Accepting Blessing, Rejecting Curse [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Because when you accept Christ by grace, through faith, everything changes and the curse no longer has a cause in your heart. Hallelujah! That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear today's message in a series titled, The Power of Blessing, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching in the series, Praying with Power.

Here is Alan Wright. I can't do enough. That comes from that kind of, and what that does, what does that make you, what does that do to you? As soon as you say that, it's like, if I can't do enough, why keep trying?

Right? Why keep trying? It's a feeling of doom. The land is full of milk and honey, yeah, okay, but, but we're just, we can't go on to tell you. When what God had wanted them to do was go in and see the land is full of milk and honey.

The fruit is sweet. Look at this. Look where we're going. We hadn't arrived yet, and later we'll learn from Joshua. They have to go in. They have to take Jericho. They have to take the Philistines. They have to keep fighting battle after battle. Your promised land is a battleground. It's a process that was going to go on, but nobody ever gets anywhere if they wait to celebrate and they wait to bless themselves and others until they arrive. All right, if the first form of curse is eh, the second form is nah.

Are you having fun taking notes on this? Eh and nah. Okay, nah.

Verse 31. The men who had gone up with them said, we are not able to go up against the people. That's the, we are not able. That's the nah. Can we do it? Nah.

You think we'll be able to conquer them? Nah. You think I'll be able to improve?

Nah. Do you think I'll be? And this takes two forms usually, all these negative kinds of nah statements in your life.

It really ends up, and you got to watch for this. Now, no elbowing, no kicking under the pew right now because we're talking about ourselves and we're trying to recognize, you know, this, but you'll see this kind of negativity because I'll come up with the statement, you always. And I want you to be on the alert for that.

I know it, you're already on the alert because it really bothers you, but I'm telling you why it bothers you so much. It's like, well, you always act like that. You know, you always are impatient. You always are messing up at that thing.

You always are. And there's something inside you gets really mad about that, really bothered by that, or really down about that. And the reason for that is because it's a statement that has now moved instead of addressing a particular behavior or something that you've done. It is now trying to generalize this into a destiny statement. Again, what I'm trying to show you here is that so much of generally what I'm referring to as curse is designed to get you to believe that you're stuck, doomed, can't move forward, can't get victory.

Those are the lies from the pit of hell. You always, you get a little bit better, but you always stumble back in that same sin. In other words, I'm going to let, I'm going to announce a destiny over your life and see if you'll just agree with me. The other side of this is you'll never, you'll just never change. You always do this and you'll never, you'll never be able to go into the promised land. You'll never be able to get over that problem. You'll never be, see it's a form of curse. We have to reject all the you always and the you'll never because there are lies from the pit of hell that are trying to get us to agree that we're stuck in this place so that we'll just live in a wilderness. Eh?

Nah. And the third that I want to make mention to you is highlighted by verse 31. The men who had gone up with them, no I'm sorry verse 33, and we saw the Nephilim. This is believed to be some breed of humanity because of angels that had wed with humans or something and they're giants and you know just inflating all of this, right? And we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers and so we seem to them.

So now they've come back and called all the people grasshoppers. And I don't know how you spell this, but here's how I would symbolize this form of curse. Let me know later how to spell that. You're going to go and take the promised land and they got giants in there? You think that you're going to get that job?

You think that you could graduate from that school? Okay, we'll okay, what is this? There is a form of curse that we face all the time that is just wanting to mock and belittle a dream. And sometimes the biggest spiritual warfare you'll ever face is when there's a truly God-given dream. We don't want to ever feel like we're just fools and so the enemy will find a way to mock that.

There are many, many different expressions to the kinds of curses that we'll receive, but all name calling falls into this category. You're a grasshopper, okay? Let me say some label about who you are that you will then identify yourself in this way so that when the day comes that you're supposed to move forward, you'll have a little tape recorder in your mind going, but I'm a grasshopper so I can't, somebody else needs to do this, somebody else can go in the promised land, but not me, I'm a grasshopper.

Somebody else can be called to that, somebody else can have that victory, not me, I'm a grasshopper. And so labels that get spoken over our lives are meant to belittle and to the extent that we believe them, they have a huge, huge impact on our lives, right? So these are just some of the ways in which we experience these negative forecasts over our life. Why are people doing this? Well, sometimes there are people that in our lives that just, they just have nothing but hate and curse in them. There are some people like that, and there are some people who will just hate you and they'll just want to hurt you, but on the whole, I think it's more often like this that people are afraid and fear when it has a voice and speaking to someone else, that fear comes out as a curse statement, right? I mean, if a parent has a child who comes home with an F on the report card and the parent says, you'll never amount to anything with grades like this, it's weird because the parent's saying something that's the exact opposite of what the parent wants, what is the parent actually expressing? The parent is expressing actually his or her fear of what might happen. And so the negative feeling that the parent has or any relationship, it gets expressed through the voice of fear and it comes out as curse. But see, the voice of faith that agrees with God's word, what happens is that what it does is it doesn't walk by sight, it's moving by faith in God's word, and so it has a voice and that voice comes out as blessing. This might have been a difficult situation, but here's a positive thing that I see coming. There might be giants in the land, but here's what God said and here's how I see our destiny moving forward.

