Review
Welcome back. We were looking last time, the last session, at the issues of the heart, dealing with root issues in the heart. We explained what some of them were, and how, when people go through difficult experiences, they react, and this forms bondages within their heart. If we don’t deal with what lies in the heart, you won’t in the end, get the person free.
So, what we’ve done is to show you some of the bondages that the heart can be gripped by: ungodly soul ties; bitter root judgements and expectations; negative expectations of the future; inward vows; traumatic experiences; word curses. All of these things bring bondages to the heart, and when we’re thinking of setting people free, we need to be aware of those bondages, and how simple it is to break them. The challenging part is rebuilding the life forward.
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We want to just look at the area of legal rights. The most common doors of entry are: legal rights that are given up by the person through sin. Again, the key to dealing with each one is usually quite simple. Once you have these keys, and a strategy of working with people, you’ll find a huge improvement in the results you get with people when you’re ministering to them. So, we looked at some of the heart bondages.
Now let’s have a look at some of the legal rights. A legal right is a ground or area, that the evil spirit claims a right to have a hold on the person. It’s always a sin base - either someone’s broken the law intentionally, or accidently. So demons really have no power over people, but they try to deceive people, and draw them to break the law of God.
Let’s just identify some of the common ones; and with each legal ground, we’ll just show you simply how you deal with it.
1.) Generational Curses and Iniquity. A curse is a spiritual power that operates until it’s stopped. An Iniquity is crookedness, or twist, or a bent towards a certain kind of problem or failure. So, a generational iniquity or curse is a problem that passes down from one generation to another. From a natural perspective, when you go to the doctor, he’ll ask your family medical history; when you go to the insurance company, they’ll also ask your family medical history; because they recognise that some weaknesses or illnesses come down genetically through the family line.
God considers us connected generationally, so spiritual influences can run from one generation to another. If you violate the laws of God, and open the door for an evil spirit, then generations after you can experience the effect of that.
For example, in Exodus 20, God speaks to His people about idolatry. In verses 3 – 6: “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. 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, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”
So God is speaking here about the generational consequences of idolatry. To “visit the iniquity” means the crookedness, or tendency to sin, spreads from one generation to another. If you think 4 generations, you’re thinking – you, your father, grandfather, great-grandfather- there’s a lot of people in that family grouping. In one part I think Deuteronomy 23, it says – illegitimacy brings a curse from to 10 generations. In Deuteronomy 23 it also says that incest will bring a curse for 10 generations. So just to summarise: the sins of one generation can have consequences that go on for generations.