What are blessings? What are curses? Do they truly impact our lives? It was a personal experience that led Derek Prince to make a systematic study of the Bible’s teaching on both blessings and curses. He said:
“I was surprised by how much the Bible has to say about them. Words for ‘bless’ or ‘blessing’ occur about 410 times – excluding instances where the word in the original text merely has the meaning of ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’ (as, for instance, in the Beatitudes). The word ‘curse’, in various forms, occurs about 230 times.
This caused me to reflect on how little teaching I had ever heard on this theme in all the years of my Christian experience. In fact, I could not recall hearing even one message that dealt systematically with this whole subject.”
Derek Prince began to teach about curses in his public ministry. Eventually, he released three cassettes entitled Curses: Cause and Cure.
Guru
In his book, Blessing or Curse: You Can Choose, Derek recalls an incident of a lady who had come under a curse, but was delivered through prayer.
“On a trip to South Africa, I met a Jewish lady who had come to acknowledge Jesus as her Messiah. This lady – whom I will call Miriam – personally described to my wife, Ruth, and me the miracle she had experienced through listening to my teaching tapes.
Miriam had been working as executive secretary for a businessman who was president of his own company. She had discovered that her employer and all the executives in the company were in some strange cult that was led by a female ‘guru’.
One day Miriam’s employer handed her a cassette and said, “Here are some blessings that our guru has pronounced over us. Please type them.” As she began to type, Miriam realized that the ‘blessings’ were actually fortune-telling, with strong occult overtones. She explained to her employer that such things were contrary to her faith in the Lord Jesus and the Bible and asked to be excused. Her employer was gracious and apologized for having asked her to do something against her conscience.
Almost immediately after this, Miriam began to develop acute pain in both hands. Her fingers curled up and became absolutely rigid. She was no longer able to carry out her tasks as a secretary. The pain was so intense that she could not sleep in the same bed as her husband, because every time he turned over, the movement of the bed caused unbearable agony in her fingers. X-ray diagnosis revealed that her problem was rheumatoid arthritis.
“I Can’t Pray The Prayer!”
A Christian friend of Miriam’s heard of her distress and brought her my tapes on Curses to listen to.
Miriam was a rather sophisticated lady, skeptical about such things as curses, which she associated with the Middle Ages. She had wondered, however, if there was any connection between her refusal to type the ‘blessings’ and the subsequent problem with her hands. Could it be that the guru had pronounced a curse on her?
Miriam consented to listen, feeling like the proverbial drowning man ‘clutching at a straw’. When they reached the point in the third tape where I led people in a prayer of release from any curse over their lives, the cassette jammed. It would not go forward or backward, neither would it eject!
“Obviously, then, I can’t pray the prayer!” Miriam responded.
Miriam’s friend had previously typed out the concluding prayer of release, however, and had a copy with her. She insisted that Miriam read the prayer out loud. Once again Miriam’s skepticism asserted itself. She could not see how reading words from a typed sheet could have any effect on the condition of her hands.
Eventually, however, Miriam yielded to her friend’s insistence and began to read the prayer out loud. As she did so, her fingers uncurled and became free. The pain ceased and by the time she had finished reading the prayer, she was completely healed. The whole experience had lasted only a few minutes.
Later Miriam returned to her doctor, who had taken the first X-rays. A second set of X-rays revealed no trace of arthritis. One feature of this incident is particularly significant. The prayer of release which Miriam read made no reference to physical healing. Her hands were healed solely as a result of praying for release from a curse.”
Since that time, Derek has observed in the lives of many people how a curse not only keeps us from receiving the blessing God is offering to us. It also keeps us from realizing that the blessing is there to receive. Only when the Holy Spirit shines the light of Scripture into our lives do we begin to understand how the devil has been deceiving and cheating us.
Online course: From Curse to Blessing
If you are wondering whether your life is under a curse, please benefit from Derek’s teaching that’s freely available to you on our website.
We also welcome you to enroll in our 6-week online course From Curse to Blessing, starting 20 September. Drawing from God’s Word and real-life experiences, Derek will help you understand the causes of curses and teach you how to be set free from curses, so you can start enjoying the benefits of God’s blessings.
