A full day, in more senses than one, with 41 people at Beth Tephillah today for our Generational Healing seminar. Our publicity says “places are limited”, so the 5 who left it to this morning were fortunate that 4 who had booked were late cancellations.
It was cosy, but the buzz developing through the day indicated the good atmosphere we enjoyed together. Lots of interesting comments and questions as we explored our part in bringing healing to the unresolved sin issues in our family history. The use of genograms as a tool to identify patterns through the generations was new to some, and for some, just looking at their family tree brought understanding of issues they face, and why their life has not gone well.
In preparing the teaching, I was again struck by the immensity of God’s grace that the blessings of obedience to His ways is to a thousand generations of those who love Him, while the consequence of disobedience is generally limited to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him. (Exodus 20:4). Also, as the Sandfords put it so well, “Wherever men will let Jesus Christ reap the dire effects of the law through forgiveness and atonement on the cross, God can prevent tragedy. (God) has set Himself to obey His own laws. So whenever men will not repent, and by that fail to give Him access, men must reap, generation to generation, whatever is sown, however unfair that may be to the unborn and however much our loving God doesn’t want that to happen.” (John and Paula Sandford, Transforming the Inner Man: God’s Powerful Principles for Inner Healing and Lasting Life Change
, p. 188-189).
So we see that the atoning death of Christ is always effective for personal sin, and when applied to corporate sin, is equally effective to bring healing to generational lines. How wonderful is the blood of Jesus to deal with all sin and bring us into all the freedom of the children of God.
Hearing some of the family inheritances that people have, makes me very grateful for my own heritage, and full of admiration for those, who in spite of the generational iniquity have, by their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, brought blessing to their family line.
As Mal concluded today, “If done well, dealing with generational iniquity not only brings a great amount of healing to the person receiving ministry, but also to their children, and often also sideways to other members of their family.” We trust that for the families represented at Beth Tephillah today, this will prove true.
By the way, we’ve changed the date of the 4th seminar, on dissociation, to 24th November. Places are being booked much earlier for this than for our other seminars, so we expect another “full” day in November.
Related Reading:
. Chuck’s story, his humour, and years of experience encouraged us all to deal with sin issues that give the devil a foothold, to “have a go”, and to exercise our authority in Jesus in all areas of life. As believers, our name is added to the credit card the Father gives to his children.
. With her husband, Marguerite Kraft has taught generations of students at