Just understand that about, you know, other people have fears and they often want to transfer those fears to you. Other people have shame and instead of knowing how to take that to God, they want to transfer it so that you'll help bear their shame. And this often takes form and curse. Now this becomes much profound theological thought in this when you begin to understand that in the Old Covenant it was clearly articulated in Deuteronomy chapter 11 that curse has to do with the law.

Because in Deuteronomy 11 26 the Lord says through Moses, see I'm setting today before you blessing and curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God. So blessing for obedience, curse for disobedience, the word of the Lord. Now did the word of the Lord change ever?

No, it didn't. The word of the Lord stands. Blessing for obedience, curse for disobedience.

And the problem is that we all know that we've been disobedient. We're all born in sin, we all mess up. So why does curse land so easily? Why is it that we will struggle to accept a compliment and yet our hearts can so easily gravitate to agree with something negative about who we are?

Why is this the case? It's because we know that we have sin in our lives. We know that we have not been perfectly obedient. So what has happened is that there is a connection between trying to live a life to measure up to the standard of the law and curse. Because if you live your life based on whether you will be good enough to deserve blessing, there will always be an opportunity for the accuser, for the enemy of your soul, for the powers of hell, for the voices of darkness, for all the voices of curse in the world.

There'll always be an opportunity to link into that place in your heart that knows that secretly you keep messing up. And that's the part the enemy wants the enemy wants to come in and attach all kind of thoughts to, right? This is a big part of what happens with spiritual warfare. This does not mean that the law was bad or wrong. It just points out the problem. The law points out the problem.

The problem is you're born in sin and you can't overcome your sin on your own. So the law comes and says, here's what you should look like. And all you do is you look into it like a mirror and you go, I'm not that.

And so it just points out, I've got a problem, but it has no power to fix the problem. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. You did well on a test, accomplished a goal, or proved yourself competent. Such affirmation is nice, but it's not the way of God. God's strategy is to declare your worth before you have done anything to prove it. In the kingdom of God, blessing is the fuel for your productivity, not the reward for it. Maybe you need your heart to be healed from old wounds caused by others withholding their blessing, or maybe you're ready to shatter that invisible ceiling that keeps you from soaring. Either way, Pastor Alan writes, the power of blessing will change your life. Change how you interact with others as you discover the ancient skill of the Hebrew patriarchs as they bless their children. Learn how to tune your heart to accept blessing and reject curse.

Most of all, drink in the unquenchable blessing of God in Jesus Christ. Get motivated God's way with Alan Wright's seven message CD album, The Power of Blessing. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4869. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Years ago when we were doing our college looking around with Bennett, and I don't want to think of this moment. I was at Wheaton, Illinois, the campus there. We're taking a campus tour. Well, a young lady was taking us around. It's hot.

Let's stand under the shade of this tree. We're standing there, and she's talking, going on a little spiel about some area of the campus like that, and she kept looking at me, and she looked closer at me and looked closer, but she kept talking. She's looking at me and just focused on me, and I thought, man, I didn't know I was that good looking, but anyway, she just looked. She just focused on me, and then finally she said, and she didn't use Mississippi. She said, and this building over here, and sir, you have a spider on your collar, and she and everybody just stopped, and I couldn't, you can't see your own collar.

Did you know that? I don't know. Is it a tarantula? What has fallen out of this tree on my collar, and everybody, including my own children and my wife, stand there looking, affirming, yes, you have a spider on your collar, and I'm like, which collar?

Where? Somebody do something, right, and the woman didn't do anything, and my family didn't do anything. I had to say, would somebody come over here and get the spider off of me? And I thought, that's what the law does. The law says, and sir, you have a spider on your collar. Okay, what are we going to do about that? We're going to stand here and tell you that you do not measure up to the law.

You've got a problem. The law said you've got a problem, but it didn't do one single thing to empower anybody to do something about the problem. So when Jesus came, did he say, well, God in the Old Testament was kind of strong about sin, but I'm kind of lax on sin. No, he didn't. Did he say, God used to be kind of mean, but now he's kind of nice, and I've brought expression to the new side of God. No, Jesus came so that God's word would stand true, and yet there would be redemption from that curse. It didn't change that curse comes with disobedience.

