I am very blessed to come from an immediate and extended family that has enjoyed “gathering” through the years on both sides-making memories, enjoying each other, extending lots of love, eating of course, and learning more and more about the generations gone by. Also, as I’ve grown through the years to understand humans more and more, I also realize we are the recipients of some identified and mostly un-identified generational curses from our family down through the ancestral years. Aren’t we all. In fact, generational curses are all over the scripture.
Our extended family has included soldiers, farmers, blacksmiths, carpenters, preachers, business owners, engineers, medical professionals, mechanics, architects, mill workers, accountants, pilots, teachers, doctors, salespeople, consultants, flight attendants, and many dedicated mothers and fathers, each carrying their own baggage from generations prior. This made for challenge as we would now spend a lifetime learning to overcome these “besetting sins” talked about in Hebrews. The ancestors that I know a little bit about, were basically good people who persevered through many dangers, toils, and snares, working hard to make life better for their families while carrying many generational curses in tow, some knowingly and most unknowingly. Many of my ancestors were loving, steadfast, courageous, faithful, realistic and practical people. They did the best that they could do in spite of the circumstances of their lives. Most had no idea about emotional safety, emotional intelligence, or managing emotions. Those that “got by” well, got by in life with a deep knowledge of scripture and applied all of it to their lives as deeply committed to Christ. This served as their understanding of emotions. If they didn’t “get by” well, then they were people who just ignored emotions altogether. Our families have the greatest influence on our development, including the development of our patterns of sin.
A generational curse is believed to be passed down from one generation to another due to rebellion against God. If your family line is marked by divorce, incest, poverty, anger or other ungodly patterns, you’re likely under a generational curse. The scripture says that these curses are tied to choices. Deuteronomy 30:19 says we can either choose life and blessing or death and cursing.
Now, as technology and knowledge has increased at jet-rate speeds, we as students and life-long learners have access to new education, and we have fast-tracked our understanding of generations and generations of “curse” and how our past contributed to our generational challenges and curses. Hopefully the goal can now become, to remove as many negative traits from our lives as possible, before we meet Jesus face to face, as we make our way home “to the garden.”
Generational sins or curses show themselves as continued weaknesses or tendencies that are handed down to us through the generations from parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or members of our family. These curses can involve behavioral patterns and ways of thinking that keep us trapped in the past. Even though sin can be passed down through the generations, each person is responsible for his or her personal sins against the Lord.
My family, possibly like yours, has been plagued with the following generational sins: unforgiveness, lying, bitterness, fear, worry, judgment, resentment, pride, rejection, envy, jealousy, anger, abuse, covetousness, doubt, unbelief, rebellion, drunkenness, manipulation, greed, lust, idolatry, fornication, adultery, hatred, and revenge.
Generational curses and sins have many patterns. Once a sin pattern begins in a family, it can continue and multiply among the family members. It can last for four generations and can become a stronghold and a stumbling block for the whole family. Generational sin is not only disobeying God’s commandments. It is also worshipping anything other than God, which is idolatry.
In an earlier blog post I wrote the following…
“Dr. John Gottman calls the negative traits in our lives, “enduring vulnerabilities.” We all have them and they are unavoidable due to the fact that the first generation up from us, (our parents), have them, their parents had them, and their parents had them…well, you get the point. They come in all shapes and sizes and you have them too, regardless if you have ever dug in deep enough to find them. They are upon us due to anything that shaped us in childhood and even as we grew up to be older…things like sports, peers, school, events, overconfidence, losing a contest, having a boyfriend or girlfriend, family, parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, and the culture you grew up around.
My good friend, personal coach, and wise counsel, Russ West, says it this way…
“You can’t break the chain if you don’t acknowledge something about your parents and family of origin that may sound negative. I’m not negating the positive traits that came through all the generations. But, the negative traits are so much more powerful on us to take us down and we must address them. I’m not being disrespectful to acknowledge negative traits in parents, grandparents, etc. but to learn from them. They could be called “Nuclear Waste.” We can’t see it but it still poisons us. When we bury those negative traits from childhood, parents, grandparents, it then invisibly impacts us in a negative way like Nuclear Waste and we can’t stop the scriptural “generational curses” in that case. We are healthy when we can actually talk about this stuff.”
Abraham’s family is a prime example of generational sin repeating itself from one generation to another. In Genesis 12, Abraham lied about his relationship with his wife Sarai. He told her to say that she was his sister. He knew that she was a beautiful woman and he was afraid that if he told the Egyptians that she was his wife, they would kill him and take her. Pharaoh’s officials praised Sarai to Pharaoh, and they took her to his house, and he took her for his wife.
“But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.” (Genesis 12:17 NASB)
When Pharaoh realized that she was his wife, he told Abraham to take her and go. Abraham lied because he was afraid of being murdered and losing Sarai. The lying spirit in Abraham’s family continued to the next generation. In Genesis 26, Isaac told the men of Gerar that his wife, Rebekah, was his sister. He was afraid that they would kill him and take her. Both father and son lied about their wives because of their own sins of fear and doubt.
We do not have to surrender to the binding power of our sins or the curses of the generations. God made provision for our release from our sins many years ago when His son, Jesus, died for our sins on the cross. When we appropriate Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins for ourselves and confess our sins, we have taken the first step to break the binding power of generational sin.
Well, there must be a way to become our best self, don’t you think, and get away from any generational curse? Especially, if we have identified and surrendered to Christ as leader and forgive of our life…the answer is yes but it takes work.
