The Bounce Back Effect

UV 1310/10,000 The Bounce Back Effect

Nevertheless the LORD thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the LORD thy God loved thee.

Deuteronomy 23 v 5

God loves without partiality. It is true that He loves Israel but He also loves the whole world and that is why He has given the potential for every human being across the planet to live eternally by virtue of his hope in Jesus, His beloved Son. All the identities of persons in the Bible are subsumed or contained in the name, person and word of Jesus, be it Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul and John. When we receive Jesus into our hearts, we also represent these identities. Naturally, we face the mountains or challenges and difficulties faced by all of them. But our resource is the collective promises of God that are also contained in the name, person and word of Jesus. He is called the “yes” and “amen” to all God’s promises. We need to enter into a personal covenant of mutual love and trust on the basis of each promise. God is bound only by His own word. By the bonds of His Word are broken the bands of our bondage or curse or limitations. Prayer releases the power of His Word to break every curse, to enable us to move every mountain, to overcome every limitation, to surmount every difficulty.

His love has a transformative effect. He turns every curse, spoken or thought against us into a blessing. Every self-limiting belief and word we have spoken knowingly or unknowingly, He turns into a source of blessing. There are many modern Balams who are recruited to curse us by the Balaks of our time. But the Lord God would not listen to their imprecations against us. If they roll a stone against us, it will roll back on them. If they dig a pit for us, they will fall into it. The very weapon they try to use against us will turn against them. The enemy of our soul and his agents use curses as weapons to rob, steal and kill, to rob our peace, to steal our health, well being and prosperity, to kill our joy and our potential, to end our legacy so that our faith in God is dampened, our effectiveness is dulled. A curse is like a bird that does not find a place to rest when it is not deserved and so it returns to whom and where it came from. The Shalom peace of Jesus protects us and preserves us from curses and bounces it back to its authors and publishers.

But God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping person. We need to make a covenant with Him so that He puts a hedge or a fence around our lives, our families, our friends, our foes, our work, our ministry and our legacy. Each promise of God is part of that fence. We should not allow the fence to lean or fall down. We need to lean not on our understanding of the world but lean on our understanding of His commands and promises. The Lord is eager to bless us in accordance with our understanding of His promises. Our faith is the sum total of our understanding of His promises that flow from our covenant or sacred relationship with Him.

Prateep V Philip