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Day 194 – Blessing or Curse Deuteronomy 28:1 “Now it will happen, if you diligently obey the voice of JEHOVAH your Elohiym, to observe His commandments which I command you today, that JEHOVAH your Elohiym will set you high above all nations of the earth. 2 These blessings will come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of JEHOVAH your Elohiym: 3 Blessed will you be in the city, and blessed will you be in the country. 4 “Blessed will be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. 5 “Blessed will be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 “Blessed will you be when you come in, and blessed will you be when you go out. 7 “JEHOVAH will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they will come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 “JEHOVAH will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in everything to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which JEHOVAH your Elohiym gives you. 9 “JEHOVAH will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of JEHOVAH your Elohiym and walk in His ways. 10 Then the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of JEHOVAH, and they will be afraid of you. 11 JEHOVAH will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which JEHOVAH swore to your fathers to give you. 12 JEHOVAH will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless the work of your hand. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. 13 JEHOVAH will make you the head and not the tail; you will be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of JEHOVAH your Elohiym, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. 14 You will not turn aside from the words I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other elohiym to serve them. 15 “It will happen, if you do not obey the voice of JEHOVAH your Elohiym, to observe carefully His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that these curses will come upon you and overtake you: 16 Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the country. 17 “Cursed will be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 “Cursed will be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. 19 “Cursed will you be when you come in, and cursed will you be when you go out. 20 “JEHOVAH will send cursing, confusion, and rebuke in everything you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. 21 “JEHOVAH will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. 22 “JEHOVAH will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they will pursue you until you perish. 23 “Your heavens which are over your head will be bronze, and the earth which is under you will be iron. 24 “JEHOVAH will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it will come down on you until you are destroyed. 25 “JEHOVAH will cause your enemies to defeat you; you will go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you will become troublesome to every kingdom of the earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. 27 “JEHOVAH will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. 28 “JEHOVAH will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. 29 You will grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you will not prosper in your ways; you will be oppressed and plundered continually, and no one will save you. 30 “You will betroth a wife, but another man will lie with her; you will build a house, but you will not dwell in it; you will plant a vineyard but will not gather its grapes. 31 “Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat it; your donkey will be violently taken away from before you and will not be restored to you; your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to rescue them. 32 “Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will look and fail with longing for them; and there will be no strength in your hand. 33 “A nation whom you have not known will eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you will be oppressed and crushed continually. 34 “You will be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see. 35 “JEHOVAH will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. 36 “JEHOVAH will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will serve other elohiym—wood and stone. 37 “You will become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among the nations where JEHOVAH will drive you. 38 “You will carry much seed out to the field but gather little in, for the locust will consume it. 39 “You will plant vineyards and tend them, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms will eat them. 40 “You will have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives will drop off. 41 “You will beget sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for they will go into captivity. 42 “Locusts will consume your trees and the produce of your land. 43 “The alien among you will rise higher and higher above you, and you will come down lower and lower. 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will be the head, and you will be the tail. 45 “Moreover, these curses will come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of JEHOVAH your Elohiym, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. 46 They will be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve JEHOVAH your Elohiym with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, 48 therefore you will serve your enemies, whom JEHOVAH will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. 49 “JEHOVAH will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. 51 They will eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they will not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they destroy you. 52 They will besiege you at your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout your land; and they will besiege you at your gates throughout your land which JEHOVAH your Elohiym has given you. 53 You will eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom JEHOVAH your Elohiym has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy will distress you. 54 The sensitive and refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind, 55 so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy will distress you at your gates. 56 “The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter, 57 her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy will distress you at your gates. 58 “If you do not carefully observe the words of this law written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, JEHOVAH YOUR ELOHIYM, 59 then JEHOVAH will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses. 60 Moreover, He will bring back on you the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. 61 Also, every sickness and every plague, not written in this Book of the Law, will JEHOVAH bring upon you until you are destroyed. 62 “You will be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because you would not obey the voice of JEHOVAH your Elohiym. 63 It will happen, that just as JEHOVAH rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so JEHOVAH will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you will be plucked from off the land which you go to possess. 64 Then JEHOVAH will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other elohiym, which neither you nor your fathers have known: wood and stone. 65 Among those nations you will find no rest, nor will the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there JEHOVAH will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will fear day and night and have no assurance of life. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘Oh, that it was evening!’ At evening you will say, ‘Oh, that it was morning!’ because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see. 68 JEHOVAH will take you back to Egypt in ships, of which I said to you, ‘You will never see it again.’ There you will be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.” God’s names: JEHOVAH – Self-existent, Eternal Elohiym – Supreme God Yeshuwa – Jesus JEHOVAH YOUR ELOHIYM God’s character: Judge Everyone wants a comfortable life without trouble. You won’t find such a life. Trouble happens. Yet in the middle of trouble, you often find your greatest blessings. Often, trouble seems to follow wherever you go, in everything you set your hand to accomplish. You cannot get ahead, no matter how much you try. Blessing or curse. You cannot have it both ways. JEHOVAH told the people what they needed to do to receive His blessings on their lives. His blessings covered every area of their lives. Yet disobedience to Him brought a curse on everything they put their hands on to accomplish. It even brought their enemies to their doorstep and caused enslavement where He promised their obedience to Him would never see enslavement again. When you accepted Yeshuwa as Savior and Lord, He engrafted you into the vine as His chosen son or daughter. As His chosen child, you inherit all the blessings and curses JEHOVAH pronounced on His people for their obedience or disobedience to Him. To have JEHOVAH’S blessing in your life, you must obey Him. What does your life look like? Do you see JEHOVAH’S blessing or does trouble follow wherever you go? What does your commitment to Elohiym look like? How often do you spend time with other believers, studying His Word? How often do you pray, read your Bible, or encourage other believers? Do you draw a blank because those things are foreign to your nature? If you want Yeshuwa’s blessing in your life, you must keep the commitment to Him that you made when you accepted Him as Savior and Lord. Your commitment equals His blessings. 2 Chronicles 7:12 Then JEHOVAH appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, 14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Blessing comes with submission to Elohiym. Return to Him and He will return to you. When you do, you will find His blessing in your life. Let’s pray: Father, help me to remain faithful to You so I will live in Your blessing and none of Your curses will come on my life. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen. Copyright © 30 July 2024 by Valerie Routhieaux The image belongs to me.