I enjoy listening and learning from Ian Cron and sensing the aroma and anointing from whence he teaches of “finding our true selves.” Ian is brilliant and has a unique way of “putting the cookies down low on the shelf” so that we can understand. Just this week, he emailed the following two thoughts which gripped me and resonated in my spirit and I wrote them down under my faith statements that I live by and next to my mission statement for life. If you can decide to follow this path, your life will be forever altered as led by Jesus Himself. It may look awkward, feel funny, and be counter-cultural to what you’ve always known, but it is the “hard work” of finding your way back to what Jesus originally crafted in the Garden of Eden, which is where we end up as believers in eternity, and, the peace and joy and freedom that you will find HERE, will be unsurpassable.
Emily McDowell says,
“Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”
Ian Cron replies in response,
“Early in childhood all of us pick up the message that there are parts of who we are that don’t conform to the expectations of the important people in our lives. And so, we instinctually place a mask called ‘personality’ over our authentic self to protect us from harm and make our way in the world. Our personality (derived from the Greek word for mask) helps us know and do what we sense is required to please our parents, to fit in and relate well to our friends, to satisfy the expectations of our culture, and to get our basic needs met. Sadly, as we get older, we lose touch with our authentic self. As Frederick Buechner so poignantly describes it, ‘The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.’ For me, recovering my true self is the touchstone of the spiritual journey. As the renowned psychiatrist, Carl Jung wrote, ‘It is the privilege of a lifetime to become who you truly are.’ The journey of recovering our true self looks different for each of us. Perhaps we might begin with a simple prayer, ‘God help me remember and welcome home the person I was before the world told me who I was supposed to be.’ I believe God enjoys answering that prayer.”
Ah, such gold! This must be what God had in mind at the cross, the price of following Him, discovering our new family of God, and living up to the most freedom-filled peace we’ve ever known, even while we walk this earth on our journey toward eternity.
Remember this from Ian Cron, also, and something to “chew” on…
“What helped you in the morning of life constricts and kills you in the afternoon of life. We have to keep morphing into our best selves peeling back and removing those things that no longer work for our lives. ‘I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.’ Some people live their entire adult life inside a childhood story that worked well as a child, but now it doesn’t exist, and, they live their entire adult life living and making decisions in such ways as to subconsciously please their up-bringers, caretakers, and their original family. And, if they don’t let go of this, they will always be a child in their thinking. Now, as a child of God, they have a new family; the family of God. You have to come to the understanding that these childhood stories are relics from the past, good memories, served you in a season, and don’t serve you now, IF, you are going to become your true and best self.”
The word “Curses” occurs about 300 times in the scripture. It is a Supernatural power for Evil. The word “Blessing” occurs almost 600 times in the scripture and is a Supernatural power for Good. Two entirely different and opposing ways to live…either you live under the blessing or you live under the curse.
I believe it’s the purpose of God that we be released from curses. People in general don’t know how to recognize what is a curse and what is a blessing. Even if they recognize, they don’t know how to be released. And, unfortunately, these curses will continue on from generation to generation until someone knows how to cut the curse off. A curse is an “invisible barrier” to you and your best life.
Interestingly enough, the “vehicles” in which blessings and curses travel, are usually WORDS. These are words spoken, written, or pronounced inwardly.
A curse is like a long evil arm from the past and you don’t know how far it stretches out and just as you make some progress it trips you up again and it really becomes the story of your life…you hear statements like this from people down through the years, ”It happened to my grandfather; it seems to run in my family.” A curse is a dark shadow of your past and it seems the sun very seldom seems to shine on you.
Deuteronomy 28 gives the words of prescription for change…
”If you will listen diligently to the voice of the Lord your God.”
Listening is emphatic here. Very simply, the primary cause of all blessings is listening to God’s voice and doing what He says. Same thing for curses but the opposite is not listening to the voice of God…
Let’s get a little more practical. There are other ways you can cause and live under a curse:
1.A father/mother with a son or daughter. If one child is “bad” in the way that we are bad, we like to take it out on them rather than ourselves. Parents, if you pick on one of your children, it’s probably because they are the most like you. Your objective is that you really don’t like what is in you. You have made statements like this to your child, “You’ll never succeed, you’ll never make it.” Curse.
2.A teacher with a student with dyslexia, “you’re silly, you’re shallow, you’re stupid.” You initiate curse here.
3.Self-imposed curses- Making negative statements about yourself is an indicator that you are under a curse. Don’t say, “I’ll never be able to do this, I never succeed, I’m no use, I’m a failure, I just can’t take it anymore, I wish I were dead.” You are inviting the spirit of death and curse when you state these things. You have imposed a curse.
A beautiful verse to recite in Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die but live and declare and proclaim the works of the Lord.” If you have said something negative about yourself, revoke the negative by reciting this verse and replacing it by the positive.
4.Unscriptural covenant curses- Idol worshippers, people who live in total rebellion toward God. Superstition invites an open door to Satan. Curse.
5.Tribal societies curses-cuts on the skin, and this exposes the person to the idolatry. Curse.
6.Servants of Satan curses- witchcraft. Curse.
Jesus said, “I will give you authority over all curses”
Pete Scazzero relates generational curses to this statement.
“Children tend to experience the consequences of the sins of their fathers in Exodus 20:25. It happened to Joseph. Lying became a way of life. Favoritism became a way of life. Becoming who God made YOU to be is the discipleship journey of following Christ and the process of putting off the sinful patterns of our family of origin and culture. Jesus may be in your heart but Grandpa is in your bones. The past may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility to get a really good future out of it.”
BE RELEASED from all curses and here is the pathway…you must cross the bridge of the Cross, surrender your heart and life to Christ, and follow him in direct focus the rest of your life. There is a difference in being a Christian and being a Follower of Jesus. Romans 10:13 is a simple roadmap.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse. 1 John 3:8 says, “that he might destroy the works of the devil.”
Pray this prayer of release from the curses in your life…Psalm 78:8-9,
“God, do not hold against us the sins of past generations; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need. Help us, God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake.”
