I want you to just be aware as we finish this session of just these two particular curses. The first one referred there, refers to illegitimacy – conceived, born out of wedlock. What it is saying is that there is a curse of rejection upon that person. In other words, when a child is conceived or born out of wedlock, then there is access of a particular type of spirit – the spirit of rejection - to their life.
Let me give you an example. I had a man come up in an altar call, we had a lot of people in an altar call, and we didn’t have time to counsel him, so I just ask a few simple questions. What is your problem? I want you to notice the questioning that gets to the root. Each day I pray that God will give me the ability to ask questions that go right to the root of problems. This is what I asked him – what is your problem? He said: “I’m angry, a lot of anger”. I said: “Who are you angry at?” “Everyone”. Now that means, he has a root of anger, he was angry at someone, but he never dealt with it. So I said, “how do you get on with your parents?” We’ll go right back and start there. He was very angry with both of his parents. I said: “Did they do something wrong against you?” He said: “I don’t know. I’m just angry at them”. I said: “Are you the eldest in the family.” He said: “Yes, I am”. I said: “Were you conceived out of wedlock”. He said: “Yes, I was”.
I said: “Here’s where the anger is. You are carrying a deep root of rejection and shame in your life, and you put the blame on the people who stepped in to help you. Being angry with them, you’ve continued now to project that anger on everyone. I said: “You need to forgive the parents who gave you out (for adoption). The father who rejected you, the mother who rejected you. You need to forgive the parents for projecting on to them all your anger. You need to go to them and put it right and apologise; because they stepped in to help and you’ve rejected them - you’ve greatly dishonoured them. That’s all it took!
Notice that the cause of it was the illegitimacy; and the deep root of rejection and anger that was in his life - and the way he carried it constantly. Anger is a demand - you took something from me, you must pay back. It’s a reaction to what’s felt or believed to be an injustice. You owe me - is the message of anger. Letting your rights go, and forgiving, is the release of it.
Just think about this – you go into a family line through four generations.... Assume that everyone had just two children. Your parents have two children, next family line there’s another 4 people there, next family line now we go back there’s more people. So gradually we begin to start to realise there’s up to 30 people involved. With 10 generations, there’s a lot more people.
Notice what we finish up with. God loves us passionately, but certain types of sins open the door for a generational curse, and an iniquity. We saw then, a cursing is a negative destructive force, empowered by an evil spirit. Notice that iniquity is a crookedness in the family line that causes people to sin. So iniquity and curses go together - they are quite different, but they go together, and they transfer from one generation to another. Next we’ll look a little bit more about those areas. We’ll look at some Bible examples and we want to come to a point of showing you how you’ll minister to people to get them free. Next we’ll show you some more things about it, then the path to freedom.
We’re looking at the topic of Generational Iniquity & Curses. Generational refers to something passing down from one family member to another. So, generational iniquity is a tendency in a family to a certain kind of sin, for example: patterns of adultery or alcoholism. There can be patterns of sin running in a family line. Generational curses are negative forces running through the family, one generation to another, that’s powered by evil spirits. Firstly, I want to look at how iniquity is transferred. How it shifts from one family member to another. Then we’ll look at curses in themselves, and how to identify them.
First of all, iniquity - how is it transferred? We’re going to list some possible ways they’re transferred. The first is: it’s generational, it’s inherited. Just as you carry physical features of your parents, you also carry some of the iniquity. Secondly, they can be empowered by spirits; there may be familiar spirits operating in the family. Thirdly, they may pass in a family line, because of bitter judgements against the parents.
Bitter Judgements - if you judge your parents for a particular sin or failure, you set in motion a cycle of sowing and reaping in your life. The thing you have judged will turn up in your own life. You hear someone say: “I’ll never be like my father”. That means they have been hurt, there is a judgement against their father, and now an inner vow. The result is, they’ll probably become exactly like him. When we judge our parents, we set in motion a cycle of iniquity continuing in our family. The thing we judge, we reap.
It seems likely then, that causes of this iniquity moving from one family generation to another are: familiar spirits; bitter judgements; and possibly genetic code. It’s quite possible that some of these areas of sin corrupt the genetic code, and create issues that pass through the genetic line. Another cause or source of the iniquity transferring is just patterns of learned behaviour. In other words, people tend to copy what their parents do.