Provoked
‘Unstable as water, you shall not excel, Because you went up to your father’s bed; Then you defiled it—He went up to my couch’ Gen.49:4 [NKJV]
The nature of curses and blessings is that curses are provoked and blessings are also provoked. ‘Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest’ Prov.26:2 [NIV]. If you are a child of God and perhaps someone is just jealous of you in the office and begins to curse you just laugh because the curse is not going to rest on you. Again who can curse the one that God has blessed? God has not beheld iniquity in you. It is so important to be on God’s good side. Israel said to Reuben ‘because you went up to your father’s bed; Then you defiled it—He went up to my couch’. Reuben’s actions must have really hurt Israel and this was what provoked the curse ‘you shall not excel’. Every Reuben that has been cursed reading this devotional I am saying to you today in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you will excel.
When a man wants to bless his children, like in Israel’s case, it is what they have done that provokes the blessing or the curse. As Christians we are under the blessings of God but there are certain levels of blessings you have to provoke. Abraham was blessed, the Bible says that ‘he believed God and God accounted it unto him as righteousness’. So he was a blessed man already but when Abraham gave Isaac, he provoked another level of blessing. And God says ‘in blessing Abraham I will bless you’. The Bible says God swore by Himself because there is none higher than Him by which He would swear. As a Christian you can still provoke blessings that other Christians have not entered into. How come we are all Christians and some people are entering some levels of anointing and some people are suffering – is God partial? The truth is that some people are provoking certain things and some people are not. It is as simple as that. If you understand this, your life will change. The only thing that is free is salvation. Once you have it every other thing you provoke.
Prayer: Father, open my eyes to see what I need to do to provoke the irrevocable blessing. Open my eyes also to see curses that must be reversed, in Jesus Name.
Except we are living a dual life, what we do to people usually is what we do to God. We need to be conscious of what we say and do to others. Be deliberate about blessing people in speech and action.
I don’t think Reuben thought that he would be cursed by his father on his death bed otherwise he would have been more conscious and deliberate about what he did.