Day 10: Your Words, Your Vows, Your Attitude
"Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so." — James 3:10
Curses You Bring on Yourself Without a Ritual
Today's doorways require no witch, no symbol, no ancestor. You can open every one of them yourself, in a normal week, without ever leaving your house.
They come from an attitude, a compromise, a sentence, or a promise you never kept.
Mocking an Enemy God Told You to Respect
Christians love to thumb their noses at the devil. It feels like faith. Often it is arrogance.
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith." (1 Peter 5:8-9)
And more pointedly:
"Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!'" (Jude 9)
Read that again. An archangel would not risk a mocking insult. He deferred to God: the Lord rebuke you. Jude condemns those who "speak evil of dignitaries" and of "whatever they do not know."
This is not fear. We have a defeated foe, and we resist him steadfastly. But we resist him in the power of Jesus Christ, not in our own cleverness. The moment we treat him lightly, we become vulnerable.
Here is what that cost the co-author of this teaching.
Daniel was touring a lodge in Washington state, in a region long associated with a powerful territorial spirit known locally as She-Who-Watches. Her face was on everything in the gift shop — dishtowels, T-shirts, wood carvings, refrigerator magnets. Walking past the magnet display, he reached out, touched one bearing her image, and said sarcastically, "See that? She's not as great as she thinks she is!"
They walked on and thought nothing more of it.
Within two hours he was profoundly ill — severe stomach pain, vomiting that would not stop. His wife and their pastor anointed him with oil and prayed repeatedly. They were convinced it was a curse and could not break it. He vomited for hours and grew dangerously dehydrated. He refused the hospital; they had a train to catch.
He vomited without letup until the train pulled out of the area. Then the Holy Spirit was finally able to speak to him and show him what he had done: through sarcasm and disrespect he had violated Jude and 1 Peter and handed that spirit legal right to curse him.
He confessed the sin of reviling, asked the Lord's forgiveness, commanded the curse broken in Jesus' name and the demons gone.
The vomiting stopped immediately.
Compromise at the Table
"Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going... lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice." (Exodus 34:12, 15)
Two passages of the New Testament seem to collide on this. Jesus rebuked the churches at Pergamos and Thyatira for eating things sacrificed to idols (Revelation 2:14, 20). Paul told the Corinthians to eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions (1 Corinthians 10:25), and told Timothy that every creature of God is good and "nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:4-5).
They do not contradict. There are two entirely different acts here.
One is participating in the sacrifice ritual itself — eating as an act of honor and worship to the god. That is covenant with the god. That is what Jesus condemned.
The other is simply eating food, a portion of which was earlier offered somewhere, with no participation in any ritual. In Paul's day most market meat came from sacrificed animals; only part went to the god, the rest was sold. Buying and eating it was not worship. Paul makes the distinction explicit by giving thanks to the one true Creator God for his food — thereby declaring whose it is.
The line, then, is participation and allegiance.
This is a live and serious issue for believers across Asia, Africa, and anywhere family religion is woven into daily life. Unless they are clearly taught, new Christians try to follow Jesus while keeping the family and the village happy. They still wear the fetish. They still drink what the local practitioner prepares. They go home and eat food sacrificed to the family gods without making any distinction that they are not partaking in the sacrifice.
They are afraid of the rejection that a clear declaration brings. And so they compromise — and bring a curse into their own lives.
You cannot serve Jesus and participate in another god's ritual. Give thanks, declare the truth about whose the earth is, and where a line must be drawn, draw it kindly and clearly.
The Curse You Speak
Curses are frequently sent by nothing more than speech. When it is deliberate, it is usually an occultist. But Christians speak curses constantly without knowing it.
"But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment." (Matthew 12:36)
"Whoever hates his brother is a murderer." (1 John 3:15)
"Jealousy is as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame." (Song of Solomon 8:6)
"And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity... With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so." (James 3:6-10)
Take these seriously in sequence. God holds you accountable for every word. If you hate someone, God calls you a murderer. And hatred does not stay inside you — your hatred permits spirits to afflict the person you hate. Your hatred becomes a curse.
People have suffered disasters and physical illness under the sustained hatred of others. And the way out for the one being hated is often startling: forgive the person doing the hating, then command every curse sent by that hatred to be broken, then ask the Lord for shielding against hatred in the future.
Jealousy works the same way; it leads to hatred, and its fire lands on the person envied.
And then there is the ordinary, careless sentence. If someone says to you, "I wish you were dead," break that curse immediately in the name of Jesus. Such a statement opens a door for spirits to work toward exactly that. Be very careful about what you say to your spouse, your children, your employees, and yourself. Be equally quick to break what is said over you. Do not accept it.
"Pursue peace with all people, and holiness... looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled." (Hebrews 12:14-15)
Bitterness defiles. It opens you to attack, and it brings attack on those around you. Bitterness in one influential person has destroyed entire churches.
