Blessings and Curses

You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God: Your towns and your fields will be blessed.  Your children and your crops will be blessed.  The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed.  Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed.  Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed. [Deuteronomy 28.2-6]

Why would anyone not desire the blessings of God?  If a person was only the least bit superstitious (let alone devoted to God), would they not at least consider the words of this blessing?

With all that is said here and in the following sections that follow regarding blessing and cursing, I always find myself reflective.  The questions, "Am I blessed?" or "Am I cursed?" always come to mind.  And, what about Jesus?  Didn't He secure the blessing for all His followers?  And, if Jesus' 'followers' experience cursing, can they, in fact, even be His followers?

Also, if Jesus has instituted blessings on all His followers (who believe), where does obedience factor in?  Does it remain a condition of blessing?  How does disobedience factor in?

I feel as if I have experienced both sides of the blessing and cursing explained in this portion of Deuteronomy.  Mind you, I have not experienced the fullest extent of either way, but certainly a 'sampling' of both.  Most recently, it seems I can relate more to the curses section of this narrative than the blessings part.  Only a couple years ago, and for a period of a few years prior to that time however, I felt very much a partaker of the blessings side of things.  Much of what I am basing this review of my life on is financial (which is, in a large part, what the blessings and curses were largely about anyway).  I would conclude that much of the 'general turmoil' found in the curses is directly resultant to financial/material stress.

So, what's the deal?  (I must ask myself this question, right?)  What, in my life, can be associated with the blessings I have perceived?  What, in my life, can be associated with the curses I have perceived?  And, while I am reviewing the matter, is my evaluation actually 'real' or 'perceived'?  Is it a matter of faith or obedience?  Is it both?  Is it neither?

And then there is verse 20 of Deuteronomy 28:

The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me.

In the last couple of years, this is what I have felt has been my lot.  Right now, my personal confusion and frustration are at all-time highs.  Am I cursed?  What have I done?  Or maybe, what have I not done?

On more than one occasion, I have had the thought of my prayer life.  In many ways, it is much more profound and intense than ever before (necessity will certainly do that).  However, there is another way that my prayer life and practice differs from a few years before - particularly in this one exclusion: I have not regularly maintained and prayed over 'lists of people' that I did for several years prior to this current time in my life.  Could this be my answer?  Would God remove His hand of financial blessing because of this?

I think today marks a turn-around in my prayer life.  If God grants that I should still be blogging here a year from today, I hope that I remember this day in 2015 and have something to report!  There is undoubtedly something to be learned and shared!

Father, You know that I have not stopped 'praying', but You also know that I have left off praying for the countless hundreds of names that I once maintained (in list form) and called to You regularly.  Please, today, help me to return to this practice and have a lesson to share at this time next year.