Breaking Generational Curses: Redeem Your Bloodline from Demonic Curses

Are curses the source of my frustration and even inability to live a peaceful life?

Are curses stopping me from fulfilling the destiny ordained by God for me? What are the signs of a curse? What is a good definition of a curse? These are all questions that should be asked and answered.

First of all, a good definition for curse is “a negative spiritual force sabotaging God’s plan for my life by taking advantage of legal rights claimed by the demonic.” In other words, a curse is real and it is out to destroy every good thing God intended for us. However, it can only work from a legal place in the spirit world. Proverbs 26:2 declares that curses operating against a person or people must have a cause.

Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.

The cause of a curse is that the demonic has discovered a legal claim to bring it into place. Notice that curses are likened to birds looking for a place to land. It is up to us not to allow a landing place for these curses. There can be a myriad of causes the devil might discover to land curses against us. However, I want to look at three distinct reasons that are the most common—iniquity, covenants, and words. I have discovered that these three are expressly used to destroy the intent of God in people and families. Any of these three can be something we are guilty of in our present time or something someone in our generations was guilty of.

Remember that the devil is not omniscient or all-knowing. However, he can commission an investigation to search our lives and/or history. This is very much like an attorney or law firm hiring investigators to find evidence against someone. They can search the history of someone to locate damning information. Satan does this as well to find anything legal that can be used against us. He authorizes the demonic powers at his fingertips to search and locate certain things that would grant him a legal right. This is especially true when some- one becomes a threat to him and his agenda. He has to find a legal claim against them that can be used to stop them.

This is what happened to me. I had led a very successful local work that we had birthed and raised up. It was a powerful expression of God’s kingdom power. After 15 years of leading this work, the Lord clearly instructed us to step away from it and for me to begin to travel. This was going to launch me into a kingdom level ministry to the world. God wanted to increase my sphere to touch the nations. I was excited about this but had no idea of the attack I was going to come under.

We had fought many battles in the 15 years of leading a local expression of the church. We had come to a place of great blessing, prosperity, and breakthrough. The house we had helped build was filled with the glory and presence of the Lord. In fact, the Lord showed me that the anointing in the house was like the house of Obed-Edom. This was where David put the ark when he tried to bring it up in a wrong manner. It stayed there for three months. The house of Obed-Edom was greatly blessed. Second Samuel 6:11-12 says everything in the house of Obed-Edom was blessed. His whole household was under the blessing of the Lord because of the awesome presence of God that was there.

The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months. And the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. Now it was told King David, saying, “The Lord has blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with gladness.

When David heard how great the blessing was on that house, he went and moved the ark. He repositioned the ark on the Hill of Zion. In that place, the ark that had blessed a house began to bless a nation. The presence or anointing didn’t get bigger; it was just repositioned for a greater effect and influence.

This is what the Lord did with me. It wasn’t that the anointing on my life increased; it was that I was repositioned from a house to a hill. In a house, I had the privilege of touching a city and region. From a hill, I was given the honor of impacting nations. It wasn’t about new levels of anointing. It was about a new positioning to use the anointing I already carried to affect new dimensions for the Lord.

You may not need a new anointing. Maybe you need a new positioning. What the Lord has birthed in you can have the potential to touch nations. The devil knew this. As I was repositioned to take what I carried in God to now touch nations, he intended to stop this. His method against me was to search out my ancestry and find legal claims to land curses. The result of this was that our life began to fall apart. My reputation came under attack. My children began to make unwise and fleshly decisions. Our marriage began to falter. Finances dried up. About anything you can imagine other than sickness and death started to hit us.

The problem was that I couldn’t get it stopped. For 30-plus years, I had been a disciplined man of prayer. I had a place in God that could stop attacks and get break- throughs. In this time, however, nothing worked. No matter how much I prayed or what strategies I employed, everything kept getting worse. Before I could get one problem solved, five more had piled on top of that one. I later learned this was a true sign of a curse at work. The devil had discovered a legal right to resist any kingdom impact I was destined for. I was to discover that much of what was allowing these attacks were legal claims from my ancestry.

