Freedom in Christ or a Formula of Man? A Theological Review of ‘Breaking Generational Bondages’

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:00:01] All right, let's see here. Okay, let's see what else there is. What's this?

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:00:24] Is that word repent? It literally just means to change your mind, to feel.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:00:28] So good. Oh yeah. I'll just save this for later. It's time to be free.

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:00:43] Good morning. It's good to see everybody and it's great to be in church with you. And I'm just so glad to be here with my dear friends, Pastor Jimmy, Pastor Kim, all the team here.
[00:00:53] and we're going to have a great service this morning.
[00:00:56] We're talking about how to be free.
[00:00:58] Let me just remind you, we don't know next week what we're going to do because we're just waiting to see what happens really in the community.
[00:01:04] You know, how COVID is spreading and how the medical community is able to stand up to that, want to be responsible.
[00:01:11] Pastor Jimmy is being very careful in that.
[00:01:14] But we want to come back to church.
[00:01:15] And so just check online if you would this week, it'll be online on the Trinity website there.
[00:01:21] And so we'll let you know in advance what's going to happen next weekend, but our default setting is to come back to church.
[00:01:27] However, we want to be responsible in that for you and also for the community. So just check on that if you would. I want to talk in this message today about breaking generational bondages. Now,
[00:01:37] this is a message that's dramatically changed my life. And I heard this message, this truth, probably 40 something years ago. And Karen and I both came out of homes that were not saved.
[00:01:50] our parents were not safe. And we had good parents in some ways and bad parents in some ways. I think that's most people's story. But in the areas where our parents were not godly, we had damage
[00:02:03] generationally. And it wasn't just our parents. It was grandparents, great-great-great-great grandparents, all that kind of thing. And so all of us are connected to the past. And this is the issue in this message. We are all connected to our past and especially our parents. I'm going to talk
[00:02:18] a lot in this message about how our parents affect us generationally and where our parents were good. In the areas where our parents were, let me use another word, godly. In the areas where our parents were godly, we have a natural advantage not only to know God, but to live a successful
[00:02:35] life. But in the areas where our parents were not godly, they did not raise us according to the Bible. They did not model to us biblical values. We have a disadvantage and we have problems there
[00:02:46] that go from generation to generation to generation until someone stops that.
[00:02:52] And that's what this message is about.
[00:02:54] I want you to be, if you have generational issues in your family, I want you to be the generation that stops taking these generational issues and moving them forward.
[00:03:05] And I want you to be the person that breaks that generational curse, that generational issue.
[00:03:10] And now the blessing of God goes forward to generation.
[00:03:13] Could you give your children or grandchildren any better gift than the gift of a free life to be free and to be free from the generational curses that went before you. So this is Deuteronomy five. I want to talk about just
[00:03:25] understanding this issue of generational blessings and curses. This is Deuteronomy five.
[00:03:31] I, the Lord, your God, I'm a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers and that's fathers and mothers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. So God is saying here
[00:03:47] that I'm going to visit the iniquity of the fathers, the parents to the third and fourth generation. This is what happens. Every parent is having an effect on multiple generations. That's the truth about parenting. And we all know that. We can see family sins. We can see family issues
[00:04:03] running for generations within families. And so the word iniquity there in Deuteronomy 5 is the word avon in the Hebrew, it means to bend or to twist. It's this word like this. Rather than being
[00:04:14] straight the way that it should be, it's bent. Well, here in West Texas, we know we have trees that grow like this because of the Southwest wind. They ought to be growing like that, but they're
[00:04:24] growing like this. And it's because day after day, week after week, year after year, this wind pushes on them and pushes on them and push on them to one day they're bent. This is what happens
[00:04:35] when you grow up around sin. This is what happens when you grow up and the influence of your parents, especially your parents, it can be grandparents, it can be other authority figures, the church even, but mainly it's your parents. A negative influence, a negative influence,
[00:04:51] a sinful influence, a bad influence over, over, over, and then you grow up with that bent. That's the word iniquity. And so parents make a huge difference in the life of children. Let me illustrate this in the life of two men. Now, there was a study done in 1906 that was comparing two
[00:05:09] men and their generations. This is the most powerful example I've ever found. And it's Jonathan Edwards versus a guy named Max Jukes. And so this study took their lineage, their lives and their lineage, and looked at these two men. Well, they were total opposites. So Jonathan
[00:05:26] Edwards and his wife, strong Christian, he was a pastor, and they raised their children in a Christian environment, Max Jukes was a drunk with very low values. And so they looked at this study and here's a record of some of the descendants of Jonathan Edwards. In his descendants were 14
[00:05:45] college presidents, more than 100 college professors, more than 100 lawyers, 30 judges, and 60 physicians, more than 100 clergymen, missionaries, and theological professors, 60 authors three senators and a vice president of the United States you've got to admit that's
[00:06:06] pretty impressive okay now Max Jukes he didn't raise his family he often disappeared for days at a time leaving his family unattended it's estimated that Max Jukes and his family cost the state of New York in 1906 10 million dollars over 10 million dollars and that would be like
[00:06:22] 100 million dollars today his family was so dysfunctional and so damaging by the 18th century the Jukes produced 310 descendants in poverty, 150 criminals, 100 drunks, seven murderers, and one half of his female descendants were prostitutes. So you look at the difference
[00:06:43] between a godly man and an ungodly man, and this illustrates Deuteronomy 5. God visits the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. So what it means is we have to be careful.
