, or speaking blessings into the atmosphere, which gives the Holy Spirit opportunity to operate in, on our behalf. Okay. So we know that there is a, a real world and a spiritual world. A natural world and a spiritual world, and this spiritual world is very, very real. Okay. And we need to understand this. So what is a curse? And how do you, how do you know if there's a curse operating? Well, actually, it's kind of, kind of logical. Usually, a curse can be described as continual frustration in a certain area, continual problem in a certain area that is frustrating, and it can occur over and over and over again, and can be even generational, going back generations, and passed on. That's what a good definition of a curse is. And a blessing. I think you would understand what that is, which is, which is really good news and good things that are supernaturally good. The Lord's will is for us to be blessed. 

One of the key scriptures in the Bible that talks about blessings and curses and, and the causes of it and the remedy for it can be seen in Deuteronomy chapter 28. In Deuteronomy 28, verses 1 and, and 2, it says, "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments, which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you on high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God:" So, there's a condition here. Now he begins, he lists the blessings, and the blessings are really, really cool. The condition is if you obey the Lord your God and be, are careful to do all His commandments. Now, this, actually, he's referring to the law. If you obey the law of God and you do everything the law of God says, then all these blessings are come, going to come upon you. And it's an amazing blessing. I want to talk about this in detail because this will, this will affect your life. Now, let me look this up for you, you know, really, really quick in my little electronic Bible here. 

So, we know we have a condition, and that condition is obedience to the Lord God. But let's look at when we meet the conditions to do everything the Lord says, what is going to happen? “Bless–” verses, starting at verse three, Deuteronomy 28, “Blessed shall you be in the city, blessed shall you be in the country.” Okay, that's pretty much everywhere. “Blessed shall the offspring of your body,” my kids, “the produce of your ground,” that's my work, “the offspring of your beast, the increase of your herd, the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they'll come up against you one way, and they will flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command blessing upon you and your barns and all that you put your hand to, and He'll bless you in the land which the Lord your God has given you. And He will establish you as a holy people to Himself.” In other words, you see, the blessings are absolutely amazing. Uh, amazing.

Uh, “The Lord will make you,” verse 11, “the Lord will make you abound in prosperity.” Uh, verse 12, “The Lord will open up for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give you rain in your land in season, and bless all the work of your hand. And you shall lend to many nations. You shall not borrow.” Uh, verse 13, “The Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you'll be above, you'll not be beneath, if you listen to the commandments of your Lord your God, which I charge you today to observe them carefully.” Now, in verse 13, a very key point, “...if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God and observe them carefully.” Well, what is that now? 

You see, this is old covenant, but there is a principle here for God's blessings of obedience. Well, how do we do that? Now, they had a problem there because nobody could actually meet all these conditions and diligently obey every single thing of the entire law of God. But along comes Jesus because what Deuteronomy 28 puts out, something, it's a test that really nobody could ever fully pass. But along comes Jesus. Jesus made it clear that He has fulfilled the law. So all the requirements of perfect obedience, see actually Deuteronomy 28 is referring to perfect obedience, in order to have these blessings. All these requirements were met by Jesus when He died on the cross and rose on the third day. And by faith in Jesus Christ, this fulfillment of these requirements that Jesus has met at the cross legally becomes yours. See, it is by your faith. What is obedience to God? Obed– the ultimate obedience to God is to believe and accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as your savior. To know that He died on the cross for you and die– and rose on the third day, and that you have the Holy Spirit in your heart, okay? And you are sealed with the seal of the Holy Spirit. You're given eternal life. You're given the, the Spirit of God. You're redeemed. You're justified. You're set apart. And these blessings become you because that's the ultimate obedience, is to be saved through Jesus Christ. His, the divine exchange He made for you. That is the ultimate obedience. Jesus became perfectly obedient because we couldn't do it. And He offer– that made Him perfectly righteous with God. And He offered Him, He offered to us His righteousness. Righteousness means right standing. Right standing comes from perfect obedience. Jesus was perfectly obedient, and He gives that to us. His obedience, let me make it simple, is imparted to us. 

So through Jesus Christ we have these blessings, and they are real. Now it doesn't mean that we can live and do anything we want. This means these blessings belong to us. Now we can do things that, that cause problems to this promise, and that is speak curses with our mouth or speak, or we can speak blessings with our mouth. When James said, Do not speak, “out of the same mouth should not come blessings and curses." He was talking to people who were saved. What should happen out of our mouth is we should be speaking and proclaiming blessings. Blessings, okay? Not curses. And so curses can come, but usually it is our fault. But, and I'm going to tell you how to be free from that. 

