In looking at iniquity continuing in the family line: 1) there’s a spiritual power, and a curse operating. We’re bearing the consequences spiritually of their sin. 2) Bitter judgements. 3) Patterns of behaviour; and possibly familiar spirits; and maybe genetic code.
You understand then, if you’re going to deal with something, you need to know what it is you’re dealing with. For example, if the person has judged their parent, they need to repent of the judgement and forgive. If the person has learned or copied their behaviour, they need to learn new ways of behaving and living.
Now, let’s have a look at the issue of curses, generational curses. I want you to understand what a curse is, and how we can recognise them. Usually curses are spoken words, which set in motion spiritual powers. Curse – you speak words, and they’re spoken with force, and they release spiritual powers. Generally they continue from generation to generation until they’re broken. The power behind the curse is an evil spirit or a demon. To curse someone, means to bring evil, or calamity, or destruction on them. Curse – bring evil or calamity upon them.
When a curse is operating, there’s a spiritual pressure on the person, to continually bring destructive results in their life. This presses the person who presses their relationship, presses their circumstances. Another way of putting it would be: recurring cycles of defeat.
Where does the curse come from? Proverbs 26:2 said “the curse, without a cause, shall not come”. Or to put it another way: if there’s a curse, there’s always a reason. There’s always a reason. One possible cause of the curse is God – He set laws in place, you violate the laws, there are consequences. Breaking God’s laws, gives demons room to move in a person’s life.
A second cause of curses is people - people speaking out, cursing our family, cursing us, or people practising witchcraft. Witchcraft – words are spoken that release spiritual power against someone. For example, a person dedicating a child to an idol or a temple - that initiates a cursing. If a person opens their life to an evil spirit, or dedicates themselves to an evil spirit - that would initiate a cursing.
Sometimes, authority figures can speak words of cursing. “You’ll never do any good. You’re stupid”. People in authority, speaking in destructive words, can cause cursings to take place.
People can curse themselves. “I’m a failure. I’ll never do any good. I’ll probably fail.”
Another potential source of cursing on a person’s life is occult objects. Deuteronomy 7:25-26. This is what the word of God says: “You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.” So, objects such as idols or occult objects can bring spiritual forces into the home, and you have undue influences.
If a curse is operating, there will always be fruit. If you want to discover if a curse is operating, you just look for repeated patterns of failure. When we’re looking for generational iniquity and curses, we’re looking for repeated patterns of failure - particularly the ones that pass from one generation to another.
So what kinds of patterns of failure? The book of Deuteronomy lists many. Deuteronomy 28:15 says: “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you”.
It begins to talk about these and gives a whole list of them. What we’ll do is, we’ll just summarise them so you’ve got a list to look for. These are evidences it could be operating. There may however be other factors as well. At least it’ll give you a start place to look for.:
1) Recurring mental and emotional problems in the family.
2) Recurring chronic sickness and allergies.
3) Difficulties with pregnancy. That means difficulties conceiving; miscarriages; childlessness. Interestingly enough, this is particularly associated with idolatry. In the book of Hosea 9, it says that idolatry - one of the consequences is: the womb will cast forth its fruit.
4) Recurring patterns of family breakdown and divorce. So, repeated cycles of divorce and family breakdown. Also conflicts in the family – everyone’s against everyone.
5) Recurring patterns of financial lack. Everything should be going right, we should get blessed, and suddenly there’s a setback; recurring patterns of family lack or financial lack. 6) Another symptom is that a person’s got patterns of accident-proneness. Tend to constantly get accidents; or it seems the family has patterns of accident in it.
7) Another thing to look for is recurring patterns of suicide, or premature death. You look in a family, and there’s a history of suicides or people dying unexpectedly early - that could be evidence of a curse.
8) I’ve also come to the conclusion that patterns of abuse and traumas or mistreatment is also evidence of a curse.
9) Another one that I have observed is inability to settle - no rest, no ability to be stable. Remember that Cain was cursed with this - he was a vagabond; he couldn’t rest or settle anywhere.