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Curses to Blessings
12 Plays1 year ago
The Bible is filled with examples of God working and blessing people, even in dark, hard times. I talk about Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and Naomi and Ruth. These people all went through hard times, but God never stops working! Through their hard times, blessings came and the story of redemption was told. All of these people had faith and hearts after God. We all can have hearts after God, even in hard times. Because He loves us and He can turn curses into blessings. This reminds us of God's power and might and gives us hope, no matter what we are facing.
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Transcript
Introduction: Mental Health & Hope in Jesus
00:00:01
Filling You Up With Hope
Hi, it's Abby from Filling You Up with Hope. I'm so thankful that you're here. um Every week at Filling You Up with Hope, we go through God's Word. I'm a therapist, so we talk about mental health things. We talk about all sorts of things, but more than anything, we talk about the hope there is in Jesus.
Entering the Promised Land
00:00:23
Filling You Up With Hope
So, and we started in Genesis and now we're in Deuteronomy, the verses that we're focusing on are in Deuteronomy 23, but there we're gonna we're going to talk about other verses too. And I just hope that that this leaves you with hope and faith that no matter what you are going through, God is mighty and power and blessings can come from it.
00:00:53
Filling You Up With Hope
So let's just start with with the verses. Just background, like we know that the Israelites are getting ready to enter this land, the Promised Land, and um Moses is giving them rules, regulations, guiding them. have So this is Deuteronomy 23, 3 through 5.
Ammonites, Moabites & Blessings
00:01:22
Filling You Up With Hope
ah matt Ammonites and Moabites can't belong to the Lord's assembly, not even to the tenth generation of such people can belong to the Lord's assembly as a rule because they didn't help you with food or water on your journey out of Egypt.
00:01:39
Filling You Up With Hope
because they hired Balam, Beor's son from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. But the Lord your God wasn't interested in listening to Balam. The Lord your God turned that curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you. Wow.
00:01:58
Filling You Up With Hope
So, you know, you might read this and think, curse curses, like, yeah this is 2024, this doesn't apply to us. Yes, it does.
Personal Reflections on Curses & Blessings
00:02:08
Filling You Up With Hope
We, I think when we're going through different things in life, we might feel like but we're cursed, right? We might feel like we're in such a negative, difficult, challenging season.
00:02:26
Filling You Up With Hope
I know I felt that way before, and this verse is about how even through those hard things, God can make blessings flow. And we're gonna talk about amazing examples of it. But a little bit of background about that verse, it's referencing Numbers 22, Balak and Baram.
Balam & Balak: Divine Intervention
00:02:50
Filling You Up With Hope
Balam, I'm sorry.
00:02:53
Filling You Up With Hope
um So basically, Balak, he sees that the Israelites are numerous and he is getting, and the in the words of the Bible, terrified of the Israelites. So he was king of the people in Moab and he knew Balam's power. So he wants Balam to
00:03:25
Filling You Up With Hope
curse the Israelites. Listen to what Balak says. now This is Numbers 22, 18. If Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I wouldn't be able to do anything small or great to break the command the of the Lord my God.
00:03:48
Filling You Up With Hope
So he he knew that no matter what this king wanted him to do, what really mattered was God and what God wanted him to do. so um But from this, from this verse in Deuteronomy, the Lord your God turned that curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you.
God's Love & Transformative Power
00:04:09
Filling You Up With Hope
He loves you. First of all, we get that from this, which is a deep thing that we might say that we know, but do we really know that God loves us? He loves us so much that he can take these really painful things that happen to us and blessings can come. And I was thinking about, um and yeah,
00:04:29
Filling You Up With Hope
What in my life is has been like a curse, a really negative thing that has happened, that I felt like it was a curse, right? That got somehow God made blessings flow from it. And maybe you know while we're talking about this, you you thinking about what in your life really challenging things did somehow blessings flow from it?
A Story of Loss & New Beginnings
00:04:59
Filling You Up With Hope
For me, like I've talked about many times on this podcast, my sweet, sweet son Lex died when he was two months old um in the NICU. He had a heart defect and it was a very, very hard thing for me. And um as I was dealing with it, it's like I was dealing with other grief that I had faced in my life too. My mom died when I was little.
