{"id":405,"date":"2005-11-14T00:15:12","date_gmt":"2005-11-14T00:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/11\/cerulean_sanctu.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:46:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:46:48","slug":"cerulean_sanctu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/11\/cerulean_sanctu.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Curses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dedelen.com\/cerulean.html\">Cerulean Sanctum<\/a> posted a while back on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dedelen.com\/2005\/10\/curses.html\">curses<\/a>.  He was talking about the literal kind and his post has an incredible personal encounter with someone who was living with one.  I&#8217;m not sure where I stand on the existence of such things, but his story was moving and thought provoking.<br \/>\nEven more thought provoking were some of his comments on the very real curses others place on us or we even place on ourselves.  Our experiences and interactions with people can leave an imprint on us that can be hard to shake.  He wries about how someone once shared that Dan&#8217;s life had had a profound negative impact on this person.  Not only was that man impacted, but his sharing it with Dan stayed with Dan for years to come.  He writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think it was just today that I came to grips with his pronouncement. In some of my darkest times, what he said to me that night haunted me, and only now do I recognize it for the curse that it was. Only now do I feel like the black power of that comment has been rendered inert in the light of Christ.<br \/>\nHow many of us are laboring under a curse someone glibly tossed out a decade or more ago? What words carelessly spoken&#8211;or even spoken with intent&#8211;have pinned us to the ground or left us flailing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That last paragraph reached out and grabbed me.  I think that to a large degree lots of folks are laboring under such a curse.  I think that plagues far too many former and current ICOC members as well.  I know that I&#8217;ve found many things I believed fervently are false, yet I cannot seem to unplug myself from that mindset entirely.  It sticks with me, shaping my thinking and my worldview.  It is a kind of curse, an undercurrent running through my subconscious subtly and not so subtly influencing my thoughts.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Though I understand now that my worth as a disciple does not hinge on my evangelism, I still feel some guilt if I&#8217;m not constantly focused on sharing my faith.<\/li>\n<li>Though I know that having daily, morning quiet times or Bible study is not necessary for salvation, I&#8217;m still afraid to admit that I don&#8217;t practice that discipline (though I do get into the Bible in other ways).<\/li>\n<li>Though I know that I don&#8217;t need to give a certain percentage of my income to be accepted as generous, I wonder if I&#8217;m giving enough.<\/li>\n<li>Though I now understand that my church is not <em>the<\/em> church, I still feel myself looking at others as outsiders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Though I am growing through these things and others, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve put enough emphasis on the spiritual forces at work here.  I&#8217;ve not prayed earnestly enough, acknowledging that I need a power bigger than me to release me from this line of thinking.  Not only that, but I need Him to help me find balance in these areas.  In my mental gymnastics to wrestle through to the truth, I can spring from a hyper focus on evangelism to an aversion to it, from a firm belief in a morning Bible reading ritual to being flippant about not getting in the Bible at all, from legislated giving to casual, inconsistent and thoughtless giving.<br \/>\nChurch relationship aren&#8217;t the only ones that can do this.  How we are raised, our work environments, friends and family can all influence us in ways we are not entirely aware of &#8211; for the good and the bad.  I can look back at my childhood and see so many blessings &#8211; how my parents taught me to love God, respect the Bible and love Jesus, how they taught me to love my country and respect authority.   I can also look back and see curses that have hung with me, like a temper that gets the best of me now and then.  Thankfully for me, the blessings <strong>far<\/strong> outnumber the curses.  Some are not so lucky and they spend a lifetime battling against the curses of their past.<br \/>\nNo matter where the curses come from, Dan brings to light for me a powerful concept that it&#8217;s not just up to us to read our Bibles and sort this stuff out intellectually, we need God&#8217;s intervention on our very souls.  Only he can reach in and separate us from those things that have their grip on us, like a curse, and free us from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan from Cerulean Sanctum posted a while back on curses. He was talking about the literal kind and his post has an incredible personal encounter with someone who was living<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/11\/cerulean_sanctu.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Curses<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Curses - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/11\/cerulean_sanctu.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Curses - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dan from Cerulean Sanctum posted a while back on curses. 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The 'this' was 7 days and nights of just sitting. Sitting in his funk, in his sores, with his friends there, just sitting. Thinking. Wondering. Sitting. He waits a week to start his lament. I doubt it'd taken me that long. Then, in Job\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":711,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/08\/codepoke_on_the.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":405,"position":1},"title":"Codepoke on The Fruit of the Vine","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"August 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Codepoke is doing a series on communion at his blog that's thought provoking. The most recent post focused on the Wine as the blood and blood as life. This struck me as I read it today: We take into our bodies the very life of the Lord Jesus. 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He has successfully navigated his two kids (a 17 year old man and 23 year old woman) into adulthood and offers some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Family and Friends&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Family and Friends","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/family-and-friends"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":827,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2008\/06\/mark_11_triumph.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":405,"position":3},"title":"Mark 11 &#8211; Triumphal Entry and a Cursed Tree","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"June 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Over a month since my last QT entry. Sigh. Mark 11:1-10 - Notice - A colt that had never been sat on, they laid their cloaks on the colt so Jesus wouldn't have to touch it and they even covered the road so the Colt wouldn't touch that. I get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":525,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/07\/convergance.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":405,"position":4},"title":"Convergence","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"July 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A year and half ago, our church's minister and I seemed worlds apart. We had different philosophies and ideas and were headed in different directions, or at least it seemed. About 9 months ago we seemed to turn together toward a common direction. 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