MEN ON THE MOVE
Men on the Move
A webpage designed to provide men with Bible-based teaching and practical application to help them move forward in their relationship with God. Also, we are a great resource for men’s small group teachings
You can break your generational sins
By James J. Holden
"I want to be free of my dad’s sinful behavior. I never want to be a man who hurts his family the way he did. I have confessed my sins, I have asked God for forgiveness, and I have taken steps to change. However, when push comes to shove, I find myself acting exactly like my father. Why aren’t I becoming different?"
Does this sound familiar to you? I know it does to me. I want to be different than my father. I long to become like Jesus. However, the more I try to break free from my father’s ways, the more I see areas I am like him. Let me give you an example.
My father is a man who refuses to deal with anything. If he is hurt or offended, he won’t deal with it. He goes inside himself. He acts withdrawn and distant. He erects a high wall around himself that no one can touch. I HATE this behavioral pattern. However, God showed me that I do the same thing.
When someone hurts me, I don’t deal with the situation. I pull inside myself. I try and avoid people. I refuse to share my feelings and emotions. I don’t let anyone get close to me as I sit and lick my wounds. Why do I do this when I hate this behavior in my father? Why can’t I break free of it?
I learned the reason why. This behavior is known as generational sins. It has been passed on to all the men in my family. I told you how it affected my father. I also learned that my grandfather acted the same way. When he would have an argument with his wife, they wouldn’t speak for days. I never knew this until I was in my twenties. How could I develop this sinful behavior when I didn’t even know it existed?
It was a generational sin handed down to me. In order for me to break free of it, I must face the fact that it is there and analyze how it affected the other people in my family. I must identify what demonic influence is involved causing this behavior. Then it must be removed. After this is done, I am free to take steps to be different. In this article, I want to show you examples of what I am talking about.
Generational sins are the sins which are passed down from one family member to another. Most people are familiar with Abraham. He is known as the great Patriarch of the nation of Israel. The book of Hebrews lists Abraham as one of the great men of faith in the Bible. Abraham was a remarkable man, but he was not without his faults. Let’s look at Genesis 12 to see the first part of our example:
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarah his wife, "Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. 12 Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you."Abraham asked Sarah to lie to protect himself. The Bible tells us the Egyptian Pharaoh took Sarah as his wife. However, God made sure that no harm came to her. He sent a plague against all of Pharaoh’s household. As a result, the Pharaoh discovered Abraham’s lie and sent Sarah back to her husband. Then the Pharaoh threw them out of his country. Abraham committed the sins of lying and deceit.
Many years later, God gave Abraham and Sarah their promised son Isaac. Now we will observe how Isaac imitated his father’s bad behavior.
Isaac married a woman named Rebecca. Together they raised two sons, Jacob and Esau. Tucked away in the details of Isaac and Rebecca’s life a passage we need to see. It is in Genesis 26:
There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar....6 So Isaac dwelt in Gerar. 7 And the men of the place asked about his wife. And he said, "She is my sister"; for he was afraid to say, "She is my wife," because he thought, "lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold."This is almost word for word the same situation we read about with Abraham and Sarah. Why? What is going on? This, my friends, is a generational sin.
Abraham committed the sin of deceit. He must not have properly dealt with it, because we find that it is passed on to the next generation in his son Isaac. God never allowed the deceit to endanger Rebecca. Isaac’s lie was discovered before any man could take her as his wife. However, the generational sin pattern continued and got worse.
When Abraham lied to the Egyptians, it was only a half-lie. Sarah was his sister; however, she was also his wife. I am not implying that the lie wasn’t wrong. It was sin. I just want to make the point that with each generation the sin gets worse. When Isaac tells the Philistines that Rebecca is his sister, it is a straight out lie. There is absolutely no truth in it at all. Let’s continue on to prove the point.
We mentioned that Isaac and Rebecca had twin sons named Esau and Jacob. Jacob was the younger of the two. As the oldest, Esau was the natural heir to Isaac’s fortune. However, God didn’t want it that way.
