I sat in my counselor's office not too long ago and admitted to her that I felt hopeless. As I imagined a future for myself as a wife and mom, I saw nothing but a path of continual sin and dysfunction. And yet I wanted so much more. I want more for my daughters, and I want more for myself too – freedom, deliverance, and holiness. However, family sins and my own past relentlessly remind me of where I've come from and what I've been.
I told my counselor I felt angry and defeated by my family sins (or generational sin), and now I'm passing all of that on to my daughters without even meaning to. The cycle of madness continues with no intent.
I'm at an age, in my early 40's, where I'm able to connect the dots between who I am and where I came from. My sins are the same ones I remember seeing in my mom. My voice towards my girls is often the same as hers too. How does this happen? Despite our best efforts to change and not repeat the past, we do. It seems inevitable, and it leaves me feeling hopeless.
My homework after that counseling session was to go home and refocus the way I look at my life. She told me to not view my life as hopeless and that this is the end of the road, but to see that this is the middle and that God still has a story to tell through the end. What if my family sin and my past is God's gift to me? This is my hope.
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I used to resent being born into a family with so much baggage and how much it affected me. Plenty of people told me that every family has baggage, but I refused to believe them. "Not like mine," I thought. Somewhere along the way, I developed the belief that if I had come from a stellar family background, then I wouldn't have as many problems. I wanted to blame my family sin for my personal sin. This made it easy to throw up my hands in defeat that this is who I am and there's nothing I can do about it. But God’s Word said something different.
"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten," Joel 2:25.
That Scripture has always been an anchor verse for me – one that I held onto with hope. "Lord, please restore the years the locusts have eaten," I'd cry out to God.
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That Scripture has always been an anchor verse for me – one that I held onto with hope. "Lord, please restore the years the locusts have eaten," I'd cry out to God.
Recently, I read the second half of that verse, which I never paid attention to before: "the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you." God sent the catastrophe to Israel. The locust invasion was God's judgment to get their attention and to redeem them.
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This got me thinking: what if this is the same in my family? What if the catastrophes are a blessing? What if they're there to show God's glory? What if I was placed in my family on purpose to co-labor with God to bring about His redemptive purposes?
We cannot change our past family sins. God, however, is in complete control. And His will is to use them to change the narrative of our family's story through His redemptive power. Our past does not have to be in vain. It can be used for glorious restoration in a way that no other way would have been possible.
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In Joel, God sent the catastrophe, but He also sent the restoration. In Joel 6:24 we read, "The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil." Then in verse 25, He says, "I will restore." God never allows hardship without a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13).
What keeps us stuck is refusing to believe there is a way out. After feeling hopeless because we realize we're not in control, we give up and adopt the attitude, "Well, this is just the way I am." We think that our lives are too far gone because of the generational sin we have inherited. But this is where we can turn the corner if we believe in God's redemptive power and allow Him to work.
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God sent Jesus through a scandalous family lineage. If you've never studied Jesus' family line, do so and see how messed up it truly was. I don't think this was an accident. I think it was to show us that God is a God of redemption. He can redeem our family just like He did Jesus'. God sent Jesus to redeem us. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose," (Romans 8:28). Without the redemptive blood of Jesus, all our pain is in vain.
But redemption does not always mean to make something perfect at the present time. Redemption is an ongoing process of making the present useful for God's future glory. So maybe the family sin never goes away. Or maybe it takes years to come out of the cycle of sin. God uses the process to redeem us. He uses the whole story to bring about His purposes. This is why we must not give up. We must look at our life as a cumulative story with a great ending of reconciliation, wholeness, and restoration.
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We move forward by changing our perspective. We begin to see ourselves as God sees us. And we see our lives as a story that God is using to bring ourselves and others to Him. This is where we believe Psalm 16:5-6, "Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Our perspective changes from one of resentment to one of gratefulness. Gratefulness for the opportunity to be used by God. We don't have to continue walking the trail of our family sin. We can make a new path, but it requires relying on God's strength within us.
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Our example of this is Gideon in Judges 6. Because of Israel's disobedience, God gave Israel into the hands of the Midianites (Judges 6:1). Now we know that, even though each generation of Israelites was still fully responsible for their actions, part of their sins and continual disobedience was because of generational sin they inherited or were taught by their ancestors. But God did not abandon Israel after giving them into the hands of Midianites, as if they were hopeless. Instead, He sought to save His people, and He used Gideon to do this.
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When God called Gideon, he was at his lowest point. He was hiding from the Midianites in a winepress as he beat out wheat (Judges 6:11). He was literally in a pit of sorts. But God sent an angel to talk to Gideon, and when the angel spoke, he didn't mention Gideon's fear or the pit he was standing in. Instead, he called him a "mighty man of valor" (Judges 6:12). Then, after the Lord told Gideon to go to the Midianites and save Israel, Gideon responds in a way that we often respond. He says, "Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house" (Judges 6:15). God wanted to use Gideon's weak family and weak self to redeem the Israelites, and that's exactly what He did.
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We all have a choice. We can choose to be victims of our family sins and our pasts or we can see ourselves how God sees us – as people with a strength that comes from Him. Our weaknesses then become our greatest weapons. "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
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God wants to use our stories to bring about His purposes. I don't know about you, but this gives me great enthusiasm to not allow my past to be in vain, but to use it to save souls. It's as if I'm on a mission to see how I can co-labor with God to make a difference in His kingdom.
Friend, God allowed your past so that He can use it in your future. Don't be defined by it. Join Him in the process. "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland" (Isaiah 43:19).
Brenda Rodgers considers herself a “recovering single” after years as a single woman chasing after marriage instead of chasing after Jesus. Now her passion is to mentor young women to live purposefully and grow in their relationship with God and others. Brenda has been married for five years to a heart transplant hero and is the mom of a toddler girl miracle. She is also the author of the eBook Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. You can also read more on Brenda’s blog, www.TripleBraidedLife.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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