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In our first lesson, I shared how Omar Oliver identified three things that can prevent healing. They were:
This lesson will examine the first two and we will look at the judgment of God in a person's life in the next lesson.
Curses Inhibit The Flow Of God's Healing Anointing
The first of Omar's "three things that inhibit healing" is when the person is under a curse. A curse is a judgment that comes against you because of what has come out of you. He didn't really elaborate on this area. I really understand a lot about curses here. And of course when I am talking about being under a curse I'm not talking about somebody that just told you a bunch of bad things. When you are under a curse or someone has even spoken a curse over you I'm not really speaking about that as much as I am speaking about the self-imposed curses and the things you have spoken over yourself. That's what I am talking about here -- the things that you have put upon yourself, that you are in bondage to.
I remember one time I was in a meeting or a seminar of praying for the sick and Francis McNutt, who has a ministry of praying for the sick, was praying for this lady. He prayed for her 30 minutes and nothing happened. And he prayed a little more, but nothing was happening. If it was me, I would have moved on to someone else because it was clear that nothing was going to happen with this lady. Finally he began to move a little deeper into some things that were going on in her life. He discovered that she was a person who chased healing meetings -- she kind of ran after this healer and ran after that healer, but nothing ever happened for her. When it finally got down to the root of it, there was a root cause in her spirit that basically said this: "I don't feel like I deserve to be healed." So she wasn't.
Nobody deserves to be healed -- God doesn't heal because we've earned it. It's not like a merit thing where we become good enough so God chooses to heal us. I used to pray this way with people I prayed with: "Oh God, remember what a great servant of God he is or she is, this person has been used mightily." God doesn't need me to remind Him of what this person has done. God never heals based upon merit, based on being good enough that you earned it, you deserved it. He never does it that way, it is all out of grace.
Francis McNutt told this woman at the conference, "Welcome to the club, nobody else does (deserves it) either." And he began to address that it is not whether you deserve it, it is a measure of God's choice and God's desire. When they broke those words over her that she had spoken over herself, she was healed. That was one example of a curse.
Here is another example of a curse. Did you know that when we refuse to forgive, we bring a curse on ourselves? In fact, unforgiveness is probably the thing that brings about the greatest curse to inhibit healing. Unforgiveness has a way of quenching the Spirit of God. If you refuse to forgive, after knowing that you should, it can have nasty and long lasting effects on your own well being.
Jesus talked about this in Matthew 6:14-15, just after He gave the Lord's prayer. He closed by saying this: "If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. If you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins."
You have the power to speak reality into existence whether blessing or curse. When you express something negative about yourself, the effect is that it begins to become true about you. You need to realize that whatever words you speak, they do come back upon you.
Look at Luke 6:37-38. "Stop judging others and you will not be judged. Stop criticizing others or it will all come back upon you. If you forgive others you will be forgiven. If you give you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together and make room for more, running over. Whatever measure you use in giving, large or small, it will be used to measure what is given back to you." Verse 38 gives a principal that goes across the board -- it applies to giving financially, it applies to everything. But the context of this passage, it is that of judging and of criticizing. The principle is this: if we speak curses over other people, the passage says that what we speak comes back on us. In short, we curse ourselves when we speak negatively about others.
And whenever you refuse to forgive somebody, what is coming out of you? The answer is things like judgment, criticism, and condemnation. When there is unforgiveness, that stuff comes out of you -- you think it, you speak it -- it just comes out. So guess what is coming back to you -- judgment, criticism and condemnation. The very things that you speak are the things that come back to you.
And guess who rides the coattails of those words? The hoards of demons. They say "I have a right to touch and torment." Look at Matthew 18 where Jesus talks specifically about a person who refused to forgive. That person was thrown into jail to be tormented by the tormentors. Jesus is saying that if you don't forgive when you know you should forgive, you are effectively imprisoning yourself and you are unleashing upon yourself the tormentors of Hell. You grant them access to torment you. And that is simply because you don't forgive.
You are under a curse when you do not forgive. Unforgiveness is just bitterness, and bitterness is nothing more than unfulfilled revenge. And it is never your right to ever bring revenge. You have absolutely no right to hang onto any offense if you have given your heart to Jesus.
The Bible says this Rom. 12:19: "Dear friends, never avenge yourself. Leave that to God for it is written, 'I will take vengeance. I will repay those who deserve it' says the Lord." And so, you must not try to act like God here, OK? Vengeance is God's job. He is the one who brings vengeance. We are not the one who does that. God is the one who does that.
Jesus said this in the Lord's prayer: "Forgive us of our sins just as we have forgiven those who sinned against us". That is a daily prayer to be prayed. In effect you are saying, "God forgive me and forgive those who sinned against me, and I am going to release it all." It is a daily thing that we have to do.
If you don't release that forgiveness, then I can't pray effectively for you. I can break off curses that the devil has put upon you. But if you put curses on yourself through your unforgiveness, the end result is that I am going to be very hard pressed to knock those curses off, because you are just going to put them back on yourself until you choose to forgive. So I found out that I can't really break those self-imposed curses off of you. You have to be involved with breaking those curses because you are the one who has to do it.
The most common reason that people are not healed is because they are not willing to forgive. In fact I found out that in a good portion of the people that are prayed for that are not healed, if I go to that area and that area is taken care of, then they are healed. I think more than any other area that prohibits healing, that is number one.
So have you taken care of everything today? Is there anybody you hold a grudge against? Is there anybody that you have not forgiven? Is there any bitterness in your heart? If there is, you are stopping the flow of God in your life.
Pact With The Devil
The second of Omar's "big three" is if you made a pact with the devil. For most of us, that is not usually our problem. But with some people it is.
If a person makes a pact with the devil, this is the whole issue of choice. They made a bargain with the devil in some way and some form. What they have effectively done, in some way, was to bring another god into their life. If a person does this, then it makes God feel jealous. Ex. 23 tells us, "You shalt not have any other gods except Me." God is saying, "I have to be number one there." And He is very serious about this. You can't contract spiritual power because when you do, you are contacting demons.
Along those same lines, you can't get information from the spirit world (through tarot cards, ouija boards, astrology, etc). That is not of the Lord but of demons. God takes this extremely seriously and there is a curse that goes along with it. We see this illustrated in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14. The passage is about King Saul. Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord and disobeyed the Lord. He even went to a medium and asked her for advice instead of asking the Lord and this is why the Lord put Saul to death and gave the kingdom to David.
God is serious about this one here. It may not be in your habit, but if it has been one of your habits in the past, you have to take care of it. You have to renounce it. You don't get involved with occultism, you don't consult mediums, you don't consult ouija boards, you don't try contacting the dead. You don't try to manipulate the spirit world, apart from God. That is occultism and that is a pact with the devil. And when you do that you open the door to diseases.
Likewise, you should not try to look into the future or try to control the future. We are not allowed to do that. God can give revelation about the future, through the prophetic. But that is an expression of God as to how and when He does that. You are not supposed to get any of that information except from God and only when God chooses to give it. Otherwise, you are putting yourself in place for a curse.
If you have done that, then you have to go back and renounce it. It is renounceable. It is undoable. If you have ever been involved in occult stuff, then you need to engage your will and choose to renounce it. And it is very easy to do. Simply say (and mean): " I renounce my involvement in those areas" and specify what they were.