So I know, you know, this is a serious topic and actually I've done classes on this and usually the class last about eight hours just on this one particular topic and I'm, I'm trying to summarize it here, but what I– main thing I want you to understand for people listening to my podcast is that blessings are real and curses are real and it's coming out of the spirit realm. You see, the blessings come through God working through the Holy Spirit in you. And the curses come through demons who feel like they have permission in your life because of your continual disobedience with God, unrepentant sin, and things that you speak in your mouth. Um, for instance, um, we could speak something, and I'm just saying this by example. “Lord, you know, you know, I'm always, I'm always, I never can get a job. Everywhere I go to work, somebody that, they're always rejecting me.” Um, “Every church I go to, they, they, they overlook me.”You see, these ar,e these are curses that you're speaking upon yourself. What you could be speaking is, “You know what? I have the favor of God. I'm a child of God. I've got the Holy Spirit. I, I have these, these blessings. It says that I'll be blessed coming in and blessed going out. So, you know what? From now on, I'm blessed in whatever I do. You know what? I have God's promise of God's blessings, and my children are blessed, and my wife is blessed. The, the, the work of my hands is blessed. My home is blessed. My land is blessed. You know what? I'm, I'm the head, and I'm not the tail. I'm not being drug around. I'm the head.” You know, tail gets drug around in the dirt. “I'm above,” you know, “I'm not beneath. This is what God promised me,” you know, and I'll tell, “and I'm healed of the Lord.”

See, I'm speaking blessings. Or you can speak negative, uh, curses over yourself. Now listen,  I'm not saying you don't acknowledge that there's a problem. But when you speak that this problem will always happen. “I will always be this way. There is no hope.” And you start speaking, uh, there literally, you can tell when you're speaking it because it's like speaking poison into your soul. It’s speaking a curse. You know, um, “Every time I try for a job, every time, every time I try for a job I always get turned down.” That's a curse. Okay, I'm use this as an example, Lord. And then I remember um, um, when was it? Back, this is long, back in 2008, 2009. There was a recession, and there were a lot of people, especially in the housing and construction market. And I had friends in the construction business, and they would say things like “Nobody's hiring. I'll never get a job no matter what I do. There's no construction going on. There's nothing, nothing's happening.” Um, “there's, there's no place to work,” blah blah blah blah blah. And so they're literally just speaking curses. You know, you could say, “You know what, there is a recession out there and things are tough, but I have the favor of God, and I can have God's favor no matter what the economy is saying.” You know, and, and these things can work in your health. You, you get a diagnosis, it's bad. I'm not saying you should ignore your diagnosis. You should not. You can say, "Well, you know, I've been diagnosed with this, but the word of God says that by His stripes, I am healed. You know what? Thank you. I am healed. I'm not going to continue this way. I'm going to, I'm going to overcome this. I'm going to make it. I'm going to be completely restored. I've got a great marriage. My marriage is blessed. My marriage, yeah, we've had some issues. We've had a few problems, but you know what? My marriage is blessed. I'm, I'm a very blessed man.” 

Now, I'm not saying be unrealistic, but I am saying is watch your words and don't get all nervous about it. Just watch your words. Be careful with what you say. Words are very powerful. And my experience has been words give the Holy Spirit permission when they're in agreement with God's will and, and God's word. Or you can speak in agreement with a demon and give the demons permission. And we want to be careful about– 

The really good news I have is that this is, there's a remedy for this. There is a way to walk in God's blessings. Remember, Jesus won the way for us. In Corinthians, “He who knew no sin became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.” And what that means is He became our sin. Okay? And gave us His righteousness. When you hear the word righteousness, that means right standing. So if we're in right standing with God, that means we're in His obedience. And if we're in His obedience, then the blessings of Deuteronomy 28 belong to us. All right. If we're in disobedience and we have, not– we've rejected Jesus completely, or we keep speaking these curses out of our mouth, then the problems of Deuteronomy 28, because we keep reading on in the chapter, it talks about curses. But, a curse can be, I don't want to focus too much on curses, but let me just give you an idea. You, continued poverty, alcoholism, disease, um, depression, um, relationship issues, divorce, divorce, divorce. All right? Cancer. These things can be part of a curse. 

Now, listen, we have a natural world. There are natural– not every disease is because of a curse. Not every bad thing that happens is because of a curse. But I want to tell you something. When you see something unexplain– just inexplicably continually happening over and over, that is an indication of a curse. But there are remedies for it. There's an answer for it. And I want to talk about the answer. I know this is a heavy show. There's a lot we could cover, but let me give you a solution. Here is a seven-step solution. Uh, some of this came from a book, Blessings and Curses, You Can Choose by Derek Prince. So I do want to give credit where credit is due. But let me talk to you about, about the solution. All right. 

