Generational Curses

The following are my notes from my pastors 3 sermons titled Overcoming Iniquities. Iniquities such as generational curses.
Maybe your family has a history of alcoholism, drug addiction, abuse, suicide...
Maybe you have felt or still feel that you are doomed to follow in those same footsteps. Maybe people around you have low expectations of you based on the past, either things your parents have done or maybe even things you have done.
But guess what, you can break that cycle! You can change the future for yourself, your children, their children, and so on. It may not be easy, but it is possible. It is just outside your reach.
God knows your heart, He hears your desire to overcome these things that hold you down, that keep you awake at night, that hurt your heart when they cross your mind.
Freedom from these issues, from any issue, is just outside your reach. The Lord wants to take your hand and help you reach that freedom.  You cannot have true freedom without the Lord.  You must let go and let God. Literally. Let him step in, let him help you. God doesn't want you living in fear, not reaching your full potential.

(I use the version called "The Message" because unlike other versions, it reads in common everyday language, making it to much easier for me to understand. You can also tell my note taking got better each service..;) )

Overcoming Iniquities (generational curses)

Exodus 20:5-6 ~ 5 Don't bow down to them and don't serve them because I am God, your God, and I'm a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. 6 But I'm unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments. ~
Ephesians 4:23 ~ a life renewed from the inside ~
God gives you a brand new thought pattern. If your thought patterns change, your desires change.
Thinking something isn't a sin, but thinking and rethinking it is.
Philippians 2:3-5 ~ 3 Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. 4 Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. 5 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.
When you wish the best for others, you destroy jealousy.
When you put others before self, you destroy pride. ~
Proverbs 26:2 ~  You have as little to fear from an undeserved curse as from the dart of a wren or the swoop of a swallow. ~
Give the bird no place to land
Quit blaming God, quit blaming others, and take responsibility for yourself.
The devil is always looking for the weakest link in our lives.
Micah 7:8-9 ~ 8 Don't, enemy, crow over me. I'm down, but I'm not out. I'm sitting in the dark right now, but God is my light. 9 I can take God's punishing rage. I deserve it - I sinned. But it's not forever. He's on my side and is going to get me out of this. He'll turn on the lights and show me his ways. I'll see the whole picture and how right he is. ~
Rise above the fray (the stresses and tribulations of life)
2 Corinthians 2:14 ~  And I got it, thank God!
Micah 7:18-19 ~ 18 Where is the god who can compare with you - wiping the slate clean of guilt, Turning a blind eye, a deaf ear, to the past sins of your purged and precious people? You don't nurse your anger and don't stay angry long, for mercy is your specialty. That's what you love most. 19 And compassion is on its way to us. You'll stamp out our wrongdoing. You'll sink our sins to the bottom of the ocean. ~


Iniquities part 2

You can cut off those generational curses! You can walk in freedom!
The Word says we can!!!!
You must be able to forgive in order to be set free from these bondages. Forgive yourself, forgive God, forgive others. This is the number one struggle!!!
If unforgiveness is working in your life, you won't be able to reach the good things God has for you.
Don't put yourself through more hurt by not letting go of the hurt. Give it to God, let it go, and do not pick it up again.

~But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. (Romans 7:17-25 MSG)~

If we are unwilling to change, to take new things in, we are holding ourselves back. We must be willing to change in order to get better and move beyond where we are right now.
If we are still struggling with the same issues over and over, we must be willing to change.

You must be willing to not be your own worst enemy.
~Run away from infantile indulgence. Run after mature righteousness—faith, love, peace—joining those who are in honest and serious prayer before God. Refuse to get involved in inane discussions; they always end up in fights. God's servant must not be argumentative, but a gentle listener and a teacher who keeps cool, working firmly but patiently with those who refuse to obey. You never know how or when God might sober them up with a change of heart and a turning to the truth, enabling them to escape the Devil's trap, where they are caught and held captive, forced to run his errands. (2 Timothy 2:22-26 MSG)~

Iniquities will drive you, but emotions will deceive you. Have you ever had your emotions run wild? That's why you must forgive when the issue happens, because the longer we hold the anger, the longer it eats at us and controls our emotions.
Iniquities work in people, they lead them to continue in the same ugly pattern.
God can open our eyes and show us a new way to see things.
You have to let God work in you, to get you out of thinking the junk in your life is normal. He can show you how to have more fun, to be more joyous, to see life in a new light.
Alot of times we let self pity rob us of letting go and moving on and receiving the beautiful treasures God has laid up for us.
~Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?" The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in." Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking." The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off. (John 5:1-9 MSG)~

Iniquities Part 3

~Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Corinthians 3:16-18 MSG)~

You have to be willing to change. God can't move you if you aren't willing. He can't move a parked car.

Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable to you, you will never be able to truly change at all because you will be under the control of those things.

Once you give something up for The Lord, for Him to help you, He will give you something good in place of it.

You gotta get fed up with the way things are right now, you gotta give it to God.

When you do something good and right, you should do it because you WANT to rather than because you have to.

To be Translated is instant
To be Transformed is a process
Getting married instantly translates you from single to married. But the transformation process of learning to love and be the spouse you are called to be takes many years.

Grow in your Joy

~When they finished everything required by God in the Law, they returned to Galilee and their own town, Nazareth. There the child grew strong in body and wise in spirit. And the grace of God was on him. (Luke 2:39, 40 MSG)~

Even Jesus had to grow in his joy and in his wisdom.
If you have deep deep joy deep inside your relationship with The Lord, you can endure anything. Don't let that joy be lost.

Grow in Wisdom
Knowledge is knowing a lot of facts. (Book Sense).
Wisdom is developed from listening to God, reading His Word, and learning from it.

Get a journal. Pray. Read the Bible. Write in your journal what you learn and what The Lord is telling you through your prayer and reading time.

~Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does. Give yourselves to the gifts God gives you. Most of all, try to proclaim his truth. If you praise him in the private language of tongues, God understands you but no one else does, for you are sharing intimacies just between you and him. But when you proclaim his truth in everyday speech, you're letting others in on the truth so that they can grow and be strong and experience his presence with you. (1 Corinthians 14:1-3 MSG)~

We have to come to the place that we realize that God wants us to grow in favor with him.

~Luke 2:40. There the child grew strong in body and wise in spirit. And the grace of God was on him. They Found Him in the Temple ~

Every time you make a decision to follow The Lord, to walk with him, He gives you an upgrade. Like upgrading your phone, when you walk with God you find yourself growing in His peace, His love, His understanding.

Just because you have taken a wrong turn, made a wrong choice, you don't have to live in the place those decisions have taken you. It's not too late for a U-Turn.
God loves you. He loves a repentant heart. He wants to destroy the bad crop, and help you grow a new crop.

When you are willing to be totally honest with God, to tell Him you want nothing between you and Him. When we allow God to have open access to us, we have the ability to choose righteous choices over evil ones.

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Won't you hand your stresses over to God?  He can handle them far better than we ever can.  Let Him help you forgive yourself, forgive others, and move on to a life without the added baggage of the past?