46: SOUL-L (Part 5: Lineage)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Episode 46. Today we are unpacking the last of the five main areas the devil claims a right to be in our lives. We’re looking specifically at issues in our lineage.

Hello, Father.

[00:34] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. It’s fun to be doing this again. It was nice to see you over the weekend a little bit.

[00:41] Stephanie: Ah, yes. It was such a joy. And we got to meet a new kitty cat and, oh, yes, lots of happiness with the family.

[00:48] Marcus: Yeah, no doubt the highlight of the trip was seeing the new kitty cat. Yeah.

[00:55] Stephanie: Yes. Well I’ve got an icebreaker for us today. This episode comes out on my birthday week, so we’re going to talk about dessert. What is your favorite birthday dessert?

[01:08] Marcus: So my favorite birthday dessert is cherry delight. My mom used to make that for me. It’s got a graham cracker crust and philadelphia cream cheese, whipped cream and cherry pie filling and more whipped cream. It’s all good.

[01:24] Stephanie: You passed on to me your love of cherries. Can you guess what my favorite birthday cake is?

[01:30] Marcus: My mind goes to black forest cake with cherry and chocolate.

[01:34] Stephanie: But yes, you know, we loved our Costco chocolate cakes for a long time.

[01:42] Marcus: Yes.

[01:42] Stephanie: I was just thinking. About dessert in general, I might say baklava, but for a birthday cake? Yes, there’s something very nostalgic to me about black forest cake. That’s what I would choose. So good job.

[01:53] Marcus: You know me well, and Costco chocolate cake was my second choice. So, hey, we are. Yeah.

[01:59] Stephanie: Oh, yay. And hey, on the note of birthday joy, I just want to remind everyone of the book birthday that just happened: The Four Habits of Joy- Filled People that my dear father, Marcus Warner, and our friend, Chris Coursey, wrote. It is out and available to you now. I highly recommend it, and I also highly recommend participating in our “28 Days to Joy” challenge. You can find out more at 4habits.org

So, hey, Father, this is our last episode on unpacking your acrostic, SOUL-L, which spells out five common ways people surrender ground to the enemy. We’re walking through how to recognize these areas and how to reclaim that surrendered ground. So we are on to our final “L” –  lineage. Let’s start by setting up a biblical understanding of lineage.

[02:51] Marcus: Sure. Well, in our western culture, we tend to be very individualistic, and we tend to think that, “I am the creator of my own destiny and what I do affects me, but why should my life be affected by other people?” And yet, when we get to it, there’s some obvious ways in which the family line I’m from has had a profound impact on who I turn out to be, just from the environment that we were in.

But you take this even further biblically, and the Bible has a lot to say about generations being culpable, and future generations being culpable. What’s interesting here is you just start with the Torah, and in the Torah there’s this interesting command that says that Moabites and Ammonites are not allowed into the tabernacle for ten generations. That’s a very specific thing, right? It’s just always intrigued me. One, why ten generations? And why is there any kind of a generational moratorium on a people group? This is talking about ethnic groups having consequences generationally that keep them from entering the tabernacle.

Now, I will point out that one of the things that becomes very clear here is that there are generational consequences to sin. That is a very common idea in scripture.

Second, is that this doesn’t mean that individuals within the Moabites and the Ammonites could not be saved during these ten generations. I just want to spell that out because we know this, because Ruth is right in the middle of that ten generations. Ruth, who married into the Israelite community, would not have been allowed into the tabernacle, even though she was a convert. It didn’t mean she couldn’t be saved, it just means that there are consequences.

We see this in the life of Jesus. He talks about this generation: the queen of Sheba’s generation would rise up against his generation. It’s just a very interesting way to talk about it. It’s like this generation is going to bear consequences for everything that’s come before.

Well, we even see where in the prophets it’s told that because Manasseh was so wicked and he was so depraved in the way that he sought the pagan world, and the sexual immorality, violence, and paganism that he combined in his reign, that it says exile had become inevitable. But what’s interesting is that God postponed that judgment for a generation because of the revival that happened under Josiah. That revival postponed it, but it still came a generation later.

We just start off by saying the Bible has a whole lot more to say about generational consequences and things being passed on from one generation to the next than we might think.

[05:52] Stephanie: On the flip side of that, is there generational blessing?

[05:56] Marcus: Yes. In the Ten Commandments, it says that God sends the punishment for iniquity to the third and fourth generation, but that he extends his blessing to a thousand generations. The idea is, “Begrudgingly, I have to. Justice demands that there be consequences on this,” but his mercy is going to cut it off after three or four generations. He says, “But I love to bless people, so there’s going to be generational blessing.”

We see this a lot, too. I saw an article several years ago about Jonathan Edwards and the generational blessing in his family line and how many of his descendants went on to be very successful, influential people. And there’s just a blessing on the family. And so we see this often.

[06:50] Stephanie: Interesting. So I know sometimes people still wrestle with this understanding of lineage. It seems unfair, or why would what one person does affect a whole group of people or your lineage? And so could you talk maybe about some of the problems people have with lineage?

[07:10] Marcus: Well, the Bible comes right out and says in Ezekiel that God does not punish the son for the father’s guilt, nor will he punish the father for the son’s guilt. The idea is, if my dad commits murder, I don’t get punished for that. But what it’s talking about is in the legal justice system. It’s saying that if my dad commits murder, I can’t be punished for the murder that my dad commits. If I commit murder, he can’t be punished for the murder that I commit. You’re punished for your sin.

However, if my dad had committed murders, would that have any impact on my life? Yeah, I’d live with a whole lot of a different reality around me because of what had happened in my ancestry than I currently have. This idea that there are consequences that get passed down is a very real thing.

I think there’s a difference between somebody being culpable in a court of law – which is not fair and does not happen and God’s very clear about that – and this idea that there are negative consequences that get passed on, which is a very different thing.

[08:20] Stephanie: So on one hand, you have the family’s systems issues that develop, and on the other hand, you have children who learn the ways of their fathers, and so they continue the sins of their fathers. And so there are different avenues that can be taken.

[08:35] Marcus: Well, that’s true. Jesus, you know when he said that on his generation, God was going to send all of the wrath for all of the sins from every generation kind of thing, it’s a pretty profound thing. He said, “From Abel to the death of Zechariah who died near the altar,” he said, “All of that’s going to the consequences, the punishment of all that’s going to come on this generation.” Well, the reason is because this generation continued in all of those sins.  If his generation had received him as Messiah, had recognized the day of God’s visitation and repented and embraced what God was doing, that wouldn’t have happened. But his generation continued in the sins of the fathers. It continued on in that.

And so what we see and what we’re trying to do here when we talk about lineage is the same idea, and that is that if I come from a family line that has been practicing evil, or where evil has gotten into this family line and I continue in it, I’m inviting all kinds of problems including demonic consequences for their activity in my family and in my family system. This is precisely what we’re encouraging people to do, is to cut that off, repent of that, and be done with it.

We actually see a few examples of this in scripture where in Nehemiah, in chapter nine for example, he prays and he confesses the sins of his forefathers. He said, “Look, you sent us into exile justly because of the sins of our fathers. And yet here we are beginning to step into those same sins again. So I repent not only of the fact that we’re stepping into them again, but I repent of what they did and say it was wrong.”

We do see Ezra do something similar, and David making this interesting thing, like, “I was steeped in sin when I was born.” It’s an interesting idea. How can a baby be steeped in sin when they’re born? To me, that’s generational. And we’re talking about demonic elements of this.

There’s also that intriguing story in the gospels where a boy sometimes throws himself into fire and sometimes into water, and you’re like, “What would give permission to a demon to have that level of impact on a child?” Because this was a young child, probably not something the child did. It’s probably something that gained access in a different way, either through a curse being put on the child or through something being passed down to that child generationally.

[11:08] Stephanie: Right. Well, it makes me think of an extremely severe case of Alaine, I don’t know how much you want to say on that.

[11:16] Marcus: I have talked to people, especially in occult, where you have generational occult in the family, and they’re intentionally trying to pass this down. And so Alaine told me a story of, we’re talking about Alaine Pakkala. She’s a friend of Deeper Walk. She runs Lydia Discipleship Ministries and has done a lot of teaching for us on ministry to the deeply wounded. But she told me about this idea of intentionally passing on spirits from one generation to another in an occult system where a grandfather would literally place the hand of a granddaughter on the hand of a deceased grandmother and pray, “May all the spirits that were in my deceased grandmother pass to my (grand)daughter.” You know, that’s a pretty profound thing. And that makes sense because it’s actually being invited to transfer to the next generation.

[12:10] Stephanie: That’s like a blend between occult and lineage.

[12:13] Marcus: Yes, that’s like a blend between the occult and lineage. That’s a summoning exercise. What we’re talking about is a little less severe than that. It’s more of something that is automatically present. Because I look at it this way: if my grandfather got in some gambling debt on one side of my family, my great grandfather, and so opened a door for that. Let’s just say that he never repented of it, that he just continued in his gambling and his problem ever since, and he never, never turned away from that. And then it passed down to the next generation. What you would look for is, in the next generation, is there any kind of a gambling or maybe some other addictive behavior that created problems for the family? And did that pass down, do you see it in the next generation?

