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The Commencement:  Today I Begin To Reverse The Curse

January 6, 2008

Scripture:

21 And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called JESUS, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.   22 Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2: 21 24)NKJV

Synopsis:

To commence is to make a beginning.  Genesis 1:1 describes the commencement of creation and the establishing of a godly principle.  God always starts with chaos and then through an established process, brings cosmos or order.  God is always in the process of bringing order to the mess we make of our existence, the mess that He has pre-ordained to be a part of the process of shaping us into what He created us to be.

To commence is also to give birth, but spiritual life as in the case of natural life, doesn’t start with birth.  Spiritual life starts with conception which precedes and is in fact the preordination of a new birth.  But the things that happen before conception and commencement are more important than the commencement itself.   This is made clear in 1 Peter 1:20 when the apostle Peter describes Jesus as being crucified before the foundation of the world.   It’s explained in detail in Ephesians 1:4 when the apostle Paul declares that God chose us before the foundation of the world.  So God established a principle and an end for mankind before He created us and the world that we live in.  He saw us in our completed state before He started the creation process.  As a result we as believers should never put too much emphasis on our present problems, but instead focus on our expected end.  For this to be activated in our lives we must believe in the loving sovereignty of the same God that said to the prophet Jeremiah “…Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”

With faith in the God of our expected end we can defeat the inevitable discouraging and distracting attacks of the enemy who always seeks to destroy what God is doing in our lives in its infancy.  Although the devil attacks us at our commencement, he is already defeated because of our “before.”  So no curse that the enemy tries to bring on us can alter our destiny.  He may use people to speak a curse on our lives or our own rebellion, but it is impossible to indefinitely curse what God has blessed.  Reversing the effects of a curse is as simple as choosing to believe what God says about your expected end.  Noah believed what God said about his expected end and saved himself and his family.  And when he emerged from the ark and the affects of a cursed mankind, he entered into covenant with God and a new commencement by building an altar and offering a sacrifice.  We would do good to follow Noah’s example.