So what are the three primary areas the devil uses as a legal claim to land curses? What is the legal cause he discovers? The first right that he claims is iniquity in the bloodline. Iniquity is the sin of our ancestors. Iniquity is one of the primary legal reasons the devil can bring curses against us. The Bible is clear that the iniquity of our fathers can be used to affect us today. In fact, whatever we are today is a result of our ancestry. We are a byproduct of those who have gone before us, both good and bad. Those who lived righteous and noble lives allow us to claim their effect. For instance, Timothy had a faith “inherited” from his family line. Paul spoke of this in 2 Timothy 1:5.

When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.

Timothy had claims to a dynamic faith because of the faith-filled way his grandmother and mother had lived. We need to know how to go into the Courts of Heaven and claim these kinds of things for ourselves. I believe much good from our family lines is unclaimed. We miss out on what could be ours. We can go before His Courts and ask for the blessing and empowerment that flow from this realm. However, just like there are good things that flow from our family history, there are also bad. The devil knows how to make cases against us based on our family sins and iniquities. This can be found in several scriptures. Exodus 20:4-5 gives us this insight concerning the right of the devil to visit the effects of sin against us from our ancestry.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.

These statements from the Lord grant the devil the legal right to land curses against us based on the iniquity in our bloodline. The devil can only use the Word of God to bring cases against us. He must find a violation of God’s law in us or our bloodline. This is why Jesus said the devil had searched Him out and found nothing in John 14:30.

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.

This statement of Jesus implies that there was no sin in Him or His bloodline that satan could use against Him. This was because Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life. Plus, Jesus’s lineage was from God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He had no natural father whose bloodline could be used against Him. Therefore, satan had no legal recourse against Jesus. Satan had searched Him out and found nothing. However, this is not true of us. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Plus, we have compromised bloodlines that allow accusations against us. We also see this in Leviticus 26:39.

And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; also in their fathers’ iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away.

Notice that the fathers’ iniquities will cause us to waste away. The devil claims a legal right against us to land curses that progressively destroy our lives and destinies. Ezekiel 18:30 makes a powerful statement about the effect of iniquity in our bloodline.

“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways,” says the Lord God. “Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin.”

Iniquity in our bloodline will allow the devil to bring ruin to our lives. This is the legal claim the devil uses against us to ruin our lives. This is why so many lives filled with hope and promise come to ruin. According to John 10:10, the devil as the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Just like the devil desires and intends to annihilate any good in our life, Jesus has come to stop that and bring us life! He will cause the intentions of the devil to be stopped. He will instead bring us life and that with much abundance.

I know someone whose life illustrates iniquity in the bloodline. This particular lady was a pastor and had watched several of her siblings die premature deaths. They had all come tragically to death before their time. Finally, the grandmother of the family came to this lady and told her a story she knew nothing about. It seemed that decades before, her grandfather had gotten into a bar fight and killed a man with a knife. The grandmother had then watched person after person be removed from their family through sickness, violence, and other means of death. The grandmother had an intuitive sense that it was related to the violent act of the grandfather who had killed that man. The pastor immediately knew what the Word of God says. The law of God is explicit in Genesis 9:6. If someone kills a person, then they must be killed or die prematurely.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man.

When these kinds of statements are made in the Word of God, the devil will take them and use them to build a case against us. He will claim this over a person and their coming generations. This lady pastor knew she must go into the Courts of Heaven and undo the legal claim the devil was making. She did this and immediately all premature death stopped. The curse of premature and untimely deaths caused by sickness and disease and violence came to an end in that family. People became free to live out their lives to the fullness of days.

Any place where there has been a violation of God’s Word and law the devil will use this against us. When the accusers in Jesus’s day brought the woman caught in adultery, they were using Moses law against her. In John 8:4- 5, they claimed a legal right to kill her.

They said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?”

They were seeking to find a way to accuse Jesus. In this scripture, we see how those who were of the spirit of satan used the Word of God against this woman. Their case against her was based on her violation of God’s word. This is exactly what the devil does to us. Any legal claim against us is based on our violation of God’s word or the violations in our ancestry. We must repent for any and all places where satan can make claims against us. When this is done, the legal right to land curses is removed.