What changed was who took the curse. So Jesus comes, and he lives a perfectly obedient life as a full human being. He is your brother. He is a human being, and he's also totally God, but he came, and he lived a human life and never sinned. What do you get if you never sin? Only blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, and he went to the cross, and there that sinless human being hung on the cross fulfilling what Deuteronomy had said, that whoever hangs on the tree is cursed, because what happened is Jesus hung on the cross and experienced a sense of God's forsakenness.

What he experienced was this. God the father treated the son as if he had committed your sin, as if he committed my sin. He looked upon him as if he had committed everyone's sin, past, present, and future, and therefore all curse that accompanies disobedience to the law comes upon Jesus, and he takes into his being our sin, and he takes upon himself the curse that was against humanity, and God's word is fulfilled. Curse comes for disobedience, but it was because he was reckoned as disobedient, and blessing comes for righteousness, and so what happens when you accept Christ is that a great exchange takes place. He became cursed, and you become blessed, and now you are treated as if you'd never sinned, and you are reckoned by God as if you had lived the perfectly righteous life that Jesus lived so that so that all the blessings that were spoken to Abraham, the blessings that were spoken to Moses, have come down through the generations. They're all yes and amen in Christ, because when you accept Christ by grace through faith, everything changes, and the curse no longer has a cause in your heart.

Hallelujah! You are what Proverb 26 is speaking of. You're the man, the woman, who has no cause for curse, and so therefore it can't light. When Paul says, Galatians 3, all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, curse be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.

When he says all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, he is saying essentially this, if you seek to live your life by a standard of whether you can be righteous enough to measure up to the law, then you will live as if you're still under the curse. And what this means is that every single day we wake up in the morning and we find a way to preach the gospel to ourselves by reminding us what Jesus has done for us. Here's how you deal with all these negative statements over your life. Here's how you get healed from the wounds of the past and here's how you reject them when people speak them to you today. You get up in the morning and you preach the gospel to yourself and you bless yourself and you say I've been redeemed from the curse of the law because of the blood of Jesus and there is no cause for any curse in my life. Instead I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ and that's who I am.

In other words, a new identity causes you when someone speaks a false identity over you to recognize it and say that's not me. I was asking the prayer team what do you what do you do? You know when somebody blesses you, let me tell you what you what to say, I receive that. People have such a hard time receiving even a compliment. People have a hard time all you know and Christians were like somebody come up and say boy I tell you that that that was a great song you just sang what a man you have got a gift oh man shucks no it's just the Lord and I'm just no and it uh you know what the right answer is? Thank you. I received that. That encourages me. It took me a long time in my life. I used to block block blessings block them stiff arm them you know why don't reject blessing welcome it in well what do you say when the curse comes listen you can't you're not good at that you can't do anything you're gonna mess up you're you've got a bad and I was trying to say what I was trying to ask some of the saints what do you say you know because as a as a Christian it may not be the best thing to say shut up um it might be something it might be something better better than that you know and um and you know you you can you can a gentle answer turns away wrath um and I like I like what one of our saints said she said well here's one way to do it is just appreciate you sharing your thoughts I don't see it that way and then walk off and preach yourself a sermon I know I've been talking a little playfully but I know I'm talking about deep things here and I want you to know that God loves you infinitely and what God has for you and has always had for you and only wants for you is blessing every curse that's been spoken over you be absolutely trumped if you hearken unto the voice of God and to hear what it is that God has to say over you to listen deeply to the spirit of Jesus himself God's word is the place his voice is the means by which you find out who you really are and essentially essentially what we do as Christians as we grow is our hearts become more and more adept at recognizing yes what you just said is true about me according to God's word and what that voice said is not true and so you learn to either accept or to reject it's today's teaching in the series the power of blessing and we invite you to stay with us alan is back here in just a moment with additional insight on today's teaching for your life and today's final word pastor alan wright's power of blessing will change your life when you make a gift this month we'll send you the power of blessing as our way of saying thanks for your partnership and when you give you'll not only be nourishing your own soul but you'll help broadcast the good news to someone else when you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you pastor alan's messages in an attractive cd album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership call us at 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastor alan.org alan i know you get a lot of correspondence and emails and probably a lot of folks want to know what are the 10 steps what are the things the practical things i can do well today today's conclusion two steps accept blessing reject curses there you go there you go and what we've been learning today and hopefully our listeners who've been through a lot and received a lot of curse statements a whole lot of you can't a whole lot of that and like we were talking about today those statements that say you always or you never these are the kinds of things that we can take into our soul and i think the lord's invitation today is by his grace to say no to all of those kinds of curse statements to call them what they are they're not true because that's not in accord with god's word and instead begin to receive god's word begin to receive the blessing of god that envisions before you an incredible possibility and it's made possible not by your efforts but by the finished work of jesus in christ you are blessed with every spiritual blessing accept that and receive that and reject every form of curse you can really do that today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries