When we pray, we stand before God’s throne. We cannot bring the foul stench of our sins into God’s holy throne room if we want to speak with our King. We must first repent of them from our heart, and not just as a formality.
Ezekiel 18:23 NIV For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
A curse brings spiritual death. It opens the door to Satan to rob us of our spiritual rights as God’s children to enjoy God’s abundant life, including love, joy, peace, health, providence, protection and more. To be free of curses, we must humbly confess and repent of our sins in Jesus’ name, so that we can receive healing and restoration from God.
2 Chronicles 7:14 ESV if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Numbers 24:9 NLT … Blessed is everyone who blesses you, O Israel, and cursed is everyone who curses you.”
Leviticus 24:15-16 NIV Say to the Israelites: ‘Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death…
Leviticus 20:9 ESV For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.
Objects and places can also be destroyed through sin and curses.
Deuteronomy 7:26 ESV And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.
Deuteronomy 11:29 NLT “When the LORD your God brings you into the land and helps you take possession of it, you must pronounce the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal.
God’s Word results in a harvest of “good fruit” if we hold on fast to it in our hearts. In the same way, we can turn the words we hear from people we trust into curses that bear “bad fruit”.
For example, a man who trusts a doctor that says he will never recover from his medical condition is unlikely to be able to receive God’s miraculous healing, no matter how many times he prays. The doctor’s words (based on a human being’s limited knowledge and not on God) has become an unintended curse. The man must take down such a stronghold through repentance and renunciation, before his relationship with God can be restored.
Luke 8:15 ESV As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
Psalm 146:3 NLT Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.
Just as prayers, spoken or unspoken over the people we judge, are effective. Curses form in our hearts, not in our mouths.
Matthew 15:18–19 ESV … For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander.
Ecclesiastes 10:20 AKJV Curse not the king, no not in your thought; and curse not the rich in your bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which has wings shall tell the matter.
The reality of being married to a survivor of complex childhood trauma is that it will often feel like storms are constantly rolling in to shore. These storms can be costly, exhausting, and overwhelming. They can accost every area of your life in ways that are difficult to quantify.
Because survivors of complex childhood trauma can function with the appearance of normalcy in everyday life, especially if they are very talented, there can be such ambiguity in your experience. On one hand, your life can have the appearance of, or potential for, what others would call success. On the other hand, you are often simultaneously recovering from a storm, experiencing a storm, and watching new storm clouds gather. It can be a steady, unrelenting cascade. This makes it seemingly impossible to gain stability and traction in your life.
Feelings of discouragement are common here. It is disheartening to feel like your life takes two to ten steps back maritally, relationally, financially, and/or professionally every time you try to take one step forward. Much of what you gain, you perhaps feel like you lose. There is a high cost to living with the effects of unhealed complex trauma. If you have children, it is even more complicated. You are likely doing your best to create as normal a life as possible for them, while being regularly confronted with the reality that you cannot shield them from all of the implications of living a life that is affected by trauma.
If you decide to work toward your marriage surviving, there will be storms to weather. (Please note, if there is abuse, weathering the storms does not mean staying and enduring it. You need to seek professional help and intervention immediately for the safety of yourself and your children.) Weathering the storms will require tenacity, but please understand that it is not your responsibility to “fix” the trauma. Weathering the storms will also likely require the help of a knowledgeable trauma counselor who can help you identify what storms to weather and how to weather them. The journey is not in vain if you walk it constructively and with intentionality.
The 2nd big area of debate you will find as you start to research this topic is on the legal rights issue.
Many people argue that nowhere in the Bible does Jesus or the apostles talk about any kinds of legal rights that demons may have to attack us. Jesus just tells us to cast out demons, and they thus believe that you just go in there and take your authority and start commanding the demons to come out and leave the person without trying to find out what their legal rights may have been to be able to attack this person in the first place.
Again, our take on this is that Jesus tells us to cast out demons, but He does not tell us exactly how to do it. And again, this is where you fall back on the verse that it is the job of the Holy Spirit Himself to be our Teacher and Guide in this life. And one of the areas that I believe that the Holy Spirit will help teach us and guide us is in the area of having to deal directly with demons who are attacking people.
I remember when I first saw this big debate occurring as I started to research this topic years ago, that my common sense really kicked in.
The Bible tells us in the story of Job that we all have some kind of a basic protective hedge surrounding us. If we did not have some kind of basic protective hedge surrounding us with the Lord, then these demons would be attacking all of us non-stop, 24/7. We would all be under constant attack and we would be doing nothing but battling demons all of the time.
For instance, if a Christian decides they are going to start doing drugs like cocaine, heroin, or meth, they then will have committed a direct willful sin against the Lord.
And if God decides to sovereignly allow their basic hedge to break down because of this direct willful sin against Him, then the demons will be able to see that big hole occur in their protective hedge and they will then waste no time in barreling right through that hole to launch an all-out attack on that person and his life.
The door opener for the demons to be able to come directly after that person in the first place was them engaging with drugs that are directly forbidden by the Lord. That door opening activity has now given the demons full legal right to be able to come directly after that person with a severe type of an attack.
