Invisble Barriers

In previous years I spent much time counselling people like those described in the previous chapters. But it was often a frustrating task. Certain people would progress spiritually up to a point, and then they seemed to encounter an invisible barrier.

It was not that they lacked sincerity or dedication. In fact, they often seemed more sincere and dedicated than others who made better progress. They would accept the counsel I gave them and try to put it into practice, but the results were - to say the least - disappointing, both for them and for me.

After dealing with such a case, I would find myself praying, "Lord, why is it that I cannot better help this person? Is there something I don't understand - something more that I need to know?" After a while, I realised that God was answering my prayer. He began to draw aside a veil and to reveal a world of powerful forces that do not operate according to natural laws. The revelation did not come all at once, but step by step as I discerned a single thread running through a series of apparently unconnected incidents.

One key incident occurred when I was a guest speaker in a Presbyterian church. I had come to the end of my prepared message, and was uncertain how to proceed. As I remained standing behind the pulpit, I noticed a family - father, mother and teenage daughter - on the front row to my left. The thought came to me, "There is a curse over that family." This was not related to the theme of my message, or to anything I had in mind at that time. Yet the impression would not leave me: "There is a curse over that family."

Finally, after some moments of hesitation, I stepped out from behind the pulpit and went over to the father. I explained to him what I was feeling and asked if he would like me to revoke the curse and release the family from it in the name of Jesus. He replied immediately that he would. It was the first time I had ever done anything like this, and I was quite surprised that the man so readily accepted my statement. Only later did I come to understand why.

I stepped back behind the pulpit and said a brief prayer out loud, breaking the curse over the family. I was not touching any member of the family as I prayed, but when I concluded with the words "In the name of Jesus", there was a distinct, visible, physical reaction in the whole family. A momentary shudder seemed to pass through each of them in turn.

At this point I noticed that the girl, who was about 18 years old, had her left leg in a cast from above the thigh to the bottom of her foot. I went over to the father again and asked if he would like me to pray for his daughter's leg to be healed. Again he responded very positively, then added, "But you need to know that she has broken the same leg three times in eighteen months, and the doctors say it will not heal."

Today, such a statement- that a person had broken the same leg three times in eighteen months - would set off an alarm bell inside me, warning that a curse was at work. At the time, however, I did not see any connection between a curse and such an unnatural series of accidents. I merely picked up the leg in its cast, held it in my hands, and prayed a simple prayer for healing.

Some weeks later I received a letter from the father, thanking me for what had happened. He said that when they took their daughter back to the clinic, a new X-ray showed that her leg had healed. Shortly afterward the cast was removed.

He also mentioned briefly a series of strange, unhappy incidents that had affected the life of his family, and this explained his readiness to acknowledge the need for the whole family to be released from a curse. In the months that followed, my mind kept returning to this incident. I felt that there was something significant about the order in which the Holy Spirit had led me. First, He had revealed the curse over the family and had prompted me to revoke it. Only then had He released me to pray for the healing of the daughter's leg. If I had prayed for healing without first revoking the curse, would the leg have been healed?

The morel pondered this, the morel was convinced that the revoking of the curse was an essential prelude to the healing of the girl's leg. It was an invisible barrier which would have prevented the healing that God wanted her to receive.

All this seemed to tie in somehow with an incident in my own life. In 1904 my maternal grandfather had commanded a British expeditionary force sent to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in China. He had returned with various specimens of Chinese art, which became family heirlooms. In 1970, at the death of my mother, some of them passed by inheritance to me.

One of the most interesting items was a set of four exquisitely embroidered dragons, which found a place of honour on the walls of our living room. Their blend of colours - mainly purple and scarlet - was typically Oriental. They had five claws on each foot, which - an expert informed me - indicated that they were "imperial" dragons. And, because my grandfather had been very close to me, they brought back memories of my early years in their home.

About this time, I began to sense some kind of opposition to the success of my ministry which I could not define or identify. It manifested itself in various kinds of frustrations which were apparently unrelated, but which produced a cumulative pressure against me. I encountered barriers of communication that had never been there before with people close tome. Others on whom I had been relying failed to keep their commitments. A substantial legacy from my mother's estate was delayed interminably by a lawyer's inefficiency.

Eventually I set aside a period for intensive prayer and fasting. Quite soon, I began to notice a change in my attitude toward the dragons. From time to time, as I looked at them, a question would form in my mind: "Who in the Bible is represented as a dragon?" I had no doubt about the answer: Satan1. This question would be followed by another: "Is it appropriate for you, as a servant of Christ, to display in your home objects that typify Christ's great adversary, Satan?" Again, the answer was clear: No! My inner struggle continued for a while, but finally I got rid of the dragons. I did this as a simple act of obedience, without any ulterior motive.

At that period I was serving as a Bible teacher to the Church at large, speaking to groups of various kinds throughout the United States. My income, which came from the honoraria I received, was just sufficient to cover the basic needs of my family. Shortly after I got rid of the dragons, however, my financial position underwent a dramatic improvement. Without any special planning on my part, or any significant change in the nature or scope of my ministry, my income more than doubled. Also my long-delayed legacy finally came through.

