Generational Curses
“The curse without a cause shall not come,” (Pr. 26:2)
Introduction
Have you every wondered why things happen the way they do, and why they seem to happen again and again, no matter what you do to TRY and change them?
The Bible tells us that “The curse without a cause shall not come,” (Pr. 26:2). So there must be a reason for the lack of blessings and the presence of a curse in our lives.
The Enemy is very familiar with our weaknesses, fears, and the patterns of destruction he has cut into the fabric of our lives. He has already been successful in breaking into our lives long before we were even aware of his existence. The patterns of dysfunction, fear and separation were well formed in the generations that preceded us. The “former desolations” and “the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations,” talked about in Isaiah 61:4 tell the story. The Enemy has worked to rebuild our lives on a foundation of shame and confusion, which creates failure and lack. (See Is. 61).
He has kept track of every sin, including any mental, verbal or subconscious agreements we, or our ancestors, have made with him. He is the record keeper. He is the Accuser of the Brethren who uses the unconfessed sin, the shedding of blood, the oaths and the words of agreement, and the symbolic dedications made by us or on our behalf by our ancestors to legitimize his plot to destroy us. These deeds and words become the premise from which Satan argues his case against us.
As individuals begin to make choices for themselves and consequently, for their descendants, the iniquities of the fathers and the consequences of those choices became part of their children’s inheritance. This automatic transmission of sin from one generation to the next is described in Exodus 20:5 as the “iniquity of the fathers visited on to the children to the third and fourth generations”. It becomes the “default pattern” that not only affects human life and its generation, but all of creation.
The curses handed out in Eden to Adam, Eve, and the Serpent continue to be passed down through the generations even to this very day. We still sweat and suffer in child bearing. Snakes still crawl on their bellies and eat dust. In addition to the general curse of death that came upon all of creation as a result of the Original Sin, we have also become weakened and more vulnerable to deception.
Born Into Iniquity
The Bible tells us we were conceived in sin and born into iniquity. That does not mean the act of conception is sinful or that the child conceived is evil. It simply means that already at birth the seeds of destruction are present within us. Those seeds contain the lies the Enemy will use to deceive us. They are the same lies he used to tempt our ancestors, and their yielding to his lies gave him the right to use them again on us.
The generational junk, though present at birth, cannot be automatically activated in us without our consent. “Whom you yield yourself servants to obey, his servant you become,” (Rom. 6:16), provides the terms of this contract with Darkness. The Enemy must get us to enter into agreement with the lie in order for that lie to begin to function in our lives. Until the lie is activated, the curses in our individual lives remain dormant. Embracing the lies allows Satan to activate the pending patterns of destruction in our lives.
Free Will
Most people do not realize either the immediate or the long term effects of their choice to believe the lie and sin.
Sin not only opens doors for demonic judgments, it also sets up a familiar learning environment as part of the legacy for us and our descendants. The lies that have been embraced and agreed upon affect both the initial signer of the contract and the offspring of those who chose to “do the deal” with the Devil.
Failing to recognize the lies that the Enemy uses to bring his judgments upon us and failing to repent or, “change our mind,” and confess our sins in light of those judgments, allows the Enemy to continue to control us after we are saved. Before we were saved we were under the indictment of death and held by the Law that says, “The soul that sins, (or, breaks the law), shall die”, (Ez. 18:4). The only way out of the legal binding the Enemy had over us as citizens of earth was to die, (Ro. 7:1-6). The Death of Jesus Christ was substituted for ours so that death would no longer have legal dominion over those who “opted out” of the Devil’s Kingdom.
God in His great goodness, did not abandon us to the consequences of our fallen state. Instead, He made a way to accommodate our free will by establishing a way out of the curse of sin and its destruction through obedience. God modified the avalanche of sin’s consequences cascading down the course of human generation from father to son by sending His Son to absorb the shock waves of sin and stop death in its tracks.
He declares, as recorded by the prophet Ezekiel, that no longer shall it need be that a child should have to die for the sins of the parent. If a son chooses to walk in righteousness he shall “not die for the iniquity of his father; he shall surely live!” says the Lord. (Ez. 18:17).