Genesis 25:23And the Lord said to her: "Two nations are in your womb, Two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the older shall serve the younger."God ordained that Jacob would be Isaac’s heir. However, instead of trusting God to work things out for him, Jacob took matters into his own hands. How did he do it? The same way that Abraham and Isaac did it. He achieved self-preservation by being deceitful.
Jacob used deception and lies to inherit the birthright that God promised to him. When Isaac became an old man, he told Esau he was going to bless him. When Esau went on a hunting trip, Jacob dressed in Esau’s clothes and deceived his father into blessing him. Once again we can see the generational pattern of sin, deceit and lying. Again, it is getting worse. Abraham told a half-lie, Isaac told a complete lie to a stranger, and now Jacob takes it a degree worse. He lies to his own father. The behavioral pattern Jacob is most known for is deceit.
We would hope that the lies in this family would come to an end. However, as you read the history of Jacob’s 12 sons, you see the sin carried on and escalated.
Jacob’s oldest son, Reuben, had an affair with one of his father’s concubines. He tried to hide the sin from his dad. Two other sons, Simeon and Levi, used deceit to weaken an entire city before they slaughtered all the men out of revenge. Ten of Jacob’s twelve sons conspired to sell their brother Joseph into slavery. They accounted for Joseph’s disappearance by lying to their father and telling him Joseph was killed by a wild animal.
We have studied four generations of men who all committed the same sin of deceit and lying. As each generation refused to deal with the sin, it was passed onto the next generation. Sadly, the degree of sin escalated with each generation. The generational sin went from Abraham’s half-lie to save his life to Jacob’s ten sons lying to cover up disgraceful sexual sins, murder, and betrayal.
We all have generational sins in our lives. If we want to be men who are truly different from our fathers, we must face those sins and deal with them. Once they are removed from our lives, we will be free to begin a new generational pattern of godliness which we can pass on to our own children. Exodus 20:5-6 sums up this promise from God:
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
How do we remove generational sins?
About 13 years ago, God introduced me and my family to the Biblical teaching concerning generational sins. I knew a young man who was on fire for God. He loved God and wanted to serve Him. He planned on becoming a minister when he graduated high school. However, this didn’t happen. One night, while driving home from his job at a fast food restaurant, he wrecked his car and died.
This event floored our family, especially my mom. She became so upset that she contacted a local pastor to come and talk with her. It was this man who first introduced us to spiritual warfare and generational sins.
He taught us the Biblical truth of generational demons. All of us are in one way or another demonically influenced because we are all sinners. We are born in bondage to Satan and evil. When we get saved, we come under the authority of Jesus who totally defeated Satan and his demons at Calvary. They have no power in our lives. However, you must know that demonic influences are there so you can take their power away. They do not always leave at the point of salvation. They hate when people get saved, and some of the demons stay around to try and influence you and keep you bound in your sin. They don’t want to see you be set free and become a new man in Christ.
Most of the demons that influence you are generational demons. You grew up around them in your other family members. You probably don’t even realize they exist.
The good news is God has supplied a way for us to break free of these generational demons and iniquities.
After talking with this pastor, we learned that there can be freedom from the oppression in our lives. He taught us that whenever we commit a sin, we give permission for a demon to influence our lives. We need to repent of the sin and take back the ground, or the permission, we gave to the demon. We need to command it to leave our lives.
Then the pastor took us through a spiritual deliverance session. He was thoroughly trained in spiritual deliverance. He knew exactly what to do. A spiritual deliverance session shows you what demonic influences are in your life. Spiritual deliverance can be thought of like this: Imagine you are stuck on a highway because of a car accident. You sit there until the damaged cars are removed. When they are moved, you are able to get back on the road and keep moving.
The demonic influences in your life are like these cars. They are in your way and hinder you in your relationship with God. Spiritual deliverance is the crane that lifts the cars off of your highway so that you are free to move forward with God, clear of bondage. Then you can begin to replace the hurts of the past, abuse, oppression, and sin in your life with new, godly ways of living, thinking, and acting.
