SELF-INFLICTED CURSES

“But the men who had gone up with [Caleb] said, ‘We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.’ And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.’”
Numbers 13:31-32

I want you to place yourself in the sandals of the Israelites. For days already you have seen God’s hand at work. You watched Him divide the Red Sea for you to walk on. You tasted the water that once was bitter now become sweet. You rested at the twelve springs and under the shade of the seventy palm trees at Elim. And you partook of the manna and quail that littered the ground daily. The deliverance that God had promised His people, you are now living. Only one thing remains, the final entry into the Promise Land. So you watch as Moses takes a single man from each of the twelve tribes, and even feel a little pride when they call out the spy from your tribe. You know that in just a few more days the report will come back, a strategy will be determined, and you will possess the land. After all, God promised it to you and He does not go back on His Word.
But something happens. The spies finally return after forty days, a few more days than you had hoped for. Nonetheless, now they are here and you rush to greet them and hear the stories of what this land holds for you and yours. The men begin to speak and they all agree that this land is wonderful. You see them raise up the fruit they collected and already your mouth waters. You hear them share the details of the soil knowing that your crops too will be blessed. And in unison they speak out that this land surly does flow with milk and honey. Yet something else catches your attention. You hear them say the words ‘giants’ and ‘grasshoppers’. Suddenly the joy that flooded your being is replaced with fear.
Caleb and Joshua, two of the spies that had gone into the land with the others, work to grab the attention of all those listening and remind them of what God had said. “Yes, the inhabitants of this land are great, but God is greater. He has promised this land to us and in His strength we will conquer the land and take back what He says is ours!” It seems as though the words have fallen on deaf ears though, and by morning the other ten spies have poisoned the people with fear and dread. And now even you have begun to not only believe you are a grasshopper, but you also speak it from your own mouth. Sadly, you have become a victim of a self-inflicted curse.
There are many times I can remember in my life where God said one thing, and I said another. Now I like to think that I have been around long enough to know the difference between a curse and a blessing, but I have found this happening just recently. In recent weeks I have felt God moving me toward the calling He has given me of full-time ministry. In these last few weeks, however, I have found opposition. It seems like with every step of progress there has been, there has been a spy there also to push me in to giving up on what God has said. In fact, it had become so persistent that I was beginning to speak these words myself, and finding myself like the Israelites, being zapped of joy and falling into a pit of fear and despair. Instead of listening to the Joshuas and Calebs, and ultimately God, I was listening to the other ten and beginning to confess with my own mouth. I was overriding the promise of God with a self-inflicted curse.
What was the major lesson that God taught His people in their self-infliction? He taught them to not doubt what He says. And how did he do this? He taught this lesson in having the people, who were on the cusp of entering their land, walk in the desert for another forty years. Think about that, they were right there on the border of what God has promised years before. But they blew it by listening to the words of others, believing and repeating these words, and in the cursing of themselves. Do we want the same thing? Do you not realize that you too may be on the cusp, on the border, on the edge of your breakthrough? Do you really want to blow it now by listening to the cursed words of man over the truth spoken by God?
Friends, it is time that we stop listening to the curses of man, and repeating these curses as if they are truth. They are not! They are the devil’s scheme to prevent us from walking in the truth and calling that God has for us. The enemy knows that when you step into God’s promise, God will make things happen. So the longer the enemy can delay you, the longer that sphere of influence is weakened. Please, I ask that you catch what I am trying to say, as one who has seen this in just the last few weeks, stop agreeing with the enemy and delaying what God has for you because of a self-inflicted curse. You do not want to stay in the desert for forty years. Confess the truth of God instead.