Welcome Back. So how many in the last session, you had a list of a few things that you realised oh,that's me there, that's me there? How many found some things came to mind, thought that's quite good. Good to just ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you; Lord, show me where I'm needing to be set free, where do I first need to break out, and what's there. So as things come up, jot them down, things the Holy Spirit speaks to you about. As things come up, or you have a question, jot that down so you can remember later on, say well I need to get some information about that.
Okay, we want to just look in the next session, I just want to look at the area of curses, and what they are and how to deal with them, recognising curses. For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and curses are a great reality. Blessing means, there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means, there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually, and so we want to identify what curses are, and just look at how we would recognise them, what we would look for, and then how you would actually go about addressing it.
So in Deuteronomy 28 the Bible talks about blessings and cursings. Now there's a huge difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how God has dealt with us. Now we are blessed. We are a blessed people. However, there may be evidences of old things still operating, which have legal rights that need to be cancelled and addressed, so in Deuteronomy 28 it lists out the blessings of obedience, it lists out cursings that come from disobedience, so moreover all these curses shall come upon you, pursue you, and overtake you, until you're destroyed. Now notice about curses, they're spoken of as though they're something living. Notice it uses the words: they will come on you, and so we you don't expect it but there it is, they'll pursue you. It's like you can't run away from it, and they'll overtake you. So when God is describing the nature of a curse, there is clearly a spiritual force, a demonic power operating behind, that comes on you and pursues you, overtakes you, and has negative or destructive forces.
So 'curses come on people' means they just turn up. You've got no idea where they came from, there's no apparent reason, but there is always a reason. Curses tend to pursue people, so wherever you go, you are, you're there, so therefore, that's where the curse will be, where you are. It's attached to you, so that's why it runs after you. Curses overtake people, and tend to overcome them, so key aspects of a curse is that the curse can impact not only an individual, but also a family itself generationally, and also a larger group like a whole tribe can have a particular cursing operating around them. Groups, organisations can have a curse running around them. I recently had the opportunity to speak into a movement of churches in New Zealand, and the Lord gave me insight that enabled us to establish a pattern, that was destructive within the movement, that had gone on and pursued it all these years.
When I shared with them what I could see and what I knew, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they began to break down and weep. Since that time they've worked systematically to address all those issues, and now God's just suddenly brought a blessing, an increase, and what they've tried to do for years has now started to come about, started to come into existence - to the extent where I'm astonished really. I don't want to identify what movement it is, but it's a movement of churches in our own nation, and within the roots of it, there was a pattern that had continued and persisted. They said after I'd shared with them, they looked into it even further, and they found it pervaded every aspect of their churches. Isn't that extraordinary? Once they brought it to the Lord, as a leadership, and dealt with it and then addressed it and put everything right, it's immediately everything has started to come into place for them. Quite extraordinary - I'm still stunned and trying to get a hold of the significance of all of that.
So curses can affect whole groups of people, and a curse, when it's operating, allows demons to operate. The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit, so we tend to think of cursing as someone swearing, but those who have a spiritual world view, what they're looking at is the demonic realm having a legal access, a legal right to come, and create havoc and destruction. So how would you know if some kind of curse, or some demonic power was operating? What would you look for? You'd be looking for something that shows up in lifestyles, it shows up in behaviours, you're looking at something that would show up in repeated patterns, so the keys to finding these are found in Deuteronomy 28. It starts off there of course, in Verse 45; all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes.