“Pull down your father’s altar“
We see so many times in the history of our own families and our countries how the same destructive situations affect people generation after generation. In Scripture too, we see that past circumstances created such malice, anger and hurt that affected multiple generations of God’s people. The good news of the Gospel though is that we can either be free from these past cycles, or we can carry on being the victim. However, because of Jesus’ resurrection and His victory over the grave, it will be by your own choice. He has made a way for you to believe and accept the victory He won at Calvary.
I, for one, have made major mistakes in my life that have not only hurt myself, but more importantly, have hurt those around me that I love. However, all of us can decide that our past mistakes will not carry on into our futures or the future of our lineage! This decision has to start with me and with you.
How Did These Destructive Cycles Get Started?
Primarily, these destructive cycles were created by life situations connected to messages we believed or wounds we received according to how other people treated us. These patterns then became ways of looking at life that we agreed with even as children. They could have been experienced as trauma or given to us as negative attitudes passed down over time. Often these strongholds are habitual issues and have plagued previous generations of our families.
How Do We Get Healed?
Sue and I have been “Sozo Ministers” for many years and a lot of what we do is minister to others for the healing of past hurts, lies and wounds that operate in people’s souls. For those of you who may not know, “sozo” is a Greek word and it means to be made whole, spirit, soul, and body. However, our souls sometimes must be restored first before physical healings can take place.
Even from a biblical perspective, which obviously goes back thousands of years, we can see that there were so many times that the Israelites created havoc in their own lives, and the lives of their generations, by doing wrong things continually. Sometimes even to their own personal demise. But God still loved them so much that He finally bought them out of crazy situations to get them back on track.
However, sometimes their deliverance was not won without a lot of battle scars and wounds. They suffered physically, spiritually and emotionally even though God in His faithfulness swept in and delivered them.
The Story of Gideon
We can see one such example of this in Judges chapter six when the angel of the Lord called Gideon. When the Spirit of the Lord finds Gideon, he is threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress, because he was trying to hide the grain and himself from the Midianites (see Judges 6: 11). He was not confronting his enemies at that time. He was hiding and trying to preserve his own life and the life of his family.
This is very interesting because God was about to use him to destroy the forces of Midian and liberate Israel. But before he could do so, there were a few family dynamics that had to be dealt with – mainly the altar his father had built to the false god, Baal. It had been in their family for years. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes the past has to be dealt with before we can move into our futures without the baggage!
So, God said to Gideon,
“Pull down your father’s altar to Baal…Then build an altar to the Lord your God” – Judges 6: 25-26 NLT
Your Past Doesn’t Have to Define Your Future
Understand this: sometimes we or our previous generations have built altars on lies, emotional wounds, anger, addiction, physical and mental abuse, marital affairs—and all of this may be part of your family history. However, the glorious truth about the deliverance that Jesus won for us on the cross is that they definitely don’t have to be part of your future!
Not only will God heal your heart and the wounds, but He will also use you to heal the hearts and wounds of your children. He can use you to cause generational garbage to stop here and now. You don’t have to give your kids what your ancestors gave you. Bring it out into the open and lay it before the Lord. REVEALING LEADS TO HEALING!
And if having a mature Christian counsellor helps, get one! Or by getting in touch with us, we can help you with providing you details on how to go through your own sozo healing session.
Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think (Romans 12:2 NLT) and changing the way you feel. Allow God to show you your proper identity.
No, I hear you; it won’t happen overnight. Damage done to you in the formative years of your life will take time to heal, and God’s heart and God’s love will help you work through this. He will walk with you day-by-day until He has made you whole. But let the healing begin. Rise up in faith, take control of your life, and declare: “It ends with me, and it ends here and now.”
We’d Love to Help
If you would like to find out more about Sozo healing, please visit our Sozo Ministry page. We can point you in the right direction for in-person meetings or online zoom sessions.
If you just want to know how to walk through some of these areas to start with in the privacy of your own home, then please listen to our practical workbook and CD teaching called Trichotomy Healing: Healing for the soul, body and spirit. This is available in a physical format(USB or CD) or downloadable format (MP3).
