God’s Promises Include Blessings and Curses

When I hear the word promise I seldom, if ever, think of it in a negative context. The first part of Leviticus 26 was easy for me to read. It tells of the blessings that God will pour out on His people when they obey Him. Things like blessed crops and military success are the things every country wants to have. Yet, we cannot end our reading at the end of the blessings because God’s promise is not only for the good things in life.

God continues His promise to Israel that if they refuse to walk in His ways, He will bring them plague, conquest, drought, and starvation. We don’t like to think of curses being a part of God’s promises, but today’s reading clearly shows that they are. This passage reminds us once again that God is just. He will not indulge our rebellious behaviors and attitudes for long.

Our home has long been a place where children gather. We joke that keeping track of who is here and who has left is like a party game. There are always people coming and going. While we enjoy being the place the neighborhood children gather, we have rules of behavior we expect to be followed. When someone breaks these rules, they are given a warning, usually two.

However, if we have had to tell someone their behavior is unacceptable three times, we will ask them to leave. If the one breaking the rules is our child, discipline will follow. Any loving parent will tell you that disciplining your child is not an act of hatred, quite the opposite. If I did not care about the future of my children, I would not care to stop the bad behavior when it is small, or they are young. My daughter is in the terrible twos. It would be so much easier to just give in to her demands in order to keep the peace, but she will not remain two and small forever. I don’t want tantrums to continue into her threes – or worse yet into her adult life. To withhold discipline is actually the opposite of love because it harms the person much longer than correcting the bad behavior.

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

God’s promises include both blessings and curses because ultimately God desires good things for His children. To allow us to continue in our rebellion is to allow us to continue to harm ourselves and others. We need to change the way we think about discipline. We need to understand that it, as well as good health and wealth, is a gift from God. God loves us too much to allow us to stay in our sins.

He offers us a way to salvation and then trains us in the ways of righteousness. Training isn’t always pleasant. In fact, most of the time it is rather unpleasant until it becomes pleasant. The work is worth it. Our obedience to God is worth it. God’s promises are always for our benefit; whether they are for blessings or curses.

The other day, I told the little girl who just moved in with our family that a person can never run out of love. The more you give, the more you have. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind and told me that made no sense at all. I know that in time she will understand this beautiful truth, but she needs to see it in action first. I learned this principle because I had the great privilege of being raised by two of the most generous people I have ever met. My parents live(d) a life of giving without ever expecting anything in return.

One example happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. A few years ago, my husband and I bought a car from my dad. We have been paying him back every week, but we still have two years of payments left to make. When my dad saw that we added three more children to our family, he knew that came with added expenses and told us that we no longer had any debt with him. Our debt had been forgiven. He told us to use that money on the children. It was a beautiful gift and very much appreciated.

If you have ever had a debt forgiven, you understand just how liberating that feels. If you have a debt that presses down on you, imagine if you received a phone call that you no longer had to pay. I remember a few years ago that some anonymous person called up the power company and paid the outstanding bill for eight families who were about to have their power turned off because of lack of payment.

One of my neighbors was one of those families. She is an elderly woman with a very small income. This anonymous gift completely changed the quality of her life. Though she will never know who gave her the freedom to eat healthier instead of worrying about her overdue bill, she will always be grateful to them.

Image that on the first day of the year, the president (or leader of your country) got on the television and announced that everyone’s debt had been erased. You no longer had a mortgage, a car loan, a credit card debt. What kind of difference would that make in your life? Imagine if any property you had to sell to pay bills immediately was given back to you as well. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it, and yet that is exactly what God commanded the Israelites to do every 50 years. He called it the Year of Jubilee, a fitting name. If anyone had sold themselves into slavery, they were freed and sent home. If anyone owed a debt, it was forgiven. Land was returned to the seller as if it had never been sold. Everything righted itself. The people were given a “do-over”.

This Year of Jubilee began right after the Day of Atonement and gives us a great representation of the freedom we experience when we are set free and forgiven. It also taught God’s people to be generous. Would you lend money to someone five months before the Year of Jubilee started? If you were giving from a heart of love you would. Proverbs 19:17 tells us,

“He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.” This should be our attitude towards giving. Everything we have comes from God. We are stewards of His gifts, and His loving nature requires us to act kindly and generously with others.

In fact, 1 John 3:17 tells us that when we don’t live generously, we are acting contrary to God’s design. It says,

“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

As much as we all love to be on the receiving end of generosity, let us be doubly generous to others. It doesn’t need to be a gift of money; not many of us have money to give. We all have ways we can be generous. We can be generous with the things we have that others need. We can be generous with our time and our attention. We can, and must, be generous with our love.

Love is one of those rare things that multiplies the more you give it away. How we show that love will vary every day in every circumstance, but we should be on the look out for ways we can live a life of love.