Generational Blessings
Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. Genesis 26:5 KJV
Kept – Why does God watch over you? Why are you so lucky in life? Why does He keep protecting and providing for you? Do you suppose that you are the recipient of a generational blessing? Isaac was. Go read the previous three verses. Isaac is blessed because Abraham obeyed! Maybe you and I need to offer another prayer of thanksgiving for our parents or grandparents, for someone in our line who was faithful to the Lord and we now reap the benefits.
We hear a lot about generational curses these days. It seems like everyone has some relative who messed up and who is now to blame for the tragedies of our lives. But I’m not so sure God works that way. In fact, if I read the prophets and the correct interpretation of Exodus 34:7, I find it much more compelling to see YHVH as the one who shows constant compassion, who continuously provides a hand of protection and whose very character is saturated with hesed. Generational curses? No, I just don’t see it. Instead I see Abraham, a father who obeyed, and Isaac, a son who benefitted from his father’s obedience. Want to help your children in their walk with the Lord? Obey—and pass on the blessings.
This statement provides us with another insight into our relationship with God. Abraham kept the commandments, the statutes and the laws. Ekev asher-shama Avraham bekoli vayishmor mishmarti mitzvotai chookotai vetorotai. What did Avraham keep? The mishmeret (charges, obligations), the mitzvot (commandments), the huqqot (statutes) and the torot (laws – Torah). But I thought Avraham lived centuries before the Law was given to Moses? Oh, yes, he did, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t follow the ordinances of the Lord. According to this text, Avraham knew and Avraham obeyed. How he knew is not revealed, but that he knew is absolutely assumed to be the case. And this provides the second insight. The instructions of God are not limited to the revelation given to Moses. They have been in place since the beginning and they will remain in place until the end. Abraham found favor, and passed on that blessing, because he obeyed. His faith was not limited to his personal experience. He created a legacy with God that lasted beyond his lifetime. So did David, and many others. The idea that God has no grandchildren, so popular in evangelical individualism, seems to overstep Scripture. God is involved with Isaac because of Abraham.
Furthermore, it is Abraham’s diligent effort that creates the legacy. Grace, of course. Abraham knows grace. But grace without obedience is dead. Abraham seizes the opportunity afforded by grace to do something righteous—to obey. And the rest is history.
Maybe we need to rethink why we seek to obey. Maybe it’s not really about us at all.
Topical Index: Abraham, Isaac, legacy, kept, shamar, commandments, Genesis 26:5
Thank you bro skip, faith without works is dead, the life we live in obedience and love for our heavenly father and for each other is a blessing, I do think that we are receipants of the generational blessings today ,because of the merits that was passed down to us and so it will be passed on to the next generation, generational curses could be passed down also, am not sure about that one. Bro. Skip what do u think?
Well, all I know is that the sins of my parents immediately affected me. And that their sins were reactions to unhealed problems that their parents had. You don’t have to call it curses. I call it generational iniquity. But what I have learned, I think, is that if I take responsibility for what they screwed up, then I find I am no longer reacting to it; am no longer susceptible to repeating it, either. My children have also come to me and told me that they don’t know what I did, but they are having an easier time. There are definite generational propensities that run in families, that I know. Incest is a prime example. You do what gets done to you. Now, you can choose to not call that a curse, but then that just means, to me, anyway, that we have to go find another word. There are many families that stay in gutters generation after generation. I have noticed, though, that upon inquiry, it does not appear that they were blessed with righteous forbears. And, when I start trying to get them to look at what it would take to get out of the ditch, invariably I start to run into balking. “Oh, we don’t see it that way in our family.” What would you call that?
But what I wanted to say is that the most wonderful thing I have been riding on lately is this whole concept that when YHVH sees me He does not just see me, but He also sees everybody and everything in my sphere. All my concerns, all my loves (all my judgment and alienation, too). When I pray, all my baggage, so to speak, gets included too. The children I love so much but cannot reach out and touch. All those I love, in fact. In the Lord’s Prayer, Yeshua prayed OUR Father. He included me. Why did I get included? Because He loved me. If I am a communal entity to Him, and the smallest unit that gets recognized is the family, then that means that I don’t have to implore Him to make an exception for all those precious alienated and fractured ones in my world: if they are loved by me, and particularly if they are FAMILY, He already is. Why? Because everything I allow in my world, He allows too. If I obey Him and pray for my enemies (I am ordered to, by the way), then He can include them too in His salvation for me. That is good for me! It makes it harder and weightier for them to mess up, and it allows for solutions to their fracture with me that wouldn’t have been there if I had not scooted over and allowed them under my tent. I like this communal aspect to being a being. It is surely a different way to think!
