Hindrance to Our Blessing

“I will never succeed”, “I will not get a promotion”, “My dad had cancer, so I too will have”,  

"I will not get admission", "My marriage will never be joyful", 

"My relationship with my brother will never become okay." 

We constantly hear these negative statements within the circle of our family or friends. Inevitably, in due course of time this comes true, even if we believe it or not now.  Such comments are not only uncalled for, but dangerous. God loves us so much that he wants to bless us, but many times we seem to be inflicting damage on ourselves by putting a curse or a hindrance to our blessing. 

There is an interesting story in Luke 1, about a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. They both were very old and they “were upright in the sight of God.” However, they never had children. One day, as Zechariah was in the house of God, an angel from Almighty God came and told him that, “your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son...” Zechariah immediately doubted this Word so was immediately made dumb. The angel said “And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time.” 

Looking at this story, one would wonder as to why such a loving God would inflict a harsh judgment on his faithful priest. However, if we truly understand the context, we will see that, if Zechariah was not made dumb – the power of his unbelief could have hindered God’s blessing in his life. Like many of us Zechariah too, might have had the bad habit of speaking negative things or perhaps speaking whatever comes into his mind. However, God was doing something mighty here (since the child John was to be the forerunner for Jesus) and did not want Zechariah’s faithless words to hinder in God’s plan and the blessing that was bestowed upon Zechariah and Elizabeth.

A similar story is seen when Jesus went to his hometown Nazareth, and the people there had unbelief and spoke words to prevent Jesus from blessing them and delivering their people from all kinds of diseases.  Alas, Nazareth prevented Jesus, who is God, to bless them by their own words.  

God created man in His image and thus gave us similar powers through our words. God spoke and this world came into being. Similarly, when we who are created in the image of God, and speak words of blessing or negative words into our lives and others, we are either allowing God's blessing to flow into our or other's life or hinder it.

I believe this story should help us recognize that there is power in the words we speak. James 3:6 says that, “The tongue also is a fire… It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire…” God wants you to succeed, get a promotion, be healthy and be disease free. However, we also need to remember that we are living in a fallen world and living in this place we will have problems and diseases. However, what we need to understand is that what was already ours we should not become a hindrance to it.

No matter how bad the circumstance might be, no matter how right we are about what we say, let's learn to avoid saying such negative statements, rather learn to encourage and become a blessing. If we don't believe this, the least we can do is to keep our negative thoughts in our heads only and not bring it to our lips.

So if possible let's ensure to keep a check on the words we speak. We need to learn to bless, instead of curse, we need to avoid speaking careless banter which in the name of being funny lands up cursing ourselves or others, if we do not understand what we say. Matthew 12:36 tells us that we will be held accountable to every “careless word” we speak.

Now if others were to speak against us, we who are believers in Christ, should rebuke it in the name of Jesus and all such careless or intentional curses will be cast off from our life. If our little children or spouses speak such careless words, then the husband as the spiritual head of the family, has been given the authority to rebuke all such curses and change it into a blessing. 

God loves us and wants to bless us, so let’s be careful of our words and not put any hindrance to God’s blessing in our life, which was already ours in the first place.