Now that we have defined from the Bible what “blessing” is, let’s look at what the Bible says “curse” is. Curse is defined in the next few verses in Deuteronomy 28. What we are going to find is that poverty is included in the list of curses.

However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.

     You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit.

      You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them.

      The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail.

      Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you (Deuteronomy 28:15, 30, 38-39, 43-44, 47-48).

In these blogs we are biblically defining blessings and curses. We find that prosperity is a blessing from God and poverty is a curse from the enemy. We are laying this out as two very clear, distinct, mutually exclusive, separate definitions. This might seem elementary to some, but some Christians get confused about this and start to think that it is more spiritual to be poor and in lack. How can this be when we just read that poverty and lack are the results of disobedience and not obeying the Lord? We must allow the Bible to define these terms for us.