He prayed, read the Bible, and then commanded the demon to leave. The demons have no choice but to leave because Jesus defeated it at Calvary. As God’s child, it has no right to continue trying to influence you to sin. Going through a deliverance session is the first step toward getting rid of the generational iniquities in your life.
When I began this process in my life, I quickly realized that I was committing the same sins that my father and his father committed. I had to face that these sins were keeping me from becoming like Jesus. They were holding me in bondage. I was unable to free myself of them until I faced them, discovered where they came from, and went through spiritual deliverance to get rid of them.
I discovered the reason I could not overcome my problems with sexual thoughts. The men in my family had a generational pattern involving sex. My father became involved in pornography at the age of 7 or 8. My grandfather was known to go to strip clubs and other girlie shows. My great-grandfather was a womanizer and adulterer. I began to experience freedom in these areas when I was delivered from the generational demons and iniquities involved. In the coming months, we will see the drastic steps God taught me to take in order to stay free. Today, I want to concentrate on this first initial step of identifying your generational sins and being delivered from them.
God led me to face the generational sin of deceit that was passed down in my family. I practiced lying and deceit instead of facing up to my mistakes. Eventually, I discovered this was a generational sin. My father was a diagnosed pathological liar. My grandfather was a liar and thief. He stole everything. It was a family joke that he even stole the toilet paper that was used in his house. It was a huge generational iniquity. Left unchecked, this sin would have continued in me and, even worse, been passed onto my children. God is breaking the generational patterns in my family. He told me that my job is to be the man who puts an end to them and begins a new pattern of godly living. This can be your job too.
What about you? Do you want to become a man who breaks free of your family’s generational sins? Deliverance is there for the asking. Begin to ask God to show you the areas of sin that are in your life. Ask Him to show you how they are connected to your family. Ask God to show you the demons that need to be faced. Look for a minister who is trained to take you through spiritual deliverance. If you can’t find one, e-mail me at jjosh@pa.net and I will give you a name. You can be free from your generational sins. You can become a godly man free of any bondage in your life.Throughout the next few months, we will learn how to destroy the behavioral patterns after the generational sins are exposed and demonic influences are cast out of you. However, you must face this first step and identify your generational sins. Ask God to show you today.
Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for loving me and setting me free. I want to become like Jesus. I want to be totally free from the sins that have held me and my family bound for years. I want to be free from any demonic oppression in my life. Show me what generational demons are influencing my life. Please break the power of Satan and set me free so I can become like Jesus. Give me the strength to once and for all break the generational patterns in my family so that future generations can be free to serve you. In Jesus Name. Amen.
Homework:
1. Go through a deliverance session. It will change your life. You will be able to experience God on a much deeper level once the demonic influences are gone.
2. Every day put on the armor of God. Ephesians 6:10-17
Put on the helmet of salvation...ask God to guard your mind and keep it holy and pure.
Put on the breastplate of righteousness...ask God to give you His righteousness instead if your own unrighteousness.
Gird up your loins with truth. Ask God to help you live and speak truth and to not fall for any of Satan’s lies.
Shod your feet with the Gospel of peace...ask God to let your life portray His message of salvation to a lost world.
Take the shield of Faith...Ask God for faith to believe in His promises and for His deliverance.
Sword of the Spirit which is the Word...Ask God to help you fight temptation through the power of the Bible as Jesus did in the desert when He was tempted.
Extreme Homework:
Read the book Breaking Free by Beth Moore. This book taught me a lot about spiritual deliverance and breaking free of sinful behavior.
Group Study Questions:
1. Is there a specific area of sin in your dad’s life that you also commit?
2. What is a generational sin?
3. We demonstrated through Abraham’s family what a generational sin is. Have you been able to see any of your family’s generational sins?
4. Why is it important to face your generational sins, especially when it comes to your own children?
5. How does demonic influence relate to generational sins?
6. Have you gone through spiritual deliverance? If not, why?
7. Will you commit to going through spiritual deliverance?