You can perhaps now see that there is no blessing in your life. Maybe I have convinced you that there is a sign of a curse in effect and it is stopping the blessing from flowing. So in this chapter let’s look very quickly at some ways that either you or someone else can open the door for Satan to bring a curse into your life.

Family Generational Curses

One of the most obvious ways for a curse to manifest is through family generational curses. This will affect almost everybody, because everyone in your immediate family line has sinned at some stage or another.

From your parents, to your grandparents and great-grandparents, you have quite a few people who could have opened the door in some way. The Scripture talks about this generational curse coming down to the fourth generation. Exodus 34:7 says this:

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth [generation].

If you add everyone up back to the fourth generation there are about 44 people who are involved. You will not likely know your relatives right back to that fourth generation. But often you will see problems affecting an entire family, certainly back to your grandparents.

Take a look at your life and see if you have certain signs of a curse happening over and over again. This could show itself in any number of ways, but the first two obvious signs are problems with finances and health.

Perhaps you always get in finances without difficulty. But then the minute you get them in something eats it up, like a sudden high bill or urgent need that crops up. With your health you could suffer from a particular disease, or always be having accidents and breaking your bones.

See if you can see a pattern in your life. Then look back at especially your parents and grandparents. Can you see the same thing in their lives? Then you have found a family generational curse.

Don’t worry about how to deal with these things. I will share that in the next chapter. For now I’m just showing you the signs and how Satan can get in.

Personal Sin

The next big cause of the Lord’s blessing not being in your life is personal sin. And under this heading there are quite a few things that you can do to open the door to Satan.

What is personal sin? It is doing anything that goes against the Word. Here is an example. The Word says in Ephesians 4:26,

Be in a state of anger, but do not sin: do not let the sun set on your anger:

So what happens if you have a fight with your wife? You fume and fret, yell, scream and swear and then sleep on the couch for the night. The sun has set on your anger and Satan has an inroad into your life now.

That is just a broad example of what I am talking about. And usually there is the flesh and the enemy mixed up in there. Satan will try to make you react more than you should so that he can make you fail.

There are some more specific things that you can do though. Here they are.

Involvement in the Occult

If you want to open an immediate door to get the enemy involved in your life, here it is. Any involvement in the occult will do just that. This includes going to fortune tellers, playing Ouija Board; even reading horoscopes ‘for fun’, even when you don’t really believe it.

You must keep away from this area at all costs because it will cause endless problems in your life. As a believer I’m sure that you will not do things like that. But you may have been involved in these sort of things before you were saved. This has already brought a curse into your life though and you must deal with it.

Emotional Problems

When you sin there are three areas that can affect your emotions and take away your peace in an instant. They are powerful indicators that something is wrong.

Fear

I already mentioned fear as being one of the signs of the curse. You can see a good example of this in Joshua 7, when the Children of Israel had attacked and destroyed the walls of Jericho.

The Lord did an amazing miracle and there was great victory in the camp. But soon afterwards when they needed to go and attack the city of Ai, the men were overcome with fear and couldn’t fight them.

Someone had stolen some things from the spoils of Jericho that they were not supposed to have stolen. They brought some cursed objects in the camp and opened the door wide for their blessing to be withheld.

If you have sinned in any way you will often be afraid of the consequences of that sin. You will try and hide it, but if you walk in the light and admit to your sin it will help you to get the victory.

Guilt

The next one follows on quite closely from fear and that is guilt. There is nothing worse than knowing that you messed something up or failed in an area.

Perhaps you knew that the Lord wanted you to do something for Him. But you didn’t feel like doing it, or you failed to listen to Him and you messed up. Oh what a horrible feeling that is! And the worst part is that you don’t want to come to the Lord because you feel too ashamed.

Perhaps you messed up with some people. You didn’t do something you were supposed to do, or you deliberately did something that you knew was wrong.

Now what happens? You feel too guilty to even look at them or speak to them. And you feel ashamed to come into the presence of the Lord to ask Him to forgive you. This puts your whole life on hold until you deal with it. And now there is an open door that is stopping the blessing from flowing.

Bitterness

The main emotional sign that there is a problem is bitterness. This is the one area that Satan tries to stir things up in you the most.

You see the greatest spiritual force is the force of love. Satan knows this, and he knows that when you flow in love the Lord will move wonders in your life. But the minute you open the door to bitterness all your blessing goes out of the window.

The Bible speaks about the root of bitterness springing up and defiling many. This is the danger of it. You see it doesn’t only affect you, but it acts like a weed that grows out of control and chokes any spiritual growth and blessing.

Now sometimes it may not be you who is bitter. But many times Satan will try to stir up strife in someone and for them to be bitter against you.

This is another possible cause of a curse operating in your life. They are negative towards you and are definitely not speaking blessing on you. Rather they are releasing the forces of darkness to come against you to cause problems in your life.

The Law of Judgment

The final area that can cause your life to show signs of a curse is the Law of Judgment.

The Law of Judgment takes place when someone does something that you do not agree with, or something that causes you hurt or anger. It is something negative that takes place, and you immediately judge the person who did it.

Here is an example. Perhaps as a kid you tried your best to get good marks in an English exam. You studied all the grammar and did what you could, but when you came to do the exam you didn’t do well. Then your teacher yelled at you and said that you are stupid.

You were furious, hurt and felt a failure, and you judged that teacher for being nasty to you when you tried so hard. That may well have been the first link in the chain.

Now perhaps the scene is repeated with another exam. Perhaps you are doing a science exam or a music exam. You do the best that you can, but when you come to the exam itself you mess it up.

With that law of judgment in motion, you can be sure that the teacher will tell you that you are stupid; that you could have done better. It is a strong spiritual law that causes a person to change and to often become totally different to what they normally area.

Now it becomes almost like an expectation with you. And each time that law goes into motion you think,

"You can see it; I just can’t do anything! I will never get it right. I’m just stupid. I may as well give up and not try anymore."

These are the main causes of a curse showing itself in your life. But as I said, you don’t have to be overwhelmed. In the next chapter I will show you different things that you can do to cause the blessing to return to your life.