Ministering Deliverance

One of the enemy's objectives to entrap you is simply that you will begin speaking curses of words against other people so that you can be the one who is entrapped. You can be the one who is burned and you're the one who gets scorched. I will tell you this, if you find a person who is bitter, who is simply angry at other people and is cursing other people, you will see a life that has been scorched and a life that has been burned. And, most of that I would call self-destruction because they have reaped it back upon themselves the results and the effects of the words they have spoken. The word hell there, is the word "ghiana." It is the dump that was outside of Jerusalem. It was constantly on fire, constantly burning and consuming.

James 3:7-8 says, "For every species of beasts and birds and reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison." Now nobody would sit down to drink poison -- at least nobody with any common sense or a brain. But yet some people don't even think twice about sitting down at a meal and murdering another person's reputation with their tongue.

Your words have enough power to bring blessing. Verse 9 says, "And with it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God." So on the positive side, it can be used for blessing. It can be on God's construction team to build other people up, to affirm them, to encourage them, to exhort them, but on the other hand it can be something that brings people down.

In regard to building people up, Hebrews 3:13 states, "But encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." So it can encourage. Acts 14:2 says, "Strengthening the souls of disciples encouraging them to continue in the faith." It's saying through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God. So souls are strengthened that are encouraged by the words.

Number 5:12-28 demonstrates that the curse of words can carry the power to fulfill its mission for what it was set to do. So just as there is power to bring a blessing, there is power to bring a curse.

Here is an illustration of this point from the life of Jesus in Mark 11. He noticed the fig tree a little way off that was in full leaf, so He went over to see if He could find any figs on it. But there were only leaves because it was too early in the season for fruit. Then Jesus said to the tree, "May no one ever eat your fruit again." And the disciples heard him say it. Here's the result a few verses later. The next morning as they passed by the fig tree he had cursed, the disciples noticed it was withered form the roots. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said to the tree on the previous day and exclaimed, "Look, teacher. The fig tree you cursed has withered."

All Jesus did was to give a few words. When God speaks a few words everything listens. When God says a few words all of nature and everything follows it immediately.

The truth is that from our tongue is the power to bless or the power to curse. We need to realize there is great power. In our culture we kind of downplay it, we kind of say it's not that big of a deal. Don't you know, you're overemphasizing it. You've heard people say the words, "Sticks and stones shall break my bones, but names shall never harm me." The person who said that lied. That's right. He was dead wrong when he said that. "I'm rubber, you're glue, what you say bounces off me and sticks on you." You know, we learned those little phrases as we were kids, but that's not really true.

The words that people speak over or speak to us have great power and we can accept those words or we can reject those words. It's like the parent who tells the child that he's stupid. A child can accept those words or reject those words. What happens to the child who receives those words and believes those words because somebody in authority spoke those words over him and carried authority to him? Some people actually become stupid because they've accepted those words -- they have received those words, they have believed those words, and therefore they said I am and I must be, and they will become those words that were spoken over them.

"You'll never amount to much." What happens when a person receives those words? No doubt there is a volitional choice that a child could say, "No, I will reject those words," and he can be pushed toward the opposite way and that does happen as well. But, what happens to the one who accepts, receives and embraces those words?

Others don't have to curse you -- you can do it to yourself! The most common instance of that is the phrase, "I can't." You're putting a curse on yourself when you say that. The Bible has a "can-do" verse, remember? Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And yet, we have cursed ourselves with "I can't and I can't and I can't." But that "I can't" doesn't come into an agreement with the Bible that says, "I can."

There are a lot of inner vows that we can make from those two little words:

• I can't change.
• I can't ever win.
• I can't ever find victory.
• This is hopeless.

We speak those types of words like that over ourselves. And at that moment we may actually feel that way. But if we continue to speak those types of words over ourselves -- I just want to remind you that our adversary does not play by fair rules. If you're putting curses upon yourself, the enemy decides he has a right to attach himself to this area and to feed that curse. When you find somebody who is always cursing himself, always speaking, doubting himself, degrading himself and beating himself up like this, those thoughts are being fed into his mind. And it very well could be that some demonic spirit has been assigned to those curses that a person has spoken over himself.

We have to break off the words that are spoken over our people. A lot of us are the product of the words that are spoken over us, either the words of blessing or the words of cursing. We are who we are because of the words that are spoken over us. Ephesians 4, where it says, "Do not give the devil a foothold," you know, don't give him a place. There's a crack that this thing gets in and it can be with the power of words that we have simply received or they could even be words that were spoken over us that we have not broken, that somebody spoke over us that we may not even have heard.

A man by the name of Ross was a member of a church I was pastoring in Washington state. When he came to our church he was living a life of sin. He had been very active in a church, had been a leader in a church, felt like God had called him into ministry and then was preaching. But all of a sudden things went south with his other church. They went sour on him and he left and for a couple of years he wasn't walking with God and he wasn't attending church. He came to our church and we began to work him through the restoration process.

After about a year he came up to me and said, "Pastor Rodney, I think I'm going to have to go back to my old church." And I said, "I don't have any problem with you doing that if God is in that." And as we began to engage in this conversation as to why he felt that way, I was trying to help him to discern if God really was calling him back. Because I know he didn't leave in such a good way. It was kind of a bad situation when he left and if he needed to go back to set things straight and right those relationships that had gone wrong, then I was all in favor of that. So, I asked him, "Why do you feel like you need to go?" As he began to talk about it, what it boiled down to is this. He had a disagreement with the pastor over certain things and they began to get so severe that he and the pastor didn't feel like they could work well anymore and so he said he was leaving. The pastor said these words as he was leaving: "God will never use you apart from this church." When he left, he embraced those words and quit going to church altogether because God would never use him apart from that church.

So now he had begun to get his life with God back, he had begun to recover his life with the Lord and now he said I've got to fulfill that. So, I said, "Let me tell you what I see here. What I see is a curse of words that's been put upon you." So, we laid hands on him and we broke the power of those words on his life and you know what? He didn't feel like he had to go back to that church. I tell you what, there are some people who have come to my church wounded and hurting. And I've had to pray that same prayer -- because when they left their previous church, they were cursed by their pastor. And as a result of that curse, they are not productive and working with the Lord. So we have had to simply break the power of those words off their life that has been upon them. See, people have these words that have been put upon them and we need to break them free of those words that are there. There are some of you who can relate to this; there are some words that are probably upon you.

If you are a leader and are concerned that you may have done that to somebody, then your responsibility is to ask God to break the power of those words that they were sent to do. Ask Him to cast those to the ground and to replace them with a blessing. If you have access to that person, I would write him a card and bless them. Call them up and bless them. If you don't have access to them, then the prayer is all that you can do. Now that doesn't mean that every effect of having reaped that curse is gone. It just means that you're just stopping any further damage that the curse would have on their life.