“Break free – Be free – Stay Free!”
Opening Illustration: From Blue Fish TV Stories, “Andrew’s Story” – bad home environment
Thesis: How can I break free from the generational sins and curses of my family? What can I do to stop the dysfunctional behavior of my family’s generational sins and curses over my life and my future children’s lives?
There are four passages in the OT that speak of God "visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth generations of those who hate God":
Exodus 20:4-6: 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven
above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them
or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for
the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but
showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my
commandments.
Exodus 34:4-10: 4So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. 6And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” 8Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. 9“O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes,” he said, “then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.” 10Then the LORD said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world.
Numbers 14:18: 18‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’
Deuteronomy 5:8-10: 8“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9You shall not bow down
to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the
children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate
me, 10but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my
commandments.
Introduction:
Generational curses and sins are real and they can be broken over our lives and over our future families lives. I know because God did it in my life and He will do the same for you tonight!
InPlainsite.org notes this about our subject: The Generational curse referred to in the preceding passage (passages) is not God cursing a person, but the negative behavior patterns passed down to succeeding generations…A person’s spirit carries uncounted numbers of scars that exist because of their family’s self-destructive habits. Yet they repeat those exact self-destructive patterns believing they’ll reap a different harvest. Of course they never do and so the pain continues unabated.
Let’s take a moment to truly understand what a generational curse and or sin looks like.
The following thoughts come from: http://findarticles.com/p/articles: “A generational curse is defined as ‘family bondage’ passed down from one generation to the next, says Rev. Dr. Sheron Patterson, senior pastor of Highland Hills United Methodist Church in Dallas. "Many families are unaware that they are caught up in generational curses because it is so normal and natural to them,’ she explains. "It’s not until they get counseling or they really look at the outside world that they see their world is warped and wicked and sometimes twisted.’ Negative patterns of behavior that could be considered generational curses are physical abuse, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and alcoholism. ‘It’s a problem that has the family bound up,’ says Patterson. ‘Whether it’s teen pregnancy and grandmama was a teen mama and mama was one and you’re one and you never married the father. That’s the frostily being bound up in a very negative situation. And it seems natural and normal to them.’ Divorce could also be considered a generational curse, says Patterson. ‘People whose parents had multiple divorces and then you have multiple divorces. People who just can’t stay together and just can’t be marriage material.’ Patterson says that people imitate what they see, which oftentimes makes a generational cruse a ‘learned behavior.’ ‘I think one generation may fall into a bad habit or negative situation and they were never able to pull themselves out of it and they wind up making it internalized into the family system and the ones that follow them just follow that pattern.’…Negative patterns of behavior that are perpetuated, says Johnson, are often taught.”
The Bible makes it clear that generational sins and dysfunctional family behavior is passed along to others in the family. They can even be transmitted from one generation to another by allowing the spiritual forces of evil to be attached to unhealthy sinful family behaviors and lifestyles. To break these generational sins requires a divine intervention in our lives by Jesus.
It’s important to know that these sins and curses as the Bible labels them are attached to spiritual forces in evil places. The Apostle Paul stated it this way in Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Therefore we must incorporate the help of Jesus to drive these evil forces out of our lives. The Spirit of Christ has the power and the ability to set us free from these evil forces who would like to destroy our lives.
One author worded this spiritual battle this way - The following is from http://www.bible-knowledge.com/prayer-generational-curse.html, “Once they attach to the sinning parent, they will then attempt to try and jump and transfer onto some of the children in the family to form out a curse line. If this curse line ends up getting formed out - then the demons will follow that child into his adult life and try to get him to commit the same type of sins that his sinning parent had been committing. This is why alcoholic fathers sometimes produce children that end up becoming alcoholics themselves - all as a result of a curse line that had been formed out between that child and his alcoholic father - with demons feeding and operating on that curse line trying to influence the child to go in the same direction his sinning parent had been going in…Say you have a father who is a severe alcoholic. He marries, has several children, but never breaks his addiction to the alcohol during his entire married life. As a result of his addiction, all of his children are forced to see, watch and have to experience his alcoholism and all of the negative things that will go along with it. Many alcoholic men end up abusing both their wives and their children - either verbally, physically and/or sexually throughout much of their married life. As a result of this kind of severe transgression against the Lord, demons will be allowed to come in and attach themselves to the sinning alcoholic father. The demons will have full legal right to be able to come after the father for crossing over into this kind of an extreme realm to begin with if God should so choose to allow this to happen. Once the demonic forces attach and settle in on the sinning alcoholic father, they will then see which of the children they can influence and control.”
T.S. - Here are the 7 steps to being freed from generational family curses and sins:
I. We must choose to surrender ourselves to God 100%.
1. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40: “37Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
2. James 4:7 tells us that if we will "submit" to God and resist the devil, that he will flee. Unless our lives are FIRST submitted to God, we cannot effectively resist the devil!
1. The key is we must submit our lives to Jesus 100%!
2. Share how you came to Jesus Christ – the decision to surrender!
1. My decision to say no to the generational sins of my family helped to deliver me and my current family from a lot of scars, hurt, abuse and other evils.
II. We must recognize and then confess the generational sins in our family to God.
1. Recognize and then confess the sins of your sinning parents to God the Father.
2. On writer put it this way, “The next thing you are going to need to do is to fully confess out the sin or sins of the sinning parents to the Lord. As you will see in the Scripture verse I will list below - God is wanting you to acknowledge and then confess out those sins direct to Him. Here is the verse:"But if they 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 ... then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember ..." (Leviticus 26:40, 42) (http://www.bible-knowledge.com/prayer-generational-curse.html).
3. You could be thinking, “Why would God want me to confess out the sins of my father, mother, grandparents, and other family member when you had nothing to do with their sins in the first place?
1. This is a good question let’s explore the answer:
1. The reason is God wants you to know exactly why these spirits are coming after you in the first place so you know what to stand against.
2. Bible-knowledge writer makes this point, “The Lord wants you to have full knowledge as to what is going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm, and by confessing out what sins you know your sinning parents and ancestors have committed against the Lord - you are showing Him that you have the knowledge and the understanding that these original sins” (http://www.bible-knowledge.com/prayer-generational-curse.html).
III. We must be willing to forgive our family for their generational sins and its affect on us.
1. Be willing to fully forgive your sinning parent and their passing of the generational curse on to you.
2. Jesus said, "AND WHENEVER YOU STAND PRAYING, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that you Father in heaven may also forgive your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." (Mark 11:25).
1. The truth is that if you are willing to take this step with the Lord and fully forgive your parent or parents for whatever wrongs they may have done or inflicted upon you, no matter how bad or vicious those wrongs may have been, then you will now be ready for next step.
2. The gift of forgiveness opens the door for freedom in your own life!
3. This act drives the spiritual forces of evil out of your life and sets you on the path to freedom.
IV. We must break the connection to these generation sins and or curses over our lives.
1. Break any unhealthy connections or ties with the sinning parent and to the spirit that is attached to it.
2. Bible knowledge editor makes this observation about this step: As a result of the natural parent-child relationship that immediately develops when a child is born into the family - a strong spiritual bond will form out between the child and his parents - even if one or both of the parents end up abusing that child over a period of many years. This is why it is such a shock to a child’s senses when he or she first starts to receive any kind of extreme abuse from the sinning and abusive parent.
3. Their first natural reaction is that there must be something wrong with them or that they must have done something wrong themselves to warrant receiving this kind of abusive behavior. It isn’t until the child starts to get older, wiser and smarter that he starts to see the abusive and sinning parent for what he or she really is - someone who is acting out on very sick and evil impulses with no effort to try and control or curb it. When a sinning and abusive parent gets this far out of control and is doing horrible things to his children or other spouse - then what the child must do when he gets old enough to understand all of this is to break any unhealthy soul ties that may have formed out earlier on in the family with this sinning parent. This sinning parent will always be your natural parent by blood - but that doesn’t mean you have to stay spiritually attached to this evil, sinning and dysfunctional parent.
4. A soul tie or connection is any type of spiritual bonding that can occur between two people who have entered into any kind of personal relationship. A soul tie can occur between two spouses, two friends, two siblings and between a parent and a child. A soul tie can be a good and healthy one like what occurs between two people who marry for true love and who are capable of loving their children and their friends in a godly and righteous manner. However, a soul tie can also be a bad one - where the personal relationship becomes dysfunctional with one of the persons becoming the dominant and abusive one in the relationship, and the other person becoming the submissive one who is being abused and hurt by the dominant person.
5. The Bible tells us in Matthew 16:19 that whatever we bind or loose on this earth will bound or loosed up in heaven. In other words, God has already given us His power, His anointing and His authority to trample over all the power of our enemies - and some of our enemies are definitely demonic
V. Do the following spiritual exercise:
1. This exercise comes from www.sw-mins.org/gen_curses.html - First, you need to develop two lists - one which is personal and one which covers your family (including parents, grandparents and the members of each of their families).
1. You should be specific in naming the generational sins and curses.
2. Take your time.
3. Pray to the Lord and ask Him to help you prepare these lists.
4. While they are doing this exercise play the videos of stories from Blue Fish TV of Ashley, and Kathryn.
2. The following is a list of generational sin categories to help you in preparing your lists. Check and see if any of these are relevant to your life and your families lives (Handout):
IDOLATRY: _Eastern Religions (list) _Meditation _Chanting/mantras _Cults (list them) _Secret Orders/Lodges _Material things _Money _People
OCCULT: _Astrology _Fortune telling (various types) _Ouija Board _Seances _Dungeons & Dragons (or similar games - board or computer) _Hypnosis/Self-hypnosis _ESP _Crystals _Psychic healing _Occult literature _Occult beliefs _OOBE (Out of body experiences attempted/experienced) _Spiritism _Parapsychology _Psychic beliefs and practices _channeling _mind control
WITCHCRAFT & SATANISM: _Incantations _Spells _Dedications _Rituals _Ritual abuse _Blasphemy/Mockery _Literature _Beliefs _Sacrifices _Perversions _Magic _Santeria _Voodoo _Wicca _ Powwow healing witchcraft (Pennsylvania Dutch) _Maloike (Italian witchcraft) _Druidism (Celtic witchcraft)
SEXUAL SINS: _Fornication _Adultery _Pornography _Rape _Incest _Lust _Homosexuality _Abortion _Bestiality _Pedophilia _Exhibitionism _Abuse _Fantasy _Other perversions
DRUGS/ADDICTIONS: _Illegal (list) _Alcohol abuse _Smoking (abuse of body) _Prescription drug dependency _Food dependency
BELIEVING SATAN’S LIES: _Regarding self-image _Regarding God _Regarding religious beliefs _Regarding people _Regarding behavior _Regarding world standards and philosophies
FEAR: _Fear of failure _Fear of success _Fear of Rejection _Miscellaneous fears (list) _Anxiety _Worry _Despair _Hopelessness
UNBELIEF: _Lack of trust _Double-mindedness _Doubts _Skepticism
DECEIT/DISHONESTY: _Lying _Stealing _Exaggeration
PRIDE: _Self-righteousness _Self-focused _Vanity _Arrogance
REBELLION: _Disobedience _Disrespect _Self-will _Desire to be in Control _Stubbornness
ANGER: _Hatred _Bitterness _Resentment _unforgiveness _Rage _Revenge _Slander/Gossip _Critical/Judgmental _Blame-shifting _Prejudice/Bigotry _Malice
WISHING DEATH: _For self _For others
VIOLENT ACTS: _Attempted suicide _Abuse _Murder
VULGAR & ABUSIVE LANGUAGE: _Cursing (Lord’s name in vain) _Sarcasm _Condemning _Off color stories and jokes
MUSIC: (Regarding content of message or performers’ lifestyles) _Occult _Satanic _Sexual _Rebellion _Drug oriented _Focus on Death
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: (with roots in false religious beliefs or with psychic/occult influences) _Reiki _Therapeutic Touch _meditation techniques (emptying the mind) _Transcendental Meditation _acupuncture _acupressure _sonopuncture _iridology _chromotherapy _sound therapy _kinesiology _radionics _astrologic medicine _orgonomy _bioenergetics _biofeedback _hypnotic regression _reflexology _polarity therapy _Rolfing _Do’in _Shiatsu _yoga _Kirilian photography _autogenics _iridology _Ayurvedic Medicine _Tai Chi _Qigong _Traditional Chinese medicine _visualization techniques _psychic diagnosis _psychic healing
UNSCRIPTURAL SEEKING OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS OR SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE: Accepting any personal experience without testing it by the Word of God _Receiving personal prophecies without testing them and having them confirmed by God and the body of Christ.
This is only a guide to aid you in preparing your sin lists. It is not comprehensive. Not every sin is listed. Add whatever is applicable to your situation.
VI. Repent of these sins for yourself and for your family.
1. Make sure that you are truly repentant as you confess these sins. Otherwise the confession means very little. It is important to be repentant on behalf of your family. If you continue to be angry and bitter towards your family, your prayers will not be effective. Ask God to give you a spirit of forgiveness.
VII. After you have confessed all sins on each list, renounce any claims of Satan upon your life in the name of Jesus Christ.
1. Declare that you have placed all his claims against you under the blood of Jesus Christ, your Savior.
Conclusion:
Then spend a time in worship and praise to the Lord. Thank Him in advance for the deliverance and healing that He is going to bring into your life.
Play song – Free during the burning of the lists.
This is a subject that many may not be aware of and fully understand. "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:3 & 4).
This Scripture tells us how to Break free-Be free-Stay free – Choose to serve God and obey His Commandments!
Deut. 11:26-28: 26See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—27the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; 28the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.