I know, for example, my dad worked with a lady whose husband had been a pastor who divorced her and abandoned the family. Turns out that his father was a pastor who had divorced his mother and abandoned the family. And his grandfather had been a pastor who had divorced his wife and abandoned his family. It was now the third generation of pastors divorcing and abandoning wives and abandoning their families. And so you’re like, is that just environment, or is there something else going on there?

What we’re saying from what we’ve learned about how spiritual warfare works, is that demons don’t say, “They’re in enough trouble, I’ll stay out of it.” If I’ve got all these environmental issues, demons will take advantage of those environmental issues. But there’s also something legal going on here where demons will say, “I have a right to be in this family because I was invited into this family, and nobody has ever kicked me out.”

Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody born in that family is born possessed. That’s not what we’re saying. But they are born in a soup, so to speak, that includes demonic activity in the environment. And because of that, they’re going to have to deal with things they wouldn’t have to deal with because of that.

One of the most concrete ways where I saw this at work was in adoptions, where someone would adopt a child who came from an entirely different lineage than theirs. Maybe they were four generations of devout Christians and a lot of divine blessing in their family, but they adopted somebody out of a very broken family system. Maybe there was paganism or false religion in that family system. And now they’re like, “What do we do?” Well, one of the first things that we often recommended was, “You need to cut off the generational inheritance, the spiritual generational inheritance from the family line they were born into, and then bring them under the spiritual family inheritance of your family line.”

I know, for example, my dad used to tell the story of a boy who had the reputation of being a “holy terror”, and he just drove everybody nuts. And his parents found out about this idea of cutting off lineage or generational iniquity. And so while the boy was sleeping, the father went into the room, next to him, and prayed and said, “I hereby cut off all spiritual inheritance from this boy’s birth family, and I command those demons to leave now,” and the boy literally flew out of the bed and landed on the floor.

[15:40] Stephanie: Wow.

[15:41] Marcus: And he woke up, and he was like, “What’s going on?”

And his dad’s like, “Don’t worry about it. I’m just praying for you. It’s going to be okay.” Tucked him back in. The next morning, this boy came down to breakfast with a different demeanor. That Friday, the teacher sent a note home with the boy saying, “I don’t know what’s changed in your home, but whatever it is, keep it up. This is a different kid.” And it all came back from breaking the spiritual inheritance that had been passed down through the birth family. Now, in this case, he had been born into a family that practiced a false religion. And so they had to cut off all of these religious spirits from that false religion.

[16:18] Stephanie: Well, because, again, with the blend of occult, usually when you see something as dramatic as flying out of a bed or something, it’s because there’s occult involved.

[16:27] Marcus: Yes, absolutely.

[16:31] Stephanie: Can you tell another story for people who suspect there’s some lineage involved in their own lives but want help exploring cutting it off?

[16:41] Marcus: I basically start with the assumption that there is generational or lineage issues in any family. For example, I look at our family and, just the one I was born into, one side goes back to religious dysfunction, and the other side goes back to irreligious dysfunction. And so we will pray to cut that off. Is there any ground that was given, any door that was opened from the anger and the rage in this family line that led to divorce? We cut that off. Or on my other side, all this controllingness. It was like a woman controlling the man with religion. We had to cut that off. We had to cut off the spirit of criticism and criticalness and so on.

There are things that have had to be cut off along the way. And every now and then, something new will pop up and surface, and you begin to realize, you know what? This pattern seems to be continuing from what I saw, my father or my grandfather or my mother, my grandmother’s generation. You notice that, so there’ll be new things you cut off, but you start with a blanket, “In the name of Jesus. I just cut off anything ancestral that’s been passed down.” And then you deal with specific things, as you know about the specific things to deal with. And so that’s the idea, is we use the same 3C, 4C approach:

“I confess that it’s true that my ancestors opened these doors, and this is what they did, and this is what I know. And then if I don’t, there’s stuff I don’t know about. I cut. I confess that, too. And I cut it off. I cancel it in Jesus name, I ask Jesus to cancel any permission that was given, and I now command any demons that have gained access to my family line, I command you to leave, go where the Lord Jesus Christ sends you, and I commit ourselves under the blessing of Christ.”

So you just use that same 4C system that we have talked about in pretty much every one of these podcasts on Confess, Cancel, Command, Commit. That’s how you break this stuff. That’s how you walk through it.

