Greetings,
Have you ever heard the phrase, “like father like son”? Of course you have. The reason: oftentimes children will imitate aspects of their parents. Granted, no child is an exact duplicate of either one of their parents, but he or she will inevitably have some of their characteristics. More often than not there is no rhyme or reason to which characteristics a particular child may take away. It’s always a mixed bag of good traits and bad traits. Why?
There are several answers to this question. One involves the concept of modeled behavior. Life is way too complicated to figure out everything. A parent is to model necessary behaviors so that their children will not have to figure certain things out on their own. For instance, parents actually model language and communication. The child will learn how to communicate by observing their parents from birth. No child has ever grown up in a family that speaks mandarin Chinese and invented a Spanish dialect as their preferred mode of communication prior to speaking their first words. This would be ridiculous. Children learn modeled behavior.
However, there is another level to this that goes even deeper. Have you ever seen someone do something and say, “It’s in their blood”? Take musical families for example. Why is it that in some families everyone can sing well? In other families, everyone sings horribly. As a matter of fact, some families are so bad—the birthday song can be a moment of embarrassment. If this is your family, just remember that there is no condemnation in Christ. My point is that there are traits that seem to be more genetic in nature. While modeled behavior is one aspect that gets passed down through the generations of a particular family, genetics is another.
Then there is sin. I truly wish this were not the case but it often is. Keep in mind that when Jesus became a curse for us by being nailed to the cross (Galatians 3:13), His death and resurrection only purchased the potential for us to be completely free. It is our responsibility to claim freedom from curses by faith. Everything in Christianity comes by faith as an act of our free will. If we don’t ask Jesus to do something, He won’t force his goodness upon us. The Bible says that whatever we ask, believing that we receive it, we will have it (Matthew 21:22). It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus CAN do something for us. What matters is that we BELIEVE He can do it for us, and then ask. This is when we begin to have the things that He wants for us, which is life and life more abundantly (John 10:10).
With this being said, there are curses that are often with us for no fault of our own. These are called generational curses. These are the result of sins that were committed by those in our family line. The consequences for these sins, which were not repented of, were passed from one generation to the next like a form of spiritual DNA. The reason is found in the following verse.
“And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)
It is a spiritual law that the sins of the parents will come down upon the heads of their children. Most sins seem to have a lifespan of three to four generations within a family line, however, some may span as many as ten (Deuteronomy 23:2). Just like genetics, this does not mean that every possible curse that a parent could be operating under will be passed to their children. There will be some curses passed to one child and others passed to another. Regardless of which curses are passed down, or how many one particular child might be operating under, the solution is Jesus who has all power in heaven and on earth.
“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18)
“Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19)
What are some examples of possible generational curses? Here is a list which by no means is all inclusive: abortion, rejection, isolation, bad marriage, divorce, can’t marry, greed, prostitution, fornication, adultery, alcoholism, anger, rage, depression, anxiety, sore loser, bully, impatient, lust, pornography, arguments, laziness, suicide, not teachable, always quits, foolishness, failure, poverty, witchcraft, gambling, rebellion, disrespectful, cowardly, etc.
As you can see, just about anything negative can come upon someone’s head as a curse. The key to identifying generational curses are patterns. Just because a destructive pattern or sin is present in someone’s life does not mean it is a generational curse. We must look at the destructive activity that is manifesting across generations. Do alcoholic tendencies run through the family? Are there a lot of children being born out of wedlock? Is drug abuse something that seems to repeat itself from one generation to the next? Is everyone divorced?
Patterns are a great indicator of potential generational curses. However, there are certain generational curses that seem to skip an entire generation and reemerge. Whatever the case, the solution is always the same. The curse must be broken by the power of Jesus Christ.
In order to break generational curses it is necessary to repent of the sins of our forefathers. We can learn a lesson here from Nehemiah.
“And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments: Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.” (Nehemiah 1:5-7)
Notice how Nehemiah not only repents of his personal sins, but also the sins of his forefathers. In doing this he was breaking the power of generational curses. Today, we can break generational curses in the same way. You may be wondering how you can repent of sins you don’t know about. When dealing with generational sins, it is much less necessary to be specific than when we are repenting of our personal sins. God gives grace, and there are inevitably going to be things your ancestors have done that you will never have knowledge of. A prayer like the following is good for breaking generational curses.
“Father, I thank you that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I repent of the sins of my forefathers coming down through both my mother’s lineage and my father’s lineage going back ten generations. I specifically repent for (name sins you know have been committed by your ancestors). I receive your cleansing from these sins. Right now, according to the power of the blood of Jesus, I break the power of all generational curses and I declare that both I and my offspring are free from the generational curses of our family tree. I specifically declare that the generational curses of (name specific generational curses you have identified) are no longer permitted to operate in my life. I make this declaration in the precious name of Jesus. Jesus became a curse for me and I receive His promise of life and life more abundantly. Thank you Father for setting me free, in Jesus’ name, amen.”