[00:06:54] First of all, I want to talk about your family, the family that you came out of.
[00:06:59] Now, here's what I know about your family.
[00:07:01] It was imperfect.
[00:07:02] I'm absolutely positive of that fact, okay?
[00:07:04] And so my family was very imperfect.
[00:07:06] And the imperfections of our family affect us.
[00:07:10] Now, I just read a congressional report that just came out from the Congress about, it says, say goodbye to the two-parent family.
[00:07:17] Okay, that's the title of this study.
[00:07:20] And it's talking about the demise of the family in America, the attack that is on marriage and family in America.
[00:07:25] Understand, when families suffer, children suffer.
[00:07:29] And those children's lives are damaged by the damage that happens to their family.
[00:07:33] If you grew up in a broken home or dysfunctional home or whatever it was, the damage in your family affected you.
[00:07:40] And that is going to affect your children and grandchildren if something isn't done about it.
[00:07:45] Our lives are generationally connected and have the power to transmit righteousness or sin, health or unhealth, blessing or cursing, wealth or poverty, education or ignorance, pleasure or pain.
[00:07:58] This is what happens with the decisions that we make over how we deal with our pain and how we deal with our past. Am I going to transmit blessing and righteousness and goodness, or am I going to transmit more pain and poverty and ignorance and so on and so forth? And we
[00:08:13] decide our legacy. We decide our legacy. Our parents don't decide our legacy. So when Karen and I heard this message many, many years ago, here's what we said. We're the end of the generational curses in the Evans and Smith families. Whatever family sins there were
[00:08:31] that came to us, we're going to break these and we're the beginning of righteousness to a thousand generations. And here's all I can tell you. Our children are blessed and our grandchildren are blessed. They live dramatically different lives than we lived when we were young. And they're
[00:08:48] raising their children according to the same standards that we taught them. And what that means is because of the decision that we made regarding our legacy, not only are our children and grandchildren blessed, I know that my great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren
[00:09:01] are going to be blessed because this is a generational blessing. So this is a big deal.
[00:09:05] So let me talk about how to stop the legacy of the generational curses and the legacy of pain and how to begin a new legacy. And the first is talking about iniquities. We're going to talk
[00:09:17] about the issue of iniquities. And again, meaning to bend or to twist, this is the power of parenting, Deuteronomy 6. God says to parents, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
[00:09:28] with all your soul, with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit
[00:09:36] in your house. When you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write
[00:09:46] them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. And so God gave them two commandments.
[00:09:50] You love me with all your heart and you teach your children diligently about me.
[00:09:54] That's the role of parents. The number one role of a parent is to lead their child to God, is to be a godly example of them and to lead their child to God. And then Ephesians 6, 4,
[00:10:04] you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. And so churches are partners for parents in raising their children right schools are partners with parents and raising their children right but the
[00:10:17] commandment is to parents the commandment to every parent is you are responsible for training that child parenting your child and training your child should not be a burden that you give to somebody else it is one of the
[00:10:30] most important things you will do for the rest of your life and it will it will decide how your family do you want a legacy of righteousness and blessing success or a legacy of pain and dysfunction and the way that we parent
[00:10:44] our children that's that's the decision we make so a parent's behavior has an effect on at least three or four generations okay that's just that's what God's Word says let me give you an example of iniquities now iniquity
[00:10:57] remember it means a bent to a sin or a negative behavior because of the sin and negative behavior of our parents we grow up with a bent anger substance abuse chauvinism sexism physical abuse you would think that people who are physically abused as children
[00:11:15] or sexually abused would be the last ones to abuse their children actually they have more of an inclination to do that because it's the way they were trained racism bigotry verbal abuse immorality pride sexual abuse negativity dishonesty materialism perfectionism gossip
[00:11:33] unforgiveness greed conditional love all of those things you say we can all sin without our parents okay these are more deeply entrenched sins the issue with iniquities is these aren't just your average sins these are generational sins the issue of anger how did your family deal with anger let
[00:11:50] me ask you some questions because if you're going to get rid of iniquities you kind of have to do a little bit of inventory of your past let me do this for you were the things that you were exposed
[00:11:59] to when you were growing up biblically sound and morally correct and that's that's the question i want you to think back on your past the way that your parents raised you was it morally correct and biblically correct was it biblical okay the way the the way people in your family
[00:12:15] resolve conflict in in my family when i was growing up we had the most dysfunctional method of resolving conflict in the history of the world you just didn't you didn't look at each other in my family growing up we weren't yellers we weren't throwers and stuff like that in my family
[00:12:31] you knew someone was mad at you because they wouldn't look at you and when they were over it they would look at you is that not I mean and Karen's family was much more animated they were
[00:12:41] you know they would you know get mad and crying you know do a lot of kind of stuff which was much more functional than my family well my family trained me not to know how to deal with my
[00:12:51] emotions. It took me during my 20s and 30s to learn to get in touch with my emotions and deal with my emotions. That was the dysfunction and iniquity that my parents gave me. The way your
[00:13:04] family handled money, was it biblical and godly? The way your parents treated others, attitudes about the opposite sex, racism, things like that. Attitudes towards submission to God in the Bible, Were your parents submitted people?
[00:13:19] Were they people who believed in the Bible and had faith in God?
[00:13:22] Attitude toward children and values in life.
[00:13:25] Did your parents love you and care for you?
[00:13:28] Or were you a distraction to them?
[00:13:30] And did they not parent you properly?
[00:13:31] All of these things make a difference.
[00:13:34] Here's another question.
[00:13:35] Do you practice the same things you didn't agree with or like about your parents?
[00:13:39] A lot of times we'll sit and judge our parents.
[00:13:42] We do exactly the same things they did.
[00:13:43] my father was a finger snapper and when he got mad at you he'd snap your fingers at you and call you little man my brothers and I still call each other little man to this day just as a joke and
[00:13:53] somebody has a little man like that and I hated it I mean every time my dad did that I think don't you snap that finger at me you know and so the first time I think my daughter Julie was about
[00:14:04] one and she was doing something I said don't do that Julie and I say Julie okay and my finger snapped I thought I cannot believe I did that I mean I'm sitting here doing the same thing
[00:14:13] this is what we do are you doing are you negative are you judgmental are you racist do you have pride do you have rebellion toward God the things that you saw in your parents are you doing those
[00:14:27] things have you ever dealt with those things I want to I want to talk to you about how to break iniquities and the first is call it a sin call it what it is it's a sin now my sin was chauvinism
[00:14:37] among many others now by the way I've never met a person didn't have iniquities Not one person.
[00:14:44] Everyone has them.
[00:14:46] One of mine was chauvinism.
[00:14:47] I grew up in a home of male chauvinist men.
[00:14:51] And my dad wasn't as bad as my grandfather and all his brothers.
[00:14:56] My grandmother literally waited on my grandfather hand and foot.
[00:15:01] He never did anything for himself.
[00:15:02] My grandmother was just his full-time servant.
[00:15:06] And I thought, A, that's of God, and B, I want one of those.
[00:15:09] But I didn't realize when I married Karen, she didn't train very well.
[00:15:13] And so I didn't, you know, she wouldn't do, she wouldn't go along with the program like that.
[00:15:17] And so, but she was healthy and I was unhealthy.
[00:15:20] I was a chauvinist.
[00:15:21] I just thought men were better than women.
[00:15:23] I just thought, you know, everything's about me and Karen just gets to be here for the ride.
[00:15:28] Well, that caused a very dysfunctional marriage and a lot of pain.
[00:15:31] It caused a lot of pain in our family to say the least because women weren't treated as equals.
[00:15:35] They were demeaned.
[00:15:36] Well, whenever I heard this message, I repented of chauvinism.
[00:15:40] Now, listen, you can't go through your life blaming your parents for all your problems. Okay. So when you take responsibility for this, what you're saying is I realize regardless of what, regardless of what my parents did to me
[00:15:53] or before me, I'm responsible for this and it's a sin and I repent of it. Whatever that sin is, abuse, you know, whatever it might be, I'm now responsible for my own behavior. You take
[00:16:04] responsibility for it. The third is you have to forgive your parents. This is the huge issue.
[00:16:09] the mother of all issues in freedom is forgiveness. This is the only part of the Lord's prayer that Jesus repeated is you have in order to be forgiven, you have to forgive the sins of others.
[00:16:20] My father was a horrible father. My father never touched me. Uh, he never talked to me. Uh, I mean, if I went up to my dad and said, daddy was two plus two, he'd say, I don't know. And he'd just
[00:16:30] look at me and never came to a ball game, never in any way involved himself in my life. And I just, I couldn't figure it out. But my aunts, my dad had nine brothers and sisters. One day I was talking
[00:16:41] to my aunts, my dad's two sisters, and they told me that they never slept indoors. My dad slept outside every day of his life growing up. In the wintertime, he slept with the horses. They
[00:16:52] raised during the depression. He only ate meat once a week. And when he went to the first grade, he didn't have shoes on. He didn't know they were poor. They lived in the country. My
[00:17:00] grandfather was a sharecropper and uh he had overalls and no shirt and no shoes and he walked into school and was just like here i am and he noticed other kids with shirts and shoes on and
[00:17:14] it shamed him and he ran out in the front yard and grabbed onto a tree in the front yard and wouldn't let go until his parents came to get him because he was so ashamed and when i heard that
[00:17:23] story it completely explained everything my father wasn't distant because he was trying to be a bad father. My father was trying to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomach. And one of the
[00:17:34] things about my dad, anytime we went out to a restaurant, he always emphasized we could have anything on the menu. And I really believe that my father prided himself in the fact that we could
[00:17:45] eat anything. We could eat meat every single day. And so whatever baggage your parents gave you, can I promise you, somebody gave them baggage. And I say this, and I don't mean this in an arrogant
[00:17:59] way but pretty much you tell me about your parents i can tell you about your grandparents because these things are generational and so you need to give your mom and dad grace that's what i'm saying because you're not the only one that had baggage handed to you they did also
[00:18:13] give even if they're dead it's important that you forgive them and i'm going to lead you in this prayer at the end of this message here in just a minute but let me also talk about inner vows
[00:18:21] iniquities means a tendency to ascend because of the sins of our parents that were deeply entrenched within us because we saw them so often and they were modeled to us but inner vows an inner vow is a self-directed promise resulting from an unpleasant experience or hurt from a
[00:18:38] life situation by a parent or someone else i promised myself something i'm hurting and i promised myself something to comfort myself to let myself know i'm not going to come back here again an example of inner vows i'll never treat my children like that i'll never spank my children
[00:18:54] i'll never make my kids wear hand-me-downs i'll never be poor again i'll never make my kids work like this again no one has ever this is a huge one no one is ever going to hurt me like this again
[00:19:05] i'll never let my husband or wife treat me like that and so we're hurting we're going through a bad situation in life and we're not doing this because we're evil we're doing this because we're trying to comfort ourselves and let ourselves know i don't want to come back here okay
[00:19:20] say hey buddy i'm not coming back here okay that's what they're for the problem is they're unscriptural this is matthew 5. again you've heard that it was said to those of old you shall not
[00:19:30] swear falsely but you shall perform perform your oaths to the lord but i say to you do not swear at all neither by heaven for it is god's throne nor by earth for it is his footstool nor by
[00:19:42] jerusalem for it is the city of the great king nor shall you swear by your head because you cannot make one hair white or black of course that was before all the new technology stuff but let your
[00:19:53] yes be yes and your no no listen for whatever is more than this is from the evil one now that's if you if you're a person that goes around swearing make you making yourself promises or
[00:20:04] swearing to other people jesus said that's evil that's pretty strong language james 4. come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such city spend a year there buy and sell and
[00:20:15] make a profit whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow for what is your life it is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away instead you ought to say if the lord
[00:20:26] wills we shall live and do this or that but now you boast in your arrogance all such boasting is evil therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it to him it is sin in both situations
[00:20:38] here when we're making these confident statements about our future oh you know tomorrow i'm going to to go over here. Well, next week I'm going to go over here. And James said, wait, just a minute
[00:20:46] now. You don't know anything. You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. You need to be saying if the Lord wills. An inner vow is saying this is going to happen for the rest of my life.
[00:20:55] I'm saying right now, this is the way it's going to be. Okay. It's evil. Okay. Well, why is it evil?
[00:21:00] When inner vows are controlling us, Jesus isn't. In any area of your life where you have an inner vow that's active, Jesus is not the Lord of that area. Let me give you an example. You say, I'm
[00:21:12] ever going to be poor again. Guess who isn't the Lord of your finances? You say, no one's ever going to hurt me again. Guess who isn't the Lord of your relationships? See, the highest loyalty
[00:21:23] we have is to ourselves. When we have an inner vow that is operating within our lives, it resists the Lordship of Christ. And so this is why it's evil. It's from the evil one. See, here's what
[00:21:36] the devil wants. The devil wants us to live our lives with a hundred iniquities and a hundred inner vows because literally our lives cannot be blessed. We may be on our way to heaven.
[00:21:48] Our lives cannot be blessed because of all these things that are hidden down there.
[00:21:51] And they all come from our response to sin or pain. Almost all inner vows are made in response to some kind of a pain. So Jesus cannot be Lord in an area where I have an inner vow. Number two
[00:22:04] reason they're evil is they cause us to overreact and be unteachable, unapproachable. Like a drunk man on a horse keeps falling off both sides. Inner vows cause you just to be completely irrational.
[00:22:16] A friend of mine, this is kind of a silly example, but a friend of mine, when he was growing up, his mother wouldn't let him or his siblings have soft drinks in the house. And so one day he had
[00:22:28] some friends over and he said to his mom, he said, mom, I've got friends coming over. When you go to the grocery store, would you get some Cokes and Dr. Peppers and stuff like that so we can have
[00:22:37] soda pop when, when my friends come over and she said, no, I don't allow soft drinks in my house.
[00:22:41] And he got mad. He said, when I grow up, I'm going to have a, I'm going to have a Coke machine in the middle of my living room. And all my kids are going to be able to have Cokes anytime they want
[00:22:49] to. Okay. Well, it pretty much came true when we met them and went over their home for the first time. I have never seen that many soft drinks outside of a grocery store. I mean, and, and the
[00:23:01] entire time you were in his home, he was pouring soft drinks. You'd have your glass and it would be down that much and he'd pour it. I mean, it was just like a mania to him that he had to have
[00:23:12] everybody in his home drinking these kinds of soft drinks. Well, he and his wife were in the grocery store one day and they were going down the soft drink aisle and he starts loading all
[00:23:19] these big liter bottles in there into the shopping cart. And she said, honey, stop. That's enough.
[00:23:26] And he said, don't tell me it's enough. I'll tell you when it's enough like that. He's the nicest guy in the world ordinarily. But when you're under the influence of an inner vow, you're a little
[00:23:34] crazy. You're a little crazy. No one can talk to you. You're unapproachable. Okay. Why? Because you don't want to go back to the pain. You're doing everything you can about the pain. My father-in-law, Karen's dad passed away last year, but he was a very wealthy man. He grew up very
[00:23:52] poor in New Mexico. And so my mother-in-law and my father-in-law lived in a very large home in North Dallas. Let me put it that way. Well, my father-in-law's closet is bigger than most people's living room. So one day I was standing with my father-in-law in his closet and he, I mean, you
[00:24:12] can't imagine, you know, the clothes he had. And he laughed and he said, I guess, I guess I overreacted. And I said, what are you talking about, bud? He said, well, one day he said, my,
[00:24:23] my mother would take chicken feed sacks and make us clothes. And she said, that's, that's, we didn't have any money. And so that's the way we dressed. And he said, one day, my mother made me an orange
[00:24:36] jumpsuit out of a chicken feet sack. And I wore it to school and the kids all made fun of me for my orange jumpsuit. And I said to myself, if I ever have money, I'm going to have all the clothes I
[00:24:49] want. And he laughed and said, I think I overdid it. A little crazy. No one can talk to you. And this is what happens. You think you're the most reasonable person in the world, but when you're
[00:25:01] under the influence of an inner vow, you just overreact. Okay. So here's how to break inner vows. The first is you recognize it. Okay. What did you say? What did you say when you were hurting
[00:25:13] that you didn't go before God? Did you say no one's ever going to hurt you again?
[00:25:19] Did you know that if no one's ever going to hurt you again, it means God can't use you because in life, you're just going to get hurt. You know, you don't want to do dumb things to
[00:25:28] get hurt, but Jesus got hurt loving us. And if we're going to be the hands and feet of Jesus, it means we're going to have to, we're going to take some risk out there. Did you ever say you'd
[00:25:38] never be poor again? Did you ever say a man's never going to do that to me again? A woman's never going to do that to me again? All those kinds of things like that. Have you made statements
[00:25:47] that you realize you made in response to pain? And that's, that's become an inner vow, a vow that you have with yourself that was not submitted to God. The second thing you do with an
[00:25:59] intervow is to repent. So to repent for saying the vow, no, to repent for not taking that pain to Jesus. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says this, and this is an interesting statement. He says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Now I'm going to disagree with Jesus
[00:26:16] for this minute, then I'm going to apologize because Jesus is right. Okay. I know a lot of people who are mourning, who are not comforted. There are people all over the world right now who are mourning and they're not being comforted. Okay. Let me come back to Jesus' statement. And
[00:26:30] here's what I believe Jesus' statement means. Blessed are those who bring their pain to me, I'll heal it. I'll comfort them. Blessed are those who bring their pain to me. The sin of an inner
[00:26:41] vow is I was in pain, but it didn't bring that pain to Jesus. Okay. The next is to forgive.
[00:26:48] We have to forgive the person that did this to us. Why did I make the vow? Typically it's because something was done to me that hurt me. I've got to forgive that person. If I want to be forgiven,
[00:27:00] it. And here's some sayings that I've heard is forgiveness doesn't make them right. It just makes me free. Doesn't make them right. Doesn't mean that what they did was right. It just means I can't be free. The other saying is the poison of unforgiveness damages the vessel it's stored
[00:27:15] in worse than anything you can spit it on. And if you decide to live your life bitter as someone else, it's only going to damage you. It's not going to damage the other person. Forgiveness
[00:27:24] is the most self-loving thing you will ever do. And I promise you this, and during the worship and during, you know, all the ministry up until here, it was about battling and going through difficulty
[00:27:33] and God being with us in those difficult times.
[00:27:36] I know good and well, someone's hurt you deeply.
[00:27:42] That's just a fact.
[00:27:44] I know you've had some deep disappointments in your life.
[00:27:48] And in those moments, we turn to God.
[00:27:51] This is the thing we learn in breaking generational bondages.
[00:27:55] Why do we have generational bondages in our lives?
[00:27:57] Because somebody didn't turn to God.
[00:28:00] We have to turn to God and we have to forgive.
