I said how do you get on with your dad? She said oh, I'm his favourite. I said oh really? Tell me a bit more about that. I'm thinking whoa, where are we going? Let's see what's going to happen. She said oh no, I was the favourite, and the youngest one was the favourite with mum, and I was the favourite with dad. Yeah, no, my dad and I are really close. I said really? Why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No way! I said: really? There's a lot of energy in that, you know, the way you said that. Why would you say to me that you're so close, and yet you don't want him to pray for you?
Then she began to open up, and actually the marriage was dysfunctional, the father downloaded to the older daughter, and eventually shut her down and controlled her life. The mother took over, and shared things that should have been only in marriage with the daughter, and this older daughter had said to herself: I'll never carry a male child. She made an inner vow, spoke to herself, I'll never carry - I said to her, have you ever spoken into yourself, I will never carry a male child? She looked shocked. Her face went white. She said yes, I remember clearly doing it. I said: can you see the connection that your inner vow, you've literally cursed your own body, so that your body is now responding to the vow you made, and it's rejecting male children? I said you need to actually repent of that inner vow, and forgive your father. You need to deal with this issue that's going on in your heart, about his control over your life.
So inner vows are very powerful, and we make all kinds of inner vows: I'll never tell anyone. I'll never talk about things, you know, so there's all this kind of stuff. Another source of bondages of the heart is this - it's the area of word curses, where people speak words over your life. Words have great power. It's a whole topic of its own, but words that are negative or destructive - you're an idiot, you're a fool, you're a slut, you're this, you're this, you're this. Those kinds of words, especially coming from an authority figure, can actually lock into your heart, and what happens is, if you come into agreement with the word, then the spirit behind it is able to operate freely, and bring that about in your life.
So many people, instead of being blessed by their parents, have been cursed by them, or cursed by authority figures, even cursed by pastors. You know, sometimes - for example you have the situation like this – well, if you leave this church and go to another church, you'll be out of the will of God, you know? And you'll have trouble. Boy, and some trouble that comes up, and immediately you’re tormented; I wonder if this is because I'm out of the will of God, so the curse, the word spoken has power. God has designed us to be His ambassadors on earth to speak words, and so when authority speaks words they have power, so word curses can affect you, words spoken by parents, by teachers and words that you come into agreement with can afflict your heart and hold you in bondage.
The last one I'll share is the area of what are called burdens, where people place a burden on you. A burden can be a number of kind of - a number of them; one of them is false expectations, where people have an expectation of you, or demand something of you, that's unreasonable. This places a burden on you, and you feel I've got to do this, or I've got to help, or I've got to do this, or I've got to do that, and often the person feels a sense of responsibility; well if you loved me, you'd do this, and you feel I love you, but I don't want to do this. Then you're caught in the burden of it, so people carry this burden, a false burden of expectation. Sometimes the eldest child in the family can have that. Sometimes if a mother's an alcoholic or father's an alcoholic, the eldest child feels a sense of responsibility, and they carry the burden of the family and they become a parent, when they should be just living out the life of a child.