God established the power of our free will in giving us the right to renounce the unrighteousness of our fathers and gave us the power to change the direction of our ancestral legacy, by doing that which was right in the sight of the Lord. The renunciation of past agreements is accomplished by confessing the sins and iniquities of our generations past as sin and an abomination against God.
Patterns Of Destruction
Patterns carried down through the bloodlines explain the observable similarities between grandparent and parent, parent and child, and child and grandparent.
Not all patterns or traits are negative. Both good and bad can occur in any area of a person’s life, personality and experience. They include, but are not limited to; length of life, causes of death, physical ailments, the amicability in relationships, violence, abuse, addictions, anger, assault, accidents, injury, finances, poverty, wealth, success, intelligence, persecution and false accusation, to mention a few.
Patterns are like wallpaper. The pattern tells us three things regardless of whether or not we know how to wallpaper. The pattern is not coincidental. There is an intelligent designer behind it. The predictability of the pattern offers further proof that the transmission of the content from one generation to the next is NOT an accident. We can safely conclude that the patterns of destruction and hardship are a direct and deliberately crafted by a designer whose intention is destruction.
The pattern tracks the Enemy’s activities over time and makes them more evident. Though medical histories make patterns of dysfunction in physical health easier to identify than the more subtle patterns of dysfunction that operate as break-downs in other areas, they all have their roots in spiritual origins.
No area of human life or activity is exempt from the patterns, or left unaffected by the forces of evil. It also leads us to believe that not all of the explanations for life exist in the realm of the physical. There are spiritual forces at work behind the scenes that have taken up specific assignments against us. (See Job 1:6-12).
Familiar Spirits
Strongholds are an accumulation of lies and patterns of sin gathered through the activity of the demons (disembodies spirits), known as FAMILIAR SPIRITS.
These familiars are well acquainted with our generational line. They are aware of all the open doors, unconfessed sin, innocent blood shed, vows, words spoken and curses made by our ancestors. These demons operate through the curses and cords of iniquities of the previous generations to build their case and establish their claims against each successive generation. They present their accusations and allegations to the Court of Heaven in a desire to bring upon each new generation the judgments of the sins of the last one.
They come looking and sounding like us. They come feeling like our feelings and using our names. They invade our thinking and hide deep within our feelings. They persuade us that they are our thoughts and feelings and impersonate us to ourselves to get us to believe we are the things we observe ourselves thinking, saying, feeling and doing.
Through constant exposure to evil, Satan continues his work of deception until we become accustomed to evil. It’s familiarity and the fact that few of us question the accuracy of our perceptions and the validity of our observations causes us to accept the beliefs and traditions of our families and cultures as accurate and true when they are not. Deception begins to feel like normal and we live without resisting our “reality”.
Our Spiritual Legacy
Without the revelation of the Holy Spirit we can live our whole lifetime in bondage to the lies that have enslaved our ancestors for centuries and never know the difference. The unspoken family rules and patterns of dysfunctional behavior that hold us captive continue to go unchallenged and we are none the wiser.
In recognizing the generational sins we are not looking for a way to blame our parents or grandparents. We are simply looking for the patterns of destruction in order to identify the areas of difficulty and consider the direction our life is taking. We are taking responsibility to bring our generations back to the Cross of Calvary so that we and our descendants can enjoy the full redemption Jesus died to give us.
The Faithful Witness
Even as every crime needs a witness to settle the dispute, we have One Who will testify to the truth of what really happened to us. Though the Enemy may have obscured our memory and twisted our perception and blocked our understanding, Jesus knows. He is that “Faithful Witness”, (See Rev. 1:5), Who opens our eyes and enlightens our hearts with His promise, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32).
Finding the place of agreement, that place in time and space where we were deceived into believing the lie, means going back into the memory. Many of those agreements were made in childhood, some even in the womb. Detecting and exposing them is the work of the Holy Spirit and Jesus, the Faithful Witness.