What a beautiful response! May it sink into my heart and be my daily ‘extra’ word for the day 🙂
It is just not as simple as discounting generational curses. There are both. Blessing and cursing, obedience and disobedience. Although I prefer to see what is traditionally called cursing as the withholding of blessing because of disobedience. The conditionality of blessing is clear in Scripture – if you, then I, says YHVH. Too many assume that the blessing is automatically theirs and demand it without applying the “if you” part of the equation.
See Psalm 78. The withdrawal of blessing may seem like cursing, but is the direct result or consequence of disobedience designed to facilitate teshuvah, repentance, returning. It is YHVH’s mercy showing me that I cannot expect to receive the blessing of the covenant unless I keep/do my part.
Abraham was faithful and so Isaac benefitted. My father was not and I had to deal with what was passed on to me from his involvement with unholy things. It would have been nice to focus only on the blessings, but in the case of those who are unwittingly tainted by the iniquity of the father(s), what we inherit must be acknowledged and dealt with so the blessing can become a reality.
For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
That they should teach them to their children,
6That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born,
That they may arise and tell them to their children,
7That they should put their confidence in God
And not forget the works of God,
But keep His commandments,
8And not be like their fathers,
A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not prepare its heart
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.
I have to go to work, but I wanted to throw something out there for someone to address. This has to do with witch cursing. I was told that people just made stuff up and then believed it, but that we enlightened ones, or whatever, knew that there is no such thing as curses. The missionaries to heathen lands were big on this. No such thing as curses. Well? There are curses associated with all secret societies. They are curses designed to be binding on the families and generations. These are people who live all around us. These are people in my ancestry. When I looked at my family tree and read lists of people who were known to be associated at the highest levels of secret societies, and I learned the vows they took and the curses they invoked against me, then I had to consider what is actually the case. Can you curse your children? I had noticed that from the time I was very small, I was inexplicably afraid of not being able to breathe. I had always found it odd, because I knew there was nothing in my life that would have caused such a thing. When I made a decision to take responsibility before YHVH for the sins of my forbears, including those secret vows and curses that had been made ABOUT ME, I woke up the next day with something missing. When I focused on what it might be, it dawned on me that I was no longer afraid of not being able to breathe. It was gone. Some of those curses had to do with hanging your children. Its a head scratcher.
Further, in my life there were many more strange problems that resolved after I made decisions to take responsibility for choices my forbears made. Some of those problems resolved after I took responsibility for choices I made, or were unwittingly participating in by not acting like they were there, too. There is a long list, in fact, that I have of things that cleared up in my life once I decided to get serious about the fact that it seemed no matter what I tried to do, and that included righteousness, things were still not resolving, and so I decided to go looking for unrighteousness in my family. Either the family is the smallest recognized unit in the eyes of YHVH, or it is not. I decided to act as if it were, and, voila! heavy weights, impasses in relationships, chronic health issues, and insoluble dilemmas all began to change. Apparently I am tied in to a structure larger than myself, for good or for ill. The key instruction, in fact, that gave me the single biggest clue to changing what had been stuck in my life for decades was in Leviticus 26:40 and in Nehemiah 9:2 where I read that the blessings would return when you stand and take responsibility for the sins of your fathers, because I am participating in what I am not actually rejecting. I chose to stop feeling sorry for myself, and blaming others. I chose to OWN the problem. After all, if I actually catch that ball, I can choose to throw it another way. I chose to throw it where others should have thrown it. My Father caught it, and He threw it into the deep blue sea, for all I know! Halleluah!
P. S. I am not very impressed with people who think that they can just say words and have curses lift. That is just more witchcraft. What worked in my life was making a decision to DO the righteousness that my forbears had refused to do. If they had made a decision to neglect their children, then I had to go and make a new decision to not neglect mine. I confessed those sins – which is taking responsibility for them – BY deciding NOT to do them, or excuse them, even, any more in my life. To repent means to turn around. A curse heads me in a wrong direction. When I turn around (repent) and head back the other way, it no longer can control my direction. (Isn’t that amazing! LOL! Righteousness is, like, so duh!)) A curse is a limiting (vilifying, lessoning) of choice. A blessing is an increasing of choice. If you look up the original definition of the word ‘curse’ in Webster’s 1828 dictionary, it says that a curse is a lessoning, or decreasing, or, vilifying, of a blessing. A villian, then, is one who lessons your blessing. In the beginning, we were all completely blessed. A villian has been hacking away at that ever since. He can only do it with our permission, however. When I take back that permission that one or more of my ancestors gave him way back when, then he no longer has a legal right to diminish my blessings. Case closed. Halleluah!
I love this! what you have just said makes perfect sense and is very well articulated. I’ve always had a problem with people that ‘recite all the formulas’ to get rid of the generational curses…while there may be nothing inherently WRONG with that – they then wonder why nothing ‘worked’???? WHAT? As you have said, that is just witchcraft on top of witchcraft!