00:05:29
Filling You Up With Hope
And it felt like when, as I was dealing with Lex's death, I was dealing with so much pain. And um and it was it was kind of kind of amazing. I don't know what, because God's ways are amazing. And they don't make sense sometimes. But after he died, my husband and I were like, we want to do something good. We want to help people.
00:05:59
Filling You Up With Hope
um We saw in the NICU so many babies in need that didn't have parents visiting them all the time and It made us really want to help babies. And so there's this charity newborns in need it's a national charity and You can start a chapter of it. So we started the Lexington, Kentucky that's where we lived at the time chapter of newborns in need and we was like the help of our church. We collected clothes and diapers and things for babies and we would go around and drop these off for peoples and people in need. And um and we it was like this blessing, right, that flowed from this really hard time.
00:06:53
Filling You Up With Hope
And also, like you know, if you listen, this was also the time that my husband and I really came to faith. Like in this very hard time, somehow his life, um Lex's life really made us see God.
God's Purposeful Actions
00:07:12
Filling You Up With Hope
And even in this really hard time, God was working.
00:07:17
Filling You Up With Hope
No matter what hard thing you are facing, God is somehow working and it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. His ways.
00:07:28
Filling You Up With Hope
are God's ways are really beyond our understanding. And there's a couple Bible verses, there's three Bible verses about this um that we're going to read. Romans 11.33, God's riches, wisdom, knowledge are so deep, they are mysterious as his judgments, and they are as hard to track as his paths. Proverbs 3.5, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and don't rely on your own understanding.
00:07:58
Filling You Up With Hope
Because his understanding, his knowledge is not like ours. It doesn't make sense that somehow through these hard things, we can be growing. We can be flourishing. It doesn't make sense to our earthly minds. Isaiah 55.8, my plans aren't your plans, nor your ways, my ways, says the Lord. His ways are better and and we're not gonna fully understand.
00:08:27
Filling You Up With Hope
We're not gonna be able to fully understand how curses can be turned into blessings. and But it happens over and over again in the Bible.
Faith Transforming Curses to Blessings
00:08:40
Filling You Up With Hope
And some stories came to mind. um Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, and Naomi and Ruth. With Abraham and Sarah,
00:08:54
Filling You Up With Hope
The people around them probably thought they were cursed because they couldn't have children. And back then, when you couldn't have children, that's people thought that you had a curse on you, right? But God made the impossible possible. and It doesn't make sense.
00:09:15
Filling You Up With Hope
They had, you know, God promises Abraham, your descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And what? You know, I'm an old man who doesn't have any children. How can this be happening? But God made it happen. He made that curse into a blessing. And they had Isaac.
00:09:41
Filling You Up With Hope
right? And um so it's just such a reminder and such a reminder of God's might and power. And Abraham knew that and Abraham was faithful. um Joseph being sold into slavery, like his brother's leaf, his brothers are jealous of him, jealous that he's their father's favorite, Jacob, and what does he do? What do they do? They leave him. They leave him for dead in a pit. But even even being left for dead in that pit, God isn't all of a sudden stopped working. When we're in those pits, when I was in that NICU, like heartbroken, God was still working. He didn't he doesn't stop working.
00:10:36
Filling You Up With Hope
I think that that's something that that helps when we're in pain, that he is he is still working and he sees you. He's Elroy, the God who sees, and he saw Joseph and he took Joseph on this journey and he, Joseph somehow He moves his way up in Egypt because of God working. And somehow he is able to help to help in this time of famine in that area. And his brother his brothers come and they need food because there's a huge famine. And Joseph recognizes them. And um and Joseph is high up in Egypt.
00:11:27
Filling You Up With Hope
He's high up. He recognizes them. And they're terrified, right? And Joseph is filled with emotion. And Joseph, um you know, many things happen, but Joseph forgives them. And this is,
00:11:53
Filling You Up With Hope
such a beautiful but Bible verse, Genesis 15, 19. And this is like the heart of what we're talking about. um What's the background of this is is so Joseph's dad, Jacob, he gets to be reunited with him and with his brothers, and then his dad dies. And the and his brothers think, oh, now he's going to pay us back for leaving him in the pit, for leaving him for death.
