Day 26: Choose Blessing

Yesterday, we saw that we need to ‘listen listening’ to hear God’s voice, and to receive the blessings. Then, after verses 1 and 2, the next twelve verses of Deuteronomy 28 present the various blessings in detail. But at verse 15, we come to this—where the curses begin:

“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.”

So the way to curses is also very clear, it’s not listening to God and not doing what He says. And that again, is a decision. You decide not to listen, you decide not to do. You’ve made your decision for curses. And then the next 53 verses (just think of that!) present the various curses. It’s an awful passage to read. But God is so honest. He confronts us with the result of making the wrong decision and He does it in great detail.

Now without going into all the details I will briefly sum up for you, first of all, the blessings and then the curses. I recommend that you read this passage for yourself. I’m just summing it up to give you a general overview.

These are the blessings as I have summed them up for myself:

• Exaltation, being lifted up
• Health
• Reproductiveness—I couldn’t find one normal English word but it means that everything you are and everything you own is fruitful. Your own body, your family, your cattle, your crops, everything
• Prosperity
• Victory
• God’s favor

Now they’re not happenstances, they’re not accidents. Those things come as a result of making the right decision.