Taking The Devil To Court
When we recognize the pattern and realize the lie we have been believing, we can intentionally cancel out the lie and our agreement with it. We declare the truth and replace the lie with the truth. We are then in a place to command the demons that were holding us hostage through the lie and using it as their authorization to continue their control of us, to be cast out.
Only when we, as the legal representative of our generational blood line, “take the Devil to court”, will the agreements with the Devil and his hold over us be broken and justice be restored. Only then will the curses be broken. The freedom Jesus died to give us will begin to flow to redeem those parts of our lives, including our physical health and current relationships, that have been bound in pain and destruction.
The Five Steps To Freedom
- IDENTIFY – Breaking the curses begins with identifying the lie. Recognizing the patterns and making the connections between what is happening in the present with things that have gone on in the past. Identification requires investigation and asking key questions that compare the experiences of our ancestors, including our parents, with our own. A good list of those questions can be found in “Diagnosing Your Family Tree.
- CONFESS – We must confess the sins and the iniquities of the generations past. Leviticus 26:39-46 very clearly instructs those who find themselves eaten up, beaten up and wasting away. “If they will confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies, if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt – then I will remember My covenant …” We admit to and confess the wrong doing. Those sins and abominations may include things we have not done ourselves and yet are part of our family’s history, such things as incest, infidelity, abandonment, rejection, failure, favoritism, abuse, anger, violence, blood shed, extortion, embezzlement, dishonesty, abortion, sexual perversion, lying, bitterness, judgmentalism, gossip, etc.
- REPENT – After we confess those things the Holy Spirit has brought to mind in regard to the sins of our generation, we take personal responsibility for our own choices. We repent for our own participation in those sins, both knowingly and unknowingly. We repent for believing lies which allowed those sins to continue to operate in our life and relationships. Repentance means to change our mind. We cannot repent for someone else because we cannot change their mind for them. That is why God commands us to ‘confess’ their sins and repent for our own. We ask Jesus Christ, our deliverer, to set us free from the contracts and curses operating in our lives through the covenants made with the Kingdom of Darkness, by those who have gone before us. Those words and deeds, still operating out of the strongholds created through the sins of the generations past, must now submit to our newly declared allegiance to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
- FORGIVE – To forgive someone means that I release them from my judgment and present the crimes and injustices they committed against me to God and the Court of Heaven. I permit God be the judge. I make my appeal to the highest court in the universe and allow heaven to make the judgment and hand down the sentence. I chose by an act of my will and with my heart to trust in God’s divine justice and to do what Jesus did.
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Mat. 6:14-15).
- RELEASE FROM JUDGEMENTS – Once we have forgiven those who have sinned against us, we can and do well to ask God to remove the judgments that Satan made against us. We must understand that the Enemy uses unforgiveness and bitterness to bind us to the very same thing we had judged in others and uses it as a justification to bring that or a similar judgment down on us. Curses come as a result of holding judgments and grudges against others, as well as, for disobedience and in response to iniquity. They are perpetuated through bitterness and unforgiveness. These curses are no respecter of persons and come to inflict injustices upon the innocent victim as well as the willful perpetrator.
The remedy for the sins of the generations and the “iniquity of our fathers which is with us” (See Leviticus 26:39) is clearly laid out in the Bible. We are admonished to break the curses of evil that cascade down into our life, and the lives of our children by confessing the iniquity of those who have gone before us. Confess the sins of the generations, identifying as specifically as possible, the patterns and the offenses.
We are acknowledging the operation of the familiar spirits that have created those particular responses and repercussions that have created a negative spiritual legacy and carried it down through our generational bloodline. When it is not possible to be specific, as may be the case when a person is adopted, or do not know our parent(s) or what was done, the best we can do is confess the general categories of sin and take responsibility to declare them to be an abomination before the Lord.
As we see from these verses, the prescription for recovery and restoration is very specific. If we CONFESS our iniquity and the iniquities of our fathers, which are with us and through which their unfaithfulness was demonstrated to Him, and humble ourselves, and REPENT of our own participation in those sins, God’s healing of our generational line and our lives will begin.