I began to wonder if there was some undiscovered principle which linked this unexpected improvement in my personal finances with the healing of the girl with the broken leg. In the case of the girl, a curse over her family had been an invisible barrier to healing. When the barrier had been removed, healing had followed. In my case, too, perhaps there had been an invisible barrier - not to physical healing, but to the financial prosperity which proved to be an important element in God's plan for my life.

The more I pondered this, the more certain I became that those embroidered dragons had brought a curse into my house. By disposing of them, I had released myself from the curse and opened myself up to the blessing God had planned for me.

These changes enabled me to buy a home, which was to play a decisive part in the subsequent extension of my ministry. Nine years later, I sold that house for more than three times as much as I had paid for it! This money came exactly at a time when God was challenging me to major new financial commitments. 'See Revelation 12:1-12

That experience with the dragons gave me new insight into the passage in Deuteronomy 7:25-26 where Moses warned Israel against any association with the idolatrous nations of Canaan:

You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it; but you shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.

My embroidered dragons were not carved images, but they certainly were images of a false god who had been worshipped for millennia in China. By bringing them into my home, I had unknowingly exposed myself - and my family with me - to a curse. How grateful I was to the Holy Spirit for opening my eyes to what was at stake!

This led me to make a systematic study of the Bible's teaching on both blessings and curses. I was surprised by how much the Bible has to say about them. Words for "bless" or "blessing" occur about 410 times - excluding instances where the word in the original text merely has the meaning of "happy" or "fortunate" (as, for instance, in the Beatitudes). The word "curse", in various forms, occurs about 230 times. This caused me to reflect how little teaching I had ever heard on this theme in all the years of my Christian experience. In fact, I could not recall hearing even one message that dealt systematically with this whole subject.

As a result of my study, I began to teach about curses in my public ministry. Each time I did this, I was surprised both by the powerful impact this teaching produced and by the number of people who obviously needed to hear it. Tapes from some of these meetings were circulated to other groups, and astonishing reports came back to me. Often it seemed that the message had transformed not merely the lives of individuals, but even whole congregations. Eventually I released three cassettes entitled Curses: Cause and Cure.

Subsequently, on a trip to South Africa, I met a Jewish lady who had come to acknowledge Jesus as her Messiah. This lady- whom we will call Miriam - personally described to my wife, Ruth, and me the miracle she had experienced through listening to those three tapes.

Miriam had been working as executive secretary for a businessman who was president of his own company. She had discovered that her employer and all the executives in the company were in some strange cult that was led by a female guru.

One day Miriam's employer handed her a cassette and said, "Here are some blessings that our guru has pronounced over us. Please type them." As she began to type, Miriam realised that the "blessings" were actually fortune-telling, with strong occult overtones. She explained to her employer that such things were contrary to her faith in the Lord Jesus and the Bible, and asked to be excused. Her employer was gracious and apologised for having asked her to do something against her conscience.

Almost immediately after this, Miriam began to develop acute pain in both hands. Her fingers curled up and became absolutely rigid. She was no longer able to carry out her tasks as a secretary. The pain was so intense that she could not sleep in the same bed as her husband, because every time he turned over, the movement of the bed caused unbearable agony in her fingers. X-ray diagnosis revealed that her problem was rheumatoid arthritis.

A Christian friend of Miriam's heard of her distress and brought her my tapes on Curses to listen to. Miriam was a rather sophisticated lady, sceptical about such things as curses, which she associated with the Middle Ages. She had wondered, however, if there was any connection between her refusal to type the "blessings" and the subsequent problem with her hands. Could it be that the guru had pronounced a curse on her? So she consented to listen, feeling like the proverbial drowning man "clutching at a straw". When they reached the point in the third tape where I led people in a prayer of release from any curse over their lives, the cassette jammed. It would not go forward or backward, neither would it eject!

"Obviously, then, I can't pray the prayer!" Miriam responded. Miriam's friend had previously typed out the concluding prayer of release, however, and had a copy with her. She insisted that Miriam read the prayer out loud. Once again Miriam's scepticism asserted itself. She could not see how reading words from a typed sheet could have any effect on the condition of her hands.

Eventually, however, Miriam yielded to her friend's insistence, and began to read the prayer out loud. As she did so, her fingers uncurled and became free. The pain ceased, and by the time she had finished reading the prayer, she was completely healed. The whole experience had lasted only a few minutes.

Later Miriam returned to her doctor, who had taken the first X-rays. A second set of X-rays revealed no trace of arthritis. One feature of this incident is particularly significant. The prayer of release which Miriam read made no reference to physical healing. Her hands were healed solely as a result of praying for release from a curse.

Here was further, dramatic evidence that a curse can be a barrier to keep people from receiving healing. The same had been true of the girl with the broken leg. In my own case, on the other hand, an unsuspected curse had been keeping me from the level of prosperity that God had intended for me.

If a curse could be a barrier to blessings such as healing or prosperity, was it not possible - or even probable - that many other kinds of blessing were likewise being withheld for the same reason? It was on this basis that I set myself to seek the answers to three related questions:

First, how can we recognise that there is a curse operating in our lives?

Second, what must we do to revoke a curse and release ourselves from its consequences?

Third, how can we enter into the blessing of God?