Cursed and Accursed

As children of God, one of our main goals in this life is to strive to be pleasing in God’s sight. This should be done out of a deep gratitude to his mercy and grace having spared us from eternal punishment for our sins; we should be devoted to this task.

To help us accomplish this we need to have our noses in the Bible as often as possible and search the scriptures to know what pleases God and what displeases him and do the things that please him. Studies in the Old Testament are a gold mine for this subject, in fact Paul even says, "Everything written in the past was written to teach us." So God wants us to be students of Bible history for this very reason. To observe God interacting with mankind and by learning from others mistakes as well as their triumphs.

That is why my sermon Sunday evening was about curses. I wondered what could make our loving God so upset that he would curse individuals and curse nations. To know that is invaluable to us. If we know what makes him so angry that the only solution left for him is to curse, we will want to avoid that behavior at all costs.

Our God is loving and benevolent, and he wants to bless his children and not curse them. Paul tells us because of God’s love for us, he will punish us as a father punishes his children in order to change our bad behavior. If things aren’t going well for us, we may be going through a period of testing, or a period of punishment, God will do both. In either case it should be a time of self evaluation to see if we are walking in the light or not, and a time of prayer to the Father to help us through our time of need.

 — Jim

continued in Wednesday Night Class Articles