Deliverance

[Chrysostom]

Why do you tremble at the curses of men, as though any word spoken against you had power if God be for you? If you are wronged, give thanks, and thereby you shall heap blessings upon yourselves, far greater than if you had willingly suffered loss. Did Job not receive double when he endured unjust curses and misfortunes without reviling or turning to sorcery? Do not run to those who promise deliverance through charms or incantations; that is to anger God and multiply your sorrows. The deliverance you seek begins when you despise such threats and cling to Christ alone.

As for your son, why do you fix your hope on the lessening of his body while his soul may be weighed down by past wounds and by the very anxiety over his flesh? The body is not evil, but when we pamper it, blame belongs not to the flesh but to the undisciplined will. If he desires to be lighter, let it be that he may more nimbly run the race set before him, and let him first cast off the heavy burden of old resentments and hurts. Forgiving from the heart is a healing far greater than any medicine, and it makes the soul ready to receive the true balm of Christ. God is the Healer, and though not all possess the gift of healings, yet all who call upon Him with faith are made whole in soul, which is the greater miracle.

Therefore, fear no curse; endure every wrong as from the hand of a loving Father who will turn it to your gain. Seek not the display of bodily improvement, but the hidden transformation of the inner man. Then shall the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts, and you shall see that even these light afflictions are working for you an eternal weight of glory, if you hold fast to the hope of the resurrection.

 

[Silas]

The cry for deliverance from curses touches something deep in the human heart. Scripture records that when the law was given, the people stood with Mount Ebal before them, hearing the curses that would fall on those who broke God's commandments. One by one, those curses were called out, and the people had to answer, "Amen", so be it. The weight of that was real, and it reflected the seriousness of our rebellion. But the good news is that what the law could only threaten, Jesus took upon himself. He became the curse for us, bearing the full penalty of our disobedience so that we would not have to. When you pray for curses to end, you are standing on solid ground: the cross of Christ breaks the power of every condemnation. There is therefore now no curse left for those who are in him. We can pray boldly, not to reverse curses by any ritual, but to rest in the finished work of Jesus and declare his authority over every lingering shadow. All that would speak against you or your son has been answered at Calvary.

Now, for your son, you are asking for two kinds of healing: physical, in safe weight loss, and inward, from past hurts. The Gospels show us that Jesus healed in many ways, sometimes with a word, sometimes with a touch, sometimes gradually, sometimes instantly. He met people where they were, yet he was never bound to a single pattern. That matters because we often think healing must look a certain way. The truth is, any process that restores the body or the mind is a work of God’s hand, whether it unfolds over weeks or in a moment. The prophet Isaiah saw that the Messiah would carry our infirmities and our sorrows. Jesus not only bore our sins; he took our weaknesses into his own person. So we can pray with confidence that your son’s body will respond to wise habits, that his metabolism will settle, and that his relationship with food will be redeemed, not through shame, but through the patient grace that restores the whole person.

The past hurts, though, need more than a physical shift. I hear a parent longing for a son to find freedom from wounds that still echo. It is easy to live in the residues of what others did, rehearsing the pain until it defines the present. The apostle Paul had every reason to be haunted by his own past, years as a legalist, a persecutor, a man building his own righteousness on the rubble of others. But when he met Christ, he counted all of that as loss. And decades later, he still counted it loss. He did not let the memory of what was behind him become a throne that ruled his present. He pressed forward, forgetting those things, because the excellency of knowing Christ outshone everything else. That is not pretending hurt never happened; it is letting the risen Jesus show himself so glorious that the hold of the past is broken. For your son, healing from past hurts will come as he sees Jesus as greater than the pain. We can pray for that sight, and for the gentle, gradual work of the Spirit to mend what has been crushed. The same God who numbered the stars is able to enter the hidden rooms of the heart and make them whole.

So yes, we pray the curses are ended, not by our striving, but because Christ has already disarmed them. We pray for weight loss that honors the body as a temple, done in partnership with the God who designed our physical processes. And we pray for a healing of the mind and emotions that moves your son out of the shadow of the past and into the light of Jesus. May he experience the reality that the past loses its power when Christ becomes the present treasure.