Blessings & Curses

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you,
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing;
and, therefore choose life
that both thou and thy seed may live.”
Deuteronomy 30:19

Moses encouraged the people to choose life, and reminded them, “This choice not only affects your life, but also the descendants that follow you.”
Blessings produce good, beneficial results and enable us to succeed. Blessings are mentioned 640 times in the Bible. Curses produce bad and harmful results and enable us to fail. Generational blessing and curses are not limited to the individual, but extend to families, tribes, communities or whole nations. Once they are released, they continue from generation-to-generation…. until something happens to cancel their effects.
The order of God is set in the earth before man ever gets a revelation.

“Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them,
for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me.”
Exodus 20:5

And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:6

“Our fathers have sinned and their iniquities visit their children.”
Lamentations 5

“Thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands and
recompense the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them.”
Jeremiah 32:18

Sin means to miss the mark. Transgression is manifestation of sin. Iniquity is the practice of sin to the point it becomes pleasurable; or a predisposition to sin which is a weakness to yield to that sin in particular and is passed from generation to generation.
In life, we will deal with recurrent situations, or patterns of behavior that cannot be explained solely in terms of what happened in your lifetime. Sometimes, the things you fall down to really have nothing to do with you, but are a predisposition you inherited from your ancestors who fell down easily to the same things!
There is a root. Proverbs 26:2, “Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.” Wherever there is a curse at work, there is a cause for it. You MUST discover the cause!
The 68 verses of Deuteronomy 28 are devoted solely to the theme of blessings and curses and reveal the primary cause of each.


In verse 1 & 2 Moses deals with the cause of blessings:

“If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments… all these blessings shall come upon you & overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God”

Blessings come from hearing God’s voice and doing what He says. Blessing is promised to those who hear and obey his voice.


In Deuteronomy 28:15, Moses states the primary cause of all curses:

“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee…”

The cause of curses is exactly the opposite to that of blessings….they result from not hearing God’s voice and not doing what He says. The refusal to hear and obey God’s voice can be summed up in one word: REBELLION. But lets move on to one more thing first.

“…Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,
having become a curse for us (for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree),
that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus,
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
Galatians 3:13-14

God’s blessing covered every area of Abraham’s life. Everywhere that Abraham needed provision, God’s blessing covered it. Everywhere that Abraham needed protection, God’s blessing covered it. Everywhere that Abraham needed anything, the blessing of Almighty God covered it. This is the generational blessing passed to us by Christ Jesus!
Some of us are operating in cycles that we don’t understand because they are coming from forces set at work a long time ago. Ask God to reveal any generational curses operating in your life! We must catch the revelation of our spiritual heritage from Jesus Christ.
Generational blessing cannot be earned by our own merits. For us in the new covenant, the blessing of Abraham is given on the basis of our relationship to God through Jesus Christ. When we know Him, we depart from darkness and go into His marvelous light.
Today, know that you have generational blessing because of your faith in Jesus Christ. You are blessed in the city, and blessed in the fields. You are blessed when you come and when you go… because of your relationship to Christ Jesus!