00:12:21
Filling You Up With Hope
And, but this is how Joseph responds to them. Don't be afraid. Am I God? You planned something bad for me. Curse, right? But God produced something good from it in order to save the lives of many people just as he's doing today.
00:12:46
Filling You Up With Hope
So even when sin and ugliness and evil come in, we need to we need to have the hope that, look, I'm doing a new thing. That's what God says. Look, I'm doing a new thing. And we need to hold onto that, because when we're in those moments, we just feel the curse, the negativity, and sometimes it doesn't feel like God is working. But one thing about Joseph is that he didn't lose his faith.
Maintaining Faith Through Adversity
00:13:20
Filling You Up With Hope
and And that leads me to the third example that we were talking about, which is Naomi and Ruth. The book of Ruth, such a beautiful book in the Bible that's short and hope, right? Devastations such a hard time. Naomi's husband is dead. Her sons are dead. She has her daughter in-laws. And She loves them, but one goes back to her people, right? But Ruth stays with her and there's loyalty. There's so much loyalty there. and um And even, you know, there's so much devastation and bitterness. And because of the grief, just this really hard time, but God, even though those hard times, right? God's working, right? And the descendant,
00:14:15
Filling You Up With Hope
Right. The descendants of Jesus in Matthew, in the beginning of Matthew, when it lists them, guess what? Ruth is listed. Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, listed in the genealogy of our Lord, our savior. And, um, and that's God.
00:14:40
Filling You Up With Hope
He can take those low moments and he's never stopping working. He never stops. So, but all three of these stories, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Naomi and Ruth, like these stories, what they have in common is their faith. And that they followed, they followed God. And we can too.
00:15:09
Filling You Up With Hope
and taking in Romans 8 28 we know that God works in all things together for the good of the ones who love God for those who are called according to his purpose all things not just good things he's just he's not just doing a new thing in good times no even in those devastations he is somehow because his ways are beyond our understanding he is he is doing a new thing. And I think that God wants the Israelites to have this hope at this time, that God can even turn the hardest things into like going into uncharted territory, they're going into new territory, uncharted territory, they're going to be surrounded by people who are not like them. And um they need to know God's power.
00:16:08
Filling You Up With Hope
they need to know it deeply, because it's easy to forget, right? When they were when they were thirsty, when they were wandering, you know it's easy to forget that wait, even in these hard times, even when I am so thirsty, got God, the everlasting water is working, he is there. And his power is displayed God's might and power all throughout the Bible. and But it doesn't get any stronger than Jesus, right? Him living this perfect life that we can all learn from by reading the Gospels.
Salvation: Grace & Transformation
00:16:54
Filling You Up With Hope
And um and then he dies for us. um This is Ephesians 2. At one time, you were like a dead person. However, God
00:17:07
Filling You Up With Hope
is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of these things we did wrong. He did this because of his the great love that he has for you. You are saved by God's grace, skipping down a little bit, because of your faith. This is salvation this salvation is God's gift. It's not something you possessed. It's not something you did that you could be proud of. Instead, we are God's accomplishments created in Christ Jesus to do good things. Wow. So e even though we fall so short and we wander and we complain and we sin and we're dead and our trespasses, right, we're we have a new life. Like from from bad things,
00:18:11
Filling You Up With Hope
from bad things, we are saved. You know, even though we've, even though we fall short, we are saved and blessings can flow. Um, we, we just need to remember like the, the message is that we need to remember God's might and that he can turn the curses in our lives into blessings, no matter what matter what you're facing in your life.
Conclusion: Hope & Future Discussions
00:18:48
Filling You Up With Hope
you know When I was grieving, i never i didn't I did not realize all of the work that God was doing until
00:19:00
Filling You Up With Hope
Afterwards, when I could look back and see, oh my gosh, you know look at all God is dead. And he's constantly he's constantly doing that. So I just hope that this filled you with some hope today. And I'm so excited to go through more of God's amazing word with you.
00:19:29
Filling You Up With Hope
and I will just talk to you soon. Bye.