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Day 4: Breaking the Cycle of Generational Curses:
Welcome to day 4! Today, we're talking about breaking the cycle of generational curses.

Systemic brokenness affects everything in the same way that colorblindness affects everything. You may see just fine, but the colors are off. Of course, colorblindness is not a matter of character—but what if it was? What if, instead of having difficulty seeing the difference between red and green, one had difficulty seeing the difference between “mine” and “yours”? Or the difference between “love” and “weakness”? What if one only saw goodness as an opportunity for exploitation? And what if such moral misperceptions were passed down from parent to child the way colorblindness is? Believe me, they are. And these cycles have been showing up for thousands of years. I call them generational curses.

If you don’t break them, they will break you.

So many of us have predispositions and predilections that are influencing us that we don’t even recognize. There are things that are influencing our behaviors and habits that we have likely never seen. They were handed down to us. We grew up in an environment and were taught certain patterns, behaviors, habits, and attitudes. It is sometimes called “bred in the bone”.

These influencing forces from the past are affecting our intimate relationships in the present.

First, generational curses are not like voodoo. They’re just sins. It’s disobedience to God that becomes habitual and familial; it comes from within—not a curse put on you from the outside. Generational curses are handed down to us through the generations, from parents or extended family. Sometimes, they’re just a negative tendency, an unhealthy way of thinking, or an attitude that’s not beneficial for healthy life and healthy relationships, but they become pervasive.

In Exodus 20:5-6, when God is giving the commandments, He says to not bow down and worship idols because He is a jealous God. He’s jealous of our relationship; He will not share it with idols. He even says, “. . . punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation to those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (NIV).

Now some of you may be reading that and thinking, That’s messed up, God; that doesn’t seem fair. You’re gonna punish that kid for something his dad or great-granddad did, when he didn’t do anything wrong?

There’s a lot of misinterpretation of this text. God is not unfair and he’s not unjust. What God means here is that there are consequences for your actions and your sins that the third and fourth generations after you will bear the consequence for. Your actions, your behaviors, your habits, the sin, and the things that you’re messing around with won’t end with you.

We are human. We all have some habits that were passed down to us that we need help with, either from a pastor, a coach, a small group, a team—whoever it may be, you need to get around people who will partner with God so that they can partner with you.

James 5:16 (NIV) says this, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” This is the reason why you need to seek out help and healing, because God actually has healing for you but it’s not going to come when you seek it in yourself, by yourself. If you want to break the generational curses in Jesus’s name and multiply generational blessings, you’ve got to call it out, step out, and seek out.

One of your greatest defenses is living out your new identity in Christ. Thank God that He has broken the curse. Do you know that there is now a new inheritance? You are grafted into the family of God. The Bible says you’ve been adopted into this family, sewn into every inheritance of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and every blessing that was attributed to those are attributed now to you in Christ.

Here’s what Romans 5:12 (NIV) says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man . . . ” this is the generational sin—the sin of one man and one woman. It didn’t stay with Adam. Death multiplied throughout the generations because of one man’s sin. “. . . through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19, NIV). Because of Jesus, we have a new inheritance, we have a new spirit, we have access to a new DNA, and we bear new fruit in our lives!