Arming The Saints Blog

When I went to seminary, there was a lot of talk about blessings and curses. In fact, I’m not sure you could ever teach the Old Testament without talking about blessings and curses – it’s just that prevalent. Now, the concept gets a bit complicated these days due to all the ways you can look at them. For example, some people want to focus on the specific OT blessings and curses listed in places like Deuteronomy 27 and 28. Others want to focus on historical accounts of specific blessings and curses of people, such as when the Israelites were forced to wonder the desert until nearly an entire generation had died, except for Joshua and Caleb, who had found favor with God (Numb. 12:13-14). Still others want to focus more on the single generational curse of sin stemming from the Fall, but with consequences that travel through generations of free will people, who then choose to carry the sin themselves. Finally, some people – perhaps most correctly – want focus on the temporal nature of curses versus the eternal blessings we have in Jesus.

Either way, the whole notion of blessings and curses can transcend even the Bible. Even secular/materialistic scientists have found that, based on our own choices and epigenetics, we can easily change the expression of our genes based on the choices we make that will be passed down through generations. In this sense, science confirms a biblical worldview, which can point to numerous scriptures indicating the stubbornness of sin upon families or other groups. Somewhat more charismatically or spirit-driven, we followers of Jesus also realize that when we make choices to sin, we partner with the demonic, which has a bias toward keeping us in the bondage of any particular curse. This makes it harder to break or reverse a curse or to acquire a blessing simply due to the demonic clouding of our minds to come up with untold numbers of excuses for maintaining the status quo.

But I want to focus on two main points this week. The first point – indeed, a point seemingly agreeable to everyone speaking or writing about the subject – is that words can cause blessings or curses, with consequences that travel (or have already traveled) through generations. It’s almost a direct offshoot of the spiritual law of reaping and sowing, but made much more confounding from its tendency to appear to affect one seemingly at random from the distant past, or to affect your children and grandchildren far in the future. Lest we forget the incredible power of the tongue to do damage, James wrote: “The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” James 3:6. Imagine that fire traveling through your family line. Of course, we can also think of numerous ways in which words can be used to uplift.

The second point is this: whatever curse you may think you have, for whatever reason (which can include idolatry to Anti-Semitism), from whatever source (which can include your parents, yourself, teachers, demons, soul ties, or even items found within your home), and, frankly, even if deep down you don’t believe in such things despite the bad things happening in your life, the answer is always the same, which is to take authority given to you by Jesus Christ over this world and use it to break it for your sake and for the sake of future generations.

Is it likely that some of the difficulties we are living with today are put in place by one/some of our ancestors’ words or actions? Absolutely – how about addiction, promiscuity, confidence, worthiness, health issues, etc.? All of these might be labeled in the “world” as inherited or genetic flaws. As followers of Jesus, though, when these types of things happen, we must consider supernatural reasons – in addition to purely natural ones – to account for our condition. On the other hand, can we reap the blessings of our ancestors, or, better yet, put in place the kinds of beliefs and positive words that literally change our brains so that the blessings travel far into the future? Yes, we can.

I believe we have the authority in this world to ask our Lord to reveal and cancel curses – not just for us, but for generations to come. You can literally break a curse of addiction off of your future grandchildren by canceling it through the authority given to you through Jesus Christ. I also believe that we have the authority to declare positive blessings over ourselves, which will carry far into the future to our world offspring as well as our spiritual children. So, again, I believe we can literally make future generations better simply through our choice of using words that speak power, light, and blessing.

Remember from last week that words combined with sowing and reaping can create a double-whammy effect on our lives, especially when we remember the incredible power of even a single word. This week, remember that the words and deeds of our ancestors likely affected us, and that our own words and deeds will most definitely affect future generations unless we break curses and foster blessings.

ACTION: Ask the Lord to reveal any generational curses and to cancel them back to the source and replace them with a blessing. Mention any that you know about, and thank the Lord for His cancellation and replacement with blessing. Ask for assistance in bridling your tongue to help you ONLY speak blessing (Life) on others. Deliberately speak in terms of blessings – use positive words, focus on love for others, and on building people up. Your actions today will last for generations!