The first thing you do if you think there's a curse operating is confess your faith in Jesus Christ. It’d be something like this, “Lord Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God. The only way to God is, you died on the cross and you rose from the dead.” That's step one. Okay. Now, I don't want to make this a formal repeat after me, but do it from your heart. I think this is good. Uh, number two, repent. If you, if you've been rebellious and you've got sin, you know, repent. Take responsibility. “I confess, Lord, I give up all my rebellion and all of my sins. I submit myself to you, Lord. I submit myself to you.” Step two. Step three, “I confess my sins before you. I ask you, I ask for your forgiveness, especially for any sin or word curse that exposed me to a curse. Lord, please forgive me and release me from the consequences of my ancestors' sins.” Now, that's something, that's a whole nother topic about generational sin, but you know, “Lord, release me,” if there's any generational sin. So we're, we're asking forgiveness for anything that we've done that's opened up ourself to a curse. Four, forgive anybody who's ever wronged or harmed you. And it should, maybe your prayer would go something like this. I suggest this. “By a decision of my will, I forgive all who have harmed me or wronged me. And, and just as I ask you to forgive me in particular, I forgive…” fill in the blank. So we forgive. Remember, the Bible says very clearly, if we do not forgive, we'll not be forgiven. So forgiveness is very important. Real quickly, about forgiveness. You're not saying that what they did to you was good or correct and didn't have consequence. It did. And it's not okay what they did, but you are saying you're releasing them to God. And you let Him take care of them. Okay? You're not their vindicator. You're not going to punish them. You're not passing judgment on them. You turn them over to the Lord by forgiving them. That's a whole nother great topic. So I’ll also– then number five, step five, renounce any contact with anything occultic or satanic. “I renounce,” here's the prayer. “I renounce all contact or anything with the occult or satanic. If I have any contact objects, I commit myself to destroy them. I cancel all of Satan's claims against me.” Now listen, the occultic should be self-explanatory. Uh, psychics, tarot cards, um, you know, if you, if you've been in the New Age movement, uh, yoga, I keep bringing that up. Yoga's got a lot of demonic stuff with it. Anything that is spiritual that's not of Jesus Christ is an abomination to God. So, if you've been involved, you know, uh, divination, sorcery, witchcraft, uh, masonry, if you've been involved in any of that stuff, you repent of it.

Now, here's a prayer to be released from any curse. It goes like this. “Lord Jesus, I believe that on the cross, you took upon yourself every curse that would ever come upon me. So, I ask you now to release me from every curse over my life. In your name, Lord Jesus Christ. By faith, I now receive the release, and I thank you for it.” Now, the Bible says in Galatians that Jesus redeemed us from curses. Okay, so where we're confessing that. Now the last step is believe you have received and go in God's blessing. The prayer or the proclamation is, “Lord, I open myself to receive your blessings in every way, in every way you want to impart them to me.” Amen. And so that's just an easy way…let me let me just kind of uh, re– go over this real quickly again. Number, step one, confess your faith in Jesus Christ. You can do that with a proclamation and a prayer. Number two, repent of all your sins. Take personal responsibility. Number three, confess your sins, ask forgiveness for them. Four, forgive people who've hurt you. Five, renounce anything occultic or satanic that you've been involved in. Six, pray for the release from any curse. Seven, believe that you've received and you're in God's blessing. 

Okay, heavy show. We covered a lot. I hope that helped you. Excuse my little cough here. Let me pray with you. Heavenly Father, I thank you for everyone listening to this podcast. I thank you, Father, excuse me, that by the blood and the power and the authority of Jesus Christ, you've given us blessings. Lord. If there's anything in our life that's causing a curse or problem to come upon us, we, we thank you, Lord, for that. We praise you, Lord, for that. Uh, we thank you, Father, that uh, you will forgive us. You'll set us free, Father. Lord, anyone listening to this show and they're convicted, Father, help them, Father, to be set free, Father, we confess our sins. We forgive those that have hurt us. We renounce anything that we've done that we shouldn't have done that is occultic, Father. Even unintentional, Father. Father, I ask you to forgive our ancestors, any ancestor that has opened up a doorway for us to, to walk in a curse, Father. But Lord, I thank you according to your word, Father, since Jesus redeemed us from the curse, that we now have the blessings of Abraham, the blessings that were in Deuteronomy 28, Father, that we are blessed coming in, blessed going out, the head and not the tail, and all the work of our hands is blessed, Father. I thank you for blessings, Father. I praise you for this, Father. I thank you for everyone listening to the show. Bless them, Father. Let them walk in the newness of life in, in abundance. Father, you said you come to give us life and life more abundantly. I thank you, Father, for everyone listening to me now, that they have that abundant life. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen. Amen. 

Whew. Heavy show. Had to cover a lot in a short period of time. Hope it made sense to you. Uh, it’s, it's a very serious show. Thank you for being a part of this. Um, if you'd like to donate to help us continue the show, that would really be nice, but it's up to you and the Lord. Uh, easiest way, just go to icmcollege.org/donate. Just pick general fund. icmcollege.org/donate. You'll see a donate page came up. Um, I think there's a scholarship fund, a general fund there. Whichever fund you want to contribute to, it all helps us a lot. I appreciate that. And then share this, you know, download and share with as many people as you can. Thank you so much for being a part of Self Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self. God bless you, now that you're blessed. You are blessed. Amen. Amen. You've got the blessings.

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