[00:28:02] of we can't keep bitterness perpetuated generationally. And here's one more thing I want to say, iniquities and inner vows. The area where we have an iniquity or inner vow, we have to submit it to Jesus. We have to come to Jesus and say, for example,
[00:28:17] chauvinist, I don't know how to deal with women. I didn't. I went to the Holy Spirit in John 16, Jesus said, when the Holy Spirit comes, he'll lead you into all truth. I went to the Holy
[00:28:27] Spirit and I said, Holy Spirit, I don't know how to deal with women. I have no idea. And the Holy Spirit taught me. He helped me to understand how to deal with Karen as an equal in my life. You
[00:28:36] have to take the affected area of your life where you have an iniquity or an inner vow and you have to take it to Jesus Christ and say, Lord, this is now submitted to you. I've lived my life to this
[00:28:48] point and this has not been submitted to you. But now, Lord, I submit this area of my life to you and I ask you to help me break this generational bondage. So I want to pray with you wherever you
[00:28:59] are okay you may be in one of our campuses and services there you may be online i want to pray with you bow your heads with me if you would and i just want to lead you through this prayer
[00:29:07] lord we just come to you on behalf of our iniquities and we just say to you lord that we repent we recognize there are things in our lives that are generationally perpetuated they're wrong and we may excuse them because this is just the way our family is
[00:29:24] but our number one identity is not in our natural family it's in the family of god We are your children first, Lord.
[00:29:33] And we want to be good representations of your family.
[00:29:37] And Lord, we repent.
[00:29:38] We recognize this iniquity.
[00:29:40] We repent of it.
[00:29:41] We forgive our parents in the name of Jesus.
[00:29:44] Any person who modeled this behavior to us, we forgive them.
[00:29:49] We give them grace.
[00:29:50] We realize that they had baggage from their past also and an evil enemy against them.
[00:29:56] We forgive them even if they're dead.
[00:29:58] We speak blessing over them.
[00:29:59] we make a decision we will not be bitter at them for this time forward and lord we submit this area to you we submit this area of our life to your lordship and to the word of god and we ask
[00:30:13] you to train us to be righteous for the sake of the generations to come lord for the sake of not just ourselves but our children and grandchildren and generations to come we do not want to pass
[00:30:24] this iniquity on to one more generation. And if we have modeled this to our children, we break it in Jesus name. And we just believe that our right example to them right now is going to break this
[00:30:38] iniquity in our family line. We come to you Lord on behalf of inner vows. And there were times in our life when we were frustrated, we were hurting. Sometimes we were hurting very deeply and we made
[00:30:50] promises to ourselves. And we realize now that was wrong. That was sin. And all of the pain that we went through should have been turned toward you. And all of the commitments that we made
[00:31:02] should have been made to you and not to ourselves. We renounce the inner vow. We renounce the inner vow right now, right there, wherever you are. It might just be important for you just to say,
[00:31:13] I renounce this vow. It might also be important for you to say what that vow is. Okay. And I know you may have people sitting around you or whatever. So whatever privacy that you can get,
[00:31:23] and maybe it's later today, it's very important just to say to the Lord, Lord, I said this and it was wrong. And as a result of that, I have become unsubmitted and unteachable.
[00:31:35] And I come to you, Lord, and I renounce it. I repent for making that vow. I forgive every person that was a part of my life that caused me to make that vow. I give them grace. I need
[00:31:49] your grace and I give them grace. And I pray God that you would just forgive them and forgive me.
[00:31:56] And Lord, now I submit this area of my life to you. And Lord, I say to you, I am committed to bringing you my pain from this day forward. When I get into a difficult circumstance, I'm not no
[00:32:06] longer going to begin to make promises to myself. I'm going to turn my pain to you so that you can comfort me when I'm, when I'm grieving. But Lord, I bring my iniquities to you. I bring my inner
[00:32:18] vows to you, Lord. And I declare right now on behalf of every person praying right now, they are free forever. We break every iniquity and every inner vow and the demon spirits that operate through those. We break those now in Jesus name. We declare that from this moment
[00:32:34] forward, we're free from iniquities and inner vows. And we also declare that we are the beginning of righteousness to a thousand generations, that we're the beginning of a new legacy for our children and grandchildren, that not only will we be blessed as a result of what we've done
[00:32:51] in breaking these generational curses through the power of the blood of Jesus, we declare that our legacy will be one of blessing, of success, of health, and of everything godly. And we pray that, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you guys. Amen. Thank you so much,

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:33:11] Pastor Jimmy, for sharing that incredible message with us. I want to do one more thing. We're about go into communion kim and i want to lead us together as a church family through communion but before we do that i want to give every individual whether you're joining us online