And I’ve done it for our family. I’ve done it periodically on specific things that have come up along the way, even after the more general, and it’s something I think that everybody would benefit from doing. I also think about the split family idea, too. It’s like you can do this for your biological family, and if you have step parents, you can do it for their family tree as well. And for some people, “What if I’m married and I’m the only Christian in the marriage, can I do it for my wife?” And the answer is, you can do it. Yes, for anything that is your nuclear family and beyond, you can cut them off.

[19:20] Stephanie: Would you recommend doing it with other people?

[19:24] Marcus: It never hurts to do it with somebody else, but I think a lot of people have done this on their own by themselves successfully. This is actually step seven of Neil Anderson’s Seven Steps to Freedom. Step seven is dealing with generational stuff. If you want a guide to walk you through it, that’s a good guide. I also have prayers or recommended guides in What Every Believer Should Know about Spiritual Warfare. And some of the older ICBC content talks quite a bit about this as well. I know in our last conference, Karl Payne had a whole session just on generational iniquity. So we have quite a bit of extra material on this for people who want to take a deeper dive.

[20:04] Stephanie: I would just reiterate, all of this with soul and such, and even with spiritual warfare, these are all tools. And so it’s not a one size fits all, “Oh, if you deal with the lineage, it all gets better.” If the lineage was the really severe issue, then maybe it will all get better.

Anything final you want to say on lineage specifically? And then maybe we can wrap up the series as a whole.

[20:25] Marcus: The lineage and generational, ancestral, stuff like that, we tend to wonder sometimes, how real is this? And so we just start off saying, “Look, the Bible actually has a lot to say about ancestral and generational consequences to sin.” Now, does the Bible come right out and say you can have demons in your family because of this? No, but it also doesn’t say it can’t happen, and there are some stories, like the boy throwing himself into the fire or the water, that seem to suggest that may exactly be what’s happening. What we’re talking about, though, is there is biblical reference for cutting off or renouncing the sins of the fathers. That’s what we’re talking about here.

Let’s make sure that we’re doing this and that, especially if we see patterns emerging or developing. This is one of those tools that you want to use. No tool fixes everything, but there are things that can’t be fixed if you don’t employ this particular approach, and that’s why we talk about it. And I think it’s pretty serious. I’ve seen a lot of people get significant help by dealing with the generational issues involved.

[21:32] Stephanie: Exactly. All right, any final thoughts for the SOUL-L Series as a whole?

[21:38] Marcus: Originally, the idea behind SOUL-L was I was looking at Neil Anderson’s Seven Steps to Freedom and I was trying to think, “Is there a way I could simplify this, and remember these seven doors that he had that open up things?” And I went, well, he talks about pride and rebellion and habitual sin. Well, that’s all sin, so we’ll call that sin. So underneath sin, we talk about idolatry and rebellion and pride and habitual or compulsive sins, and put all these different categories of sin there.

And then his Step One was the counterfeit vs. the real. So we talk about the occult and we talk about counterfeit Christianity that includes occult elements in it, even though it calls itself Christianity, and put it there.

His third step was about forgiveness and unforgiveness and bitterness. So that inspired this idea, well, let’s talk about unforgiveness. And then there’s lies that we believe. And again, he’s got a step there on deception, and we’re just taking that and unpacking it in a little bit different way.

So I just want to give credit to Neil, to the ideas in Steps to Freedom that have sort of inspired the thinking around this, have kind of repackaged things. And I’ve had other people suggest, you know, adding this or adding that. And you can add other things. There’s nothing magical about these five. They’re just very common.

If I was going to add another one, it would probably be fear. I’ve tended to include fear underneath lies we believe, because usually there is a lie underneath our fear. So there are other things that could be included in a list like this. It’s just meant to get us started. And I used it because it helped me to keep it in my head so I didn’t have to look it up every time. It’s a memory device so that I know what to look for.

One of the ways that I used SOUL-L throughout my ministry was as I would listen to people tell their story, and I would be writing down and taking notes, a lot of times I could just put an S or an O or a U or something like that, or L1 or L2 next to it, just to remind me, go revisit this point because there’s a good chance, based on their story, there’s a good chance that they’ve opened a door here that we need to go back and close.

That’s kind of how it got used in my ministry time. And hopefully this will be helpful both to people who are engaged in that kind of ministry and people who are looking for ways to find freedom in their own life.

[23:54] Stephanie: Yes, it is so helpful. Thank you so much, Dad.

And hey, thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a non-profit organization, and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do. Some are on the trail with us as official Trailblazers who commit to donating $25 or more per month. We invite you to consider becoming a Trailblazer. You can do this very simply by visiting our website, deeperwalk.com/trailblazers.

If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail Podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends. Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.