Situations You Did Not Choose
Some curses arrive through circumstances genuinely outside your control — a hotel room, a workplace, a deployment.
Arriving in Abidjan after thirty-six hours of travel, this teaching's author and her husband collapsed into bed at their hotel. The next morning he felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed; no one was there. That evening they finally looked around the room properly: a large woven tapestry hung over the head of the bed with African figures worked into it, plainly representations of gods, and a watercolor on the opposite wall depicted a tribal ritual ceremony. Both were legal ground. Her small bottle of anointing oil had been left at home in the rush.
They bound the spirits for the night. Later, sitting on the bed studying, she distinctly felt something sit down near her feet. She rebuked it and commanded it to leave. It did not leave. It did not have to. It had legal right to be in that room.
They were harassed all night. The next day they borrowed oil, anointed the room, the tapestry, and the painting, and commanded the spirits bound — the best that could be done with objects they could neither remove nor destroy.
But she remained under attack physically and could not gain victory. Late that week their hostess visited, looked at the tapestry, and identified the figure: a well-known regional god notorious for his hatred of women. He hated them so intensely that any woman who dared look at him or at an image of him had a curse of death placed on her. In the north there are no images of him, because the women who look at them die.
She had been cursed simply by looking. She had recognized the figures as gods immediately; it never occurred to her that looking could cost anything.
When she left that room for the last time, she took authority over that death curse, commanded it broken in Jesus' name, and commanded every associated spirit to leave forever. She began improving at once and was well by the time they reached home.
That spirit had no legal right to curse her at all. It tried anyway. Breaking such a curse is simple — but it must be done.
There is a heavier example. Christian Vietnam veterans have pointed out that since that war ended, more veterans have died by suicide than were killed in action, and that the returning veterans came home with an extraordinary inclination toward self-destruction.
Their explanation deserves a hearing: as each troop plane landed, groups of monks stood at the end of the runways performing incantations, placing curses of destruction on every arriving soldier. Veteran after veteran, asked independently, remembers the monks.
If you are a veteran of that war — or of any deployment where you were prayed against — break those curses of destruction off your life. Command every associated demon to leave forever in the name of Jesus. And tell the men you served with.
The Promise You Never Kept
The final doorway is the quietest, and it stops more Christians in their tracks than almost anything else.
"When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow and not pay." (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5)
We make vows casually. God does not receive them casually.
"Lord, if You heal me, I will serve You the rest of my life." And then health returns, and life resumes, and the vow evaporates.
"Lord, if You get me out of this, I'll go to the mission field." "Lord, if You save my marriage, I'll never touch that again." "Lord, if You give me a child, I'll give that child back to You."
Broken vows give the enemy legal right to attack, and unfulfilled vows to God can bring a curse from Him. You cannot go forward in your walk with the Lord past a vow you have left unpaid.
Ask the Holy Spirit to search your life and show you what you promised. Then go pay it.
Point to Ponder
Some curses need a ritual. Others need only a sentence — and you can say it yourself.
Verse to Remember
"When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it... Better not to vow than to vow and not pay." — Ecclesiastes 5:4-5
Question to Consider
Who am I still bitter toward — and what did I once promise God that I never delivered?
Today's Practice
Work through four lists. Take your time.
1. Words spoken against me. Who has said something over you that has stuck? You'll never amount to anything. You're just like your father. I wish you'd never been born. You'll always be sick. Write them down. Then say aloud: "In the name of Jesus Christ, I break every curse spoken over my life through those words, and I refuse to accept them. I command every demon spirit sent through them to leave me now."
2. Words I have spoken. Who have you cursed with your mouth — a child, a spouse, an ex, a boss, a rival, yourself? Confess each by name. Ask forgiveness. Then, where you can, go and bless that person out loud in prayer.
3. Hatred, jealousy, and bitterness. Name the people. Forgive each one specifically, out loud, by name — not because they deserve it, but because bitterness is defiling you and everyone around you. Then break the curses your hatred may have sent onto them, and ask God to shield you from the hatred directed at you.
4. Vows. Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of every promise you made to God. Write each one down. For each, either pay it now, or confess honestly: "Father, I vowed ______ and I did not pay it. I confess that as sin. Forgive me. Here is what I will do about it, beginning today."
Then make no new vows lightly for the rest of your life.
Prayer
Father, I have been careless with my mouth and careless with my promises, and I did not understand that either one carried weight in the spirit.
Forgive me for arrogance toward an enemy that even the archangel would not mock. Forgive me for compromise where I should have drawn a line, out of fear of what people would think. Forgive me for words that wounded, for hatred I nursed, for jealousy I fed, and for bitterness I have called by kinder names.
I forgive everyone who has cursed me with their words. I release them, and I bless them.
And Father, I remember what I promised You. I am sorry that I forgot when the crisis passed. Show me every unpaid vow, and give me the resolve to pay it now, in full.
Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord. Keep watch over the door of my lips. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Day 10 of 12 — The tongue is set on fire by hell. Guard it accordingly.