[00:33:24] or you're in one of our services an opportunity to make jesus the lord of your life you know one of the things that i think is just what responsible people do is they recognize that i've got to do
[00:33:35] something different for the generations to come and i just have a sense of whether you're a new parent or maybe get to be about to be a new grandparent, you recognize that you need to make
[00:33:45] a decision in your life to follow Jesus because that's the first step in beginning to break off these iniquities. And so I just want to encourage you, it's the easiest thing. Apostle Paul says, if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we believe in our heart that God raised him
[00:33:59] from the dead, in that instant we receive Jesus. In that instant we are saved. In that instant we are transformed. We're born again. We can perceive God's kingdom realm. And so I want to encourage
[00:34:10] you, if that's you, just say that prayer today. It's so simple. Just say, Jesus, I give you my life. I make you the Lord of my life. I receive all that you have done for me. And if you've done
[00:34:20] that, would you do us one more favor? Would you text the word decision to 797979? We just want to follow up. We actually want to give you a gift of a book that Pastor Jimmy Evans has written to
[00:34:29] to help you take that next step in following him and in following God and becoming everything that God has wanted you to be. So if you would just text decision to seven, nine, seven, nine, seven,
[00:34:39] nine. All right. If you're at home, you can gather around your elements. If you're in one of our services, you can go ahead and peel back that first layer there and get out that wafer. And

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:34:47] let's take communion together. We are about to take communion. The Lord's we're at the Lord's table. That means that we're at our father's table of blessing. So this is a very special time to get to receive this word that was just given to us, that we recognize we belong here. And I
[00:35:07] want to speak that to you. You belong at the father's table. Jesus made a way when he was at the Passover meal with his apostles. The Bible tells us that Jesus took the bread. He said,
[00:35:21] thanks to God and he broke it. So if you will, will you take that bread that you have there and will you break it? And then remember that Jesus' body was broken so that you can be united
[00:35:35] to his body and you can be a part of the family of God. So Ephesians tells us, it says, so you are not foreigners or guests. That means you are not people without rights, but rather you belong
[00:35:54] here. You have citizenship. You are the children of the city of the holy ones with all the rights as family members of the household of God. So remember when you're taking this bread, it's easy to remember Jesus with affection because he's the one who allows you to belong
[00:36:19] to his family of blessings. So right now, right there where you are, will you just say, thank you, Jesus, for blessing me so that I can be part of your family. Thank you that I am blessed.
[00:36:37] now take the bread now go ahead and take the juice or peel back that next layer

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:36:49] and as we take this and we look at the color of this juice that reminds us of the blood of Jesus I'm reminded that when we share this meal together we are taking something that is symbolic
[00:37:03] of the DNA that was poured out literally on the ground for us the DNA that is the DNA of God the DNA of heaven, the DNA of Jesus himself and the DNA that is transformative, that is powerful
[00:37:17] and that can shift anything. So as we take this today, I want us to think about how we are taking in Jesus himself and how his DNA transforms us. It changes us. It changes our thinking. It strengthens our bodies. It transforms who we are. So father, we lift the
[00:37:38] cup the juice that represents the blood of jesus and we receive it this morning and we ask to be transformed that we would be more like jesus more like him in the way we think more like him in the
[00:37:50] way we believe more like him in the faith that we walk in more like him in the hope that we have more like him in relationship with you god grow us transform us shift us to be like jesus in jesus
[00:38:04] name we take the cup amen amen it is so great to be with you this morning kim's going to pray a blessing over all of us today i do want to make just a quick kind of announcement and let everybody
[00:38:21] know even though that we're in the coveted season and we are having to change some things please know that our community life is thriving if you're looking for connection in a small group our online
[00:38:31] small groups are more vibrant than they have ever been we have an incredible online community there is a place where you can connect quite easily from your office, from the comfort of your own home or
[00:38:42] from the coffee shop. There's a way to connect. So I just want to encourage you and go online to tfc.org. You can find our groups, call your campus office, and we'll help you get connected. We've got
[00:38:52] a great place for you to join in community. Baby, you want to pray a blessing? Yes. May the Lord

[00:38:57] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:38:57] bless you. May the Lord protect you. May the Lord smile on you and may you know how significant you are to him. May the Lord be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and open all kinds
[00:39:14] of doors of opportunity for you. And may he give you his peace. God bless you. Amen. Amen. We love

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:39:22] you guys. Have a great week.