I ask the Lord to bless my bread bowl almost every time I make bread because of this chapter.

Sometimes the bread turns out better than others.

What are we to do with the blessings and the curses? I have had prosperity and I have had others give to me. I have had many children and I have had miscarriages. Jesus was killed by His enemies. He had nowhere to lay His head. Job was blameless and was covered in boils, which is promised to the cursed. Noah was blameless and had his home destroyed.

But Jesus led the world into righteousness and relationship with God. Job was healed and restored. Noah was saved and delivered and fathered the world and given a new home.

Paul was beaten to the point of death. He was imprisoned. He was shipwrecked. Yet, he says that he was blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He knew he had every blessing.

This chapter has derailed a lot of Christians, so I want to be clear here. God blesses His children. God saves, heals, delivers, protects His children.

It doesn’t always look like the physical healing, deliverance, and protection we desire.

If God to us was only ever physical blessing, people wouldn’t love God. They would love themselves and God only for what He could give them.

The only way we can honestly show love for God is to love Him when we don’t get any physical blessing out of it.

When it hurts, when it seems all wrong, when it looks like a curse instead of blessing, that’s when we show if we really love God or if we are just in it for ourselves.

And there is hope. There is light in the morning. As Paul said, “Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”

Yes, He delivers and restores and redeems.

But we don’t need any of that. We just need Him. His presence with us is the fulfillment of all blessing. We’ve been anointed with the oil of His Spirit and our cup overflows. We live in abundance when we live in Christ.