Derek Prince - Don't Curse Someone In Ignorance
Now I want to go on to other sources of curses. The next one is very important and very little understood by contemporary Christians. I call it persons with relational authority. That is, persons who have authority because of a relationship. Now, authority is a very unpopular concept in many places and parts of the world today but the fact remains it’s still real. Authority is not created by man, it precedes from God. And there are many different relationships in which a person has authority. Now you may or may not like it but a husband has authority over his wife in certain contexts. Parents have authority over their children. Teachers have authority over their pupils. Pastors have authority over their congregations, just to take a few examples.
Now, because of the authority relationship, words spoken by those persons to those under their authority have special supernatural power. Whether they’re blessings or whether they’re curses. And if you look at the Bible you’ll find that second to the blessing of God, the most important blessing that any person could ever have in his life is the blessing of his father or her father. That’s still true today. I say to any of you whose fathers are alive, do everything in your power, everything you can to obtain the blessing of your father. And your mother, but primarily your father. It makes a lot of difference.
When I was saved I’m afraid I had a bad attitude towards my parents. I thought, They’re not saved, I’m saved; they don’t understand, I do understand. I praise God He rebuked me for it. He showed me that I could not expect His blessing if I didn’t honor my parents. And before they died I had shown them the honor that was appropriate. I don’t believe otherwise I could have ever enjoyed the blessing of God in my life and ministry.
I want to take an example of a husband who cursed his wife without knowing it and the results. The story is found in Genesis 31. You’ll remember, some of you, that Jacob had been with his Uncle Laban serving him. He’d married two of Laban’s daughters, he had become father to a pretty substantial family and then the Lord directed him to leave Laban in Mesopotamia and go back to the land of Canaan. And he was afraid that if he told Laban he was going Laban would take his daughters back. So he stole away secretly while Laban was busy somewhere else. But Laban and his relative pursued after Jacob and caught up with him on Mount Gilead. And then there was a confrontation. Laban said, Why did you steal away and not let me say good-bye to my daughters? Jacob said, I was afraid you’d take them from me.
All right, Laban said, I can accept that. But why did you steal my household gods? The Hebrew word is terraphim, they were little idol images that people kept in their homes to protect them against evil, which is a very common practice to this day. Now, Jacob didn’t know anything about the terraphim but his favorite wife, Rachel, had stolen her father’s images. Now, that was a very bad thing to do because she shouldn’t have stolen from her father. Second, she involved herself in the occult. That is always dangerous.
And now, this is what happened. Verse 30 of Genesis 31: Laban says to Jacob, Now you have surely gone because you greatly long for your father’s house. But why did you steal my gods (terraphim)? Then Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was afraid (that’s why I went). For I said perhaps you would take your daughters from me by force. And then he says: With whomever you find your gods, do not let him live. The King James says Let him not live. What’s that? It’s a curse. Let him not live.
Now, Jacob didn’t know that he was talking about Rachel who was his favorite wife. Rachel succeeded in keeping the gods concealed, Laban never discovered them. That ended that situation. But, within a few years the next time Rachel gave birth she died in childbirth. Why? Because of the curse pronounced by her husband. See? This is very real. You may not like it, I may not like it but that’s the way it is. God has built certain principles into human life and relationships. Now let’s consider a few other possible examples. And most of these are constructed out of situations that I have actually dealt with but I've kind of changed a little so I don’t expose the identity of people.
Let’s consider another possible example of a husband. This man is a business executive, he’s busy, he’s financially successful, he’s a man with drive, he’s pretty ruthless. He marries a woman who doesn’t know how to cook. Like so many young ladies today, she’s never learned from her mother. And for a long while he endures his wife’s cooking but then he just can’t take any more. And he says, I’m sick of your cooking. You’ll never learn to cook. And he probably says it many times. What is that? It’s a curse. All right. What he doesn’t realize is he’s pronounced a curse on himself, too. I’m sick of your cooking.
So what happens? He gets indigestion. Doctors cannot find any cure for that indigestion, he suffers from it till he dies. The marriage breaks up, they’re divorced. The wife is a talented woman, she can succeed in every area except one. The kitchen, that’s right. When she goes into the kitchen her body starts to shake, she gets all nervous and she never can get it together. Why? The husband’s curse. Both of them endure their curse until they die. See? All right. Let’s take a father. This is perhaps the commonest of all.
A father has three sons. The first is the firstborn. Of course, he’s always welcome. The third, the youngest, is brilliant. But the middle one is neither firstborn nor brilliant. He has a lot of the same characteristics that his father has. Have you ever noticed when people are bad and they’re bad in the way that we’re bad, we like to take it out on them rather than ourselves. Have you ever noticed that? Parents, if you pick on one of your children it’s probably the one that’s most like you if you knew it. What’s you’re objecting to is what’s in you that you don’t like. Anyhow, so the father says, to the second son: You’ll never succeed. You’ll always be a failure. You’ll never make it. What’s that? It’s a curse.
And I’ve dealt with many men in their 40s and 50s who were still struggling against words spoken by a father before they were teenagers. Or, let’s say the father has a daughter, fifteen. Like some young ladies of fifteen she has acne. And the father has to drive her to school every day and every day she’s up there in the bedroom putting things on her pimples. And so she’s late. And so the father gets exasperated and one day he says, You’ll never get rid of those pimples, you’ll have pimples for the rest of your life. Fifteen years later she’s a married woman with children of her own and she is still struggling with her acne. Why? Because of a curse.
Or let’s take a mother. And this is actually a real case that I’ve been dealing with and I will not give the identity. Her daughter always pleased her, she always did what she wanted. She was one of those manipulative, controlling mothers. But then the daughter fell in love and married a man that the mother didn’t approve of. And the mother said, You’ll never make good. You’ll always be struggling. You’ll never have enough. I know the man. He’s a gifted man, he's a capable man. But for at least a dozen years that was true. It’s only changed when I confronted them with the reality of the source of their problems: The mother’s curse. Now there’s a new life opening up before them.
Let’s talk about teachers. The teacher has a pupil who can’t spell. Maybe he’s got what they call dyslexia. You know, you put the letters the wrong way around. You’re silly, you’re stupid. You just don’t try hard. You’ll never succeed. I know teachers shouldn’t talk like that but sometimes they do. What’s the result? A child, a boy or a girl that never can make it in life. Ruth and I have a friend, a teacher said to her when she was a teenager: You’re shallow. She’s now I think in her 60s or at least in her late 50s. We discovered that all her life she’s been struggling against that statement, You’re shallow. And the strange thing about it is if anybody doesn’t deserve that statement, it’s that lady. She is far from shallow.
But you see, there’s authority behind those statements and that makes them powerful. Usually speaking, there’s a demonic element. I’ll just show you one thing in James 3 which is very important. James 3 verses 14 and 15: But if you have bitter envying and self seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, soulish, demonic. In other words, if your attitudes are wrong and your reactions are wrong and you speak, what’s going to come out will have a demonic element in it. I’ve used this little picture.
How many of you know what a whistling kettle is? I’m sure most of you do. All right. So you have this kettle on the stove and the water is getting hotter and hotter. And the moment the steam comes out, what else comes out? The whistle, that’s right. The whistle is like the curse, you see? When the steam comes the whistle comes. There’s only one way to prevent the whistle, what’s that? Take the kettle off before it boils. So when, let’s say, a parent or a teacher or a husband is getting more and more angry and frustrated and impatient, if you don’t take that kettle off the steam is going to come out and the whistle will come out with it. You’ll say something cruel, hard, unkind, unjustified and a curse will be released with it. Does that happen in our contemporary culture?