A few weeks ago I talked about generational sin and the uphill battle many believers face to break the chains of their family line. I don't know why the Lord keeps laying this topic on my heart of late; perhaps because, as my kids get older, I see more clearly what my parents fought to provide for me.
Perhaps it's because I see the hundreds of first-generation believers fighting WITH God to make a change.
I see the single girl scared to get married, to have children, because she thinks her family line will inevitably destroy any good she could try to accomplish.
I see the husband and wife leaving legalism behind, rejoicing at their newfound freedom and yet battling the guilt that whispers: You're doing it wrong.
I see them. I see you.
I had the advantage of a godly foundation, and I do what I do today because of it. Many of you are building that foundation right now, for your kids, or simply in your character and community. You're building something new, something foreign to how you were raised, trying to catch up and learn while also teaching and leading. And you're overwhelmed at the magnitude of it.
There's a reason my favorite verse in the entire Bible is John 16:33: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
What else is there to say? In this world, you WILL have trouble. Perhaps your parents, your “line”, invited trouble in. Perhaps they embraced it, endorsed it, perpetuated it. Perhaps those choices plague you to this day.
Dear one, take heart. He has overcome what they have done. He has overcome what they have said. He has overcome what they have spoken over you. And He is overcoming the difficulty of redeeming your line.
His overcoming doesn't remove all the hurt and it doesn't always free us right away, but who the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8) and no chain of family addiction and anger and contempt and unfaithfulness and divorce gets to reign over you.
Take heart. He is doing a new thing - can you see it?
Come with me, and together we redeem your bloodline.
Maybe you've been answering like the Southlands' king: But how? We're stuck here.
And the gospels scream in hope and glory: I changed that. You are free indeed.
I want you to know that the foundation you're scratching into the dirt with a pickax is a foundation for something greater than you can imagine, and it is worth every painful step. But the best news of all is this: Jesus isn't asking you to do it alone. He will do it FOR you. Oswald Chambers says God never asks us to do things FOR Him but to do things WITH Him, and only when we are doing “for” instead of “with” do we feel burnt out. To work WITH God in His mission is to be carried along in the force of His Spirit's leading - to let Him overcome through us.
Come with Him. Redeem the bloodline.
This is the good fight.