It is in the DOING that we have freedom! When we recognize we are ‘cynical’ than we ‘correct’ that by making teshuvah and restitution! When we recognize that we are missing the mark in another area – we do the same, we turn around and do it DIFFERENTLY- no matter what it is that we have learned – if we recognize that it is not in the fruit of the Spirit, than we need to adjust our spotlight.
Recognition is the first step in the process…breaking the ‘curse’ is simply to determine to stop doing what we’ve always done….just because that’s the way we learned it. Thanks Laurita!
Laurita, Thank you for sharing this. You are so right! At the point in my life when I realized things were going on that I could not explain, I began asking the Father for revelation and boy, howdy! There is distinction between the holy and the profane for a reason. For those born to a lineage faithful to YHVH, they have much to be thankful for. However, so do those of us from the other end of the spectrum – those who have been forgiven much, love much! IF we seek Truth with all our heart, THEN we will find it. Omain v’omani!
P. S. A curse without a cause cannot land/have effect/cause harm. When you have illogical fear of something, that is sin. Sin is the cause to allow a curse to manifest in your life. By confessing the sin, repenting of it – turning away from the sin and then towards the instruction of YHVH – you can now receive forgiveness that washes you clean from the unrighteousness of the sin. It is not so much about fighting demons, but walking in Truth and obedience. This is the true warfare!
That is what is working for me, too, Sherri! What people do not realize is that parents have the authority to bless or curse their children who are still under their spiritual authority. If a parent is sinning, the child will suffer. All sin is a curse. Now, no one can tell me that sin does not affect (curse) others! That’s what the stuff is! The whole world groans under the curse of my sin. I rest my case.
The more I read TW, the more I think from a community perspective. We have been individualistic for far too long. For instant, I work on the command to remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. But for more blessings to occur, my community, my city, my country must do the same. If my community disregards God, do we not all suffer, the righteous with the unrighteous?
Let me say first, that what I am about to say is not intended to offend anyone. But I think the blog comments have gotten off on a backwards tilt today.
I don’t understand how this TW, which so beautifully focuses on the blessing, still has so many readers who can’t get past the curse. Yes, there are consequences for behaviors. And yes, sometimes those consequences continue to be experienced by us and our progeny. Don’t you think Abraham dealt with consequences of behavior from his ancestors? But I see nothing in scripture to suggest that he gave “generational curses” any weight. He just turned around and obeyed God. Don’t miss the most important thing here today: there is probably a blessing in your life from an ancestor you may not even know! Curses are easy to see when you are looking for them — try giving blessings the same treatment.
🙂
The absolute best thing we can do for ourselves, our children and our children’s children is to obey God. When our children see in us (mom and dad) the gospel message “fleshed out” in our everyday 24/7 lives, – they learn by the example we have set and are setting.
~ These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up ~You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.…~ Fathers, bring them (your children) up in the training and instruction of the LORD.~
~ You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless ~ (Matthew 5.13)
Parents, it is our responsibility, no — our privileged duty to introduce our children to the Unseen, yet Ever-Present One, to teach them respect for the Word of God, respect for authority, and respect and love for family, neighbors, and friends.
Then, they too – one day will “each one teach one!” – and grow a new crop, a new generation that loves our LORD.
Regarding: “The instructions of God are not limited to the revelation given to Moses. They have been in place since the beginning and they will remain in place until the end.”
Jesus when questioned by the Pharisees about divorce stated that Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement for the hardness of your heart but from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. And when the disciples asked about it later he said Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. Mark 10:2-12
Instead of focusing on the generational curses (been there/done that), focus on the BLESSINGS!
Change your paradigm!!
I believe in generational blessings. No matter how our grandparents, forefathers, or parents have transgressed against YHWH, He is able to turn that around to good. My late Granny was a devoted Believer, and no one else in the family of my late father do I know besides her who is/was like her, she reminded me that we are from a line of devoted believers. My late mother’s side are mostly non-believers, though they do not bow down/ worship idols.
Yet, I feel ABBA’s peace and protection upon me from young. I believe her prayers are what kept me, and the family including my late mother who turned to ABBA’s ways after much suffering in relationships. I saw the void in her life.
“The instructions of God are not limited to the revelation given to Moses. They have been in place since the beginning and they will remain in place until the end.
I agree absolutely. It has to be YHWH’s Ruach ever guiding and reaching out to us/those who seek/hunger after Him.
Definitely, I and the family down to the generations reap the blessings from my late Granny. I see that in my children and grandchildren!
One observation I have is seeing many parents these days NOT fulfilling their obligations in maintaining the principles of YHWH’s teachings to/in their kids.
It is a diligent effort.