Often it seems that the Lord takes an idea (a spiritual truth) and increases it in your mind, like pouring gas on a burning fire. The Lord has been doing this in my life around the truth of blessings and curses. As I have been reading a book on "The Blessing of the Lord makes rich and adds no sorrow" that I was given by a client, the truth that the Blessing is what produces fruitfulness and multiplication has been reinforced. When I did a quick word study in the Old Testament the words "fruitful and multiply" appeared 40 times, showing this wasn't a one time thing but a theme God was reiterating. When God blessed Adam & Eve together to co-reign, He blesses them twice in Genesis 1:22 & 28 with the words "Be fruitful and multiply". This is covenant language (covenant is an agreement till death made by two parties that is binding) and is part of what makes up the Creation Covenant or covenant with Adam. It is important that we see this is covenant language because the two parties were God and Adam who represented all human beings because we will see this has implications for us. We see that from the very design of all Creation, God intends for us to be blessed and through the blessing to be fruitful and multiply. I know in the past I thought this phrase meant to have kids and for those in agriculture to have good crops, so I figured I got the kids part covered and maybe I can bless our little tiny garden. As you can tell God is shattering my old paradigm about the blessing and also being fruitful and multiplying. I believe the blessing was key to Adam and Eve co-reigning on the earth and spreading the will and glory of God beyond the Garden of Eden. Many people have wrongly believed that the whole earth was the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden which God caused to be fruitful and lush was about the size of modern day Iraq. God displayed to Adam and Eve a prototype of what their dominion should look like, since they were His representatives on the earth carrying His authority and empowerment (the Blessing was from Heaven). The rest of the earth lay untamed, wild, and in need of the dominion and ruler ship that Adam and Eve would bring. Also after the great rebellion in Heaven by Lucifer, Satan had to leave Heaven because he violated his own nature and thus he was cast down to the earth (the wild and untamed part).
I believe that if God had not blessed Adam and Eve they would not have the Divine empowerment to carry out their mission on the earth. In the past I have thought God cursed Adam and Eve after they believed "The Lie" and chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet what I know had revealed to me is that really curse is the absence of the blessing or another way to think of it is that curse is the process of death. So curse was the result of the Fall and Adam and Eve's disobedience and sin's entrance which leads to death. I think this is very important to understand this because so many times we assume that we should be prospering and growing but without the blessing. God announces the results of the curse in Genesis 3:14-19 which affect the serpent, Eve, Adam, the ground, their relationships, and their future. The Curse is like a nuclear blast, the echos of this blast we are still hearing today in our everyday lives. I don't believe that God expected us to be fruitful and multiply under the curse only to struggle to eek out an existence but thank God that He provided a way to restore the blessing to human beings.
I believe that Biblical prosperity is not about TV evangelists having personal jets but about every person yielded to God on the earth being fruitful and multiplying. I have also heard people refer to Genesis 3 where it talks about toiling the land with thorns and thistles and eating by bread by the sweat of your brow as being an explanation of why life can be so hard some times. This may be the result of living under the curse but then why did Christ come? It is wonderful to be forgiven and cleansed of all sin, I never want to minimize the powerful work of the blood of Christ but it seems to me that we were in a whole lot more trouble than just our sins. In Ephesians 2:1 & 2 refer to us being dead in our trespasses, walking according to this world, and children of wrath. The redemption that God brought about through Christ is a complete redemption and addresses all the root issues that have affected the human race.
I will explore in future blogs how blessing is one of the keys to Biblical prosperity (fruitfulness & multiplication). Hopefully this begins a little series that will encourage you and take you to a new level of freedom and life "in Christ".
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