King David’s Heart After the Lord
There have been a number of times in my life when the Lord God has shown me I had been living under a generational curse. More recently He showed me, that many generational curses are not simply due to the actions of others, but that they are often spoken over households as well. Many curses He told me are gender specific; sometimes following the male family line, not always the female – according to the way in which they are spoken.
Because of these things, many people are often unable to progress in the things of the Lord until they are properly dealt with. All of these areas need to be revealed to us by His Holy Spirit, and then dealt with by appropriating the blood of Jesus Christ on our behalf. There is most often a combination of our own sin that needs to be confessed, as well as the generational things of the past.
When confronted by his own sin, King David said:
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight— That You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge”.
Psalm 51:1-4
Whilst King David took full responsibility for his own sin before the Lord and was genuinely repentant; he also acknowledged that there was a generational component to his sin as well. King David said, he was ‘brought forth’ in iniquity and that in sin his mother had conceived him. This would imply that there was some form of generational iniquity that had attached itself to David at the time of either his conception or his birth.
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me”.
Psalm 51:5
I believe that David had a knowledge of how generational iniquity worked and that because he believed God desired truth ‘in the inward parts,’ that God would give him wisdom in the ‘hidden parts’ where this iniquity dwelt.
“Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me”.
Psalm 51:6-11
David said, “Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me” because he did not want the Holy Spirit to depart from his life the way it had with Saul. When we do not submit to the way of the Lord, God may choose to withdraw His hand by removing His anointing.
David’s desire was to return to the way of the Lord. As the result of God’s wisdom in the areas of his life where there had been generational sin, David’s desire, like mine, was to be cleansed from all this; for His joy to return; to be upheld by the hand of the Lord; to teach transgressors His ways, that sinners would be converted to the Lord.
“Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You”.
Psalm 51:12 & 13
The Enemy’s Great Lie of Rejection
There is a great lie of rejection the enemy brings; that “what I’ve done is not enough to make amends.” But Christ’s blood is sufficient for all. The writer of the book of Hebrews, in Chapter 10 explains, that the law of God was only a shadow of things to come ~ that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away our sin. But Jesus said, He came to take away the first covenant, that He may establish the second. This is the new covenant in His blood. (See 1 Corinthians 11:25).
“Then He (Jesus) said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man (again speaking of Jesus), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.”
Hebrews 10: 10-12
I believe that David knew his heart of contrition before the Lord was an aroma sweeter to God than any sacrifice that he could have given Him.
“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart — these, O God, You will not despise.”
Psalm 51:16 & 17
- For love covers a multitude of sins — but in Christ they are taken away.
The Obedience of Gideon
In the book of Judges in the Bible, is the true story of a man named Gideon. Gideon was an Israelite, the son of Joash the Abiezrite. At the time of Gideon, Israel had been delivered into the hands of the Midianites and the hand of Midian continued to prevail against them.
“Because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made for themselves the dens, the caves, and the strongholds which are in the mountains. So it was, whenever Israel had sown, Midianites would come up; also Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. Then they would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, coming in as numerous as locusts; both they and their camels were without number; and they would enter the land to destroy it. So Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.”
Judges 6:2-6
Just the same as the Midianites who were troubling the people of Israel by destroying their produce – when a generational curse is operating against us in any area of our lives, the enemy will try to frustrate the blessings of God by coming to take them away. But once these generational curses have been broken in the name of Jesus Christ, we are then free to go on and enjoy these same blessings for the rest of our lives! Hallelujah!
When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord sent a prophet to tell them not to fear the gods of the Amorites. But they had not obeyed His voice. An angel of the Lord then appeared to Gideon saying,
“The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour!”
Judges 6:12
Although Gideon considered his clan at that time to be the weakest in Mannaseh and he himself to be the least in his father’s household, the angel of the Lord told Gideon that he was sending him to save Israel from the hand of the Midianites and that together they would defeat them ‘as one man.’
“And the Lord said to him, ‘Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.’”
Judges 6:16
Gideon was a man who sought the purposes of God, that life would come as a result. But Gideon was not a ‘one-man band’ who could defeat the Midianites on his own. Just the same as we cannot proceed in the things of the Lord until we have dealt with the things of the past, so too, there were things in Gideon’s life that he needed to address before he could move on.
Gideon Dealt With the Past
Before Gideon began the task of defeating the Midianites, the Lord gave him some very specific instructions.
“Now it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, ‘Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image (Asherah) that is beside it; and build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement, and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down.’”
Judges 6:25 & 26
What the Lord had asked Gideon to do at this crucial time was very significant. Before the Lord could use Gideon to save Israel from the hand of the Midianites, he first had to cut off the generational things of his past. In the tearing down of his father’s altar to Baal and the sacrificing of his father’s bull of seven years on an altar before the Lord (it was for seven years they had been under the hand of Midian), Gideon was putting an end to the wrong things of the past generations and the curses that had held them bound.
So, Gideon did all that the Lord commanded him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city, he carried out this task by night. What Gideon did was no small task and could very well have cost him his life, had the Lord not protected him. For when the men of the city awoke and found out what Gideon had done, they wanted to kill him. But his father Joash intervened by saying:
“Would you plead for Baal? Would you save him? Let the one who would plead for him be put to death by morning! If he is a god, let him plead for himself, because his altar has been torn down! Therefore on that day he called him (Gideon) Jerubbaal, saying, ‘Let Baal plead against him, because he has torn down his altar.’”
Judges 6: 31 & 32
Just the same as the Lord God did for Gideon, the Lord God will do for us. As we begin to confront and cut off the generational things of our past, He will protect us from the judgments and ‘death sentences’ of others. The spirit of Baal will never succeed against the blood of Jesus Christ shed on our behalf.
Have Faith Like a Little Child
In order to obey Christ, we must first have faith in His word. In the Gospels, Jesus tells us we must have faith like a little child in order to inherit the Kingdom of God.
“But Jesus called them to Him and said, ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.’”
Luke 18:16 & 17
- The faith of a little child is such that he or she comes to the father when they are called.
Similarly, Jesus tells us that even if we only have faith as small as a mustard seed; when we sow that small seed of faith, He will cause it to grow.
“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.’”
Matthew 13:31-33
The difficulty for many in the generations who follow after the start of a curse, is that they follow the same pattern of living, so that the word of the Lord does not come to pass in their lives as it should. And though the Apostle Paul tells us, that that which is past is past……
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:23 & 24
……. many of us have difficulty moving on in the things of the Lord because there are generational curses blocking us. It is only in gaining understanding from the Holy Spirit about these areas, that He is able to help us remove them. Before the Lord Jesus ascended again into heaven He spoke of the Holy Spirit, Whom, He said, the Father would send to help us.
“These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
John 14: 25-27
The word ‘helper’ in these verses is translated ‘paraklētos’ in the Greek, meaning ‘an intercessor, consoler: —advocate, or comforter’
(Strong’s Concordance).
- When we reach out in faith to Christ, the fortitude of Christ will be our strength!
A Personal Encounter with Christ
When Jesus entered and passed through Jericho, a man named Zacchaeus was eager to see Him. Being of short stature Zacchaeus could not see through the crowd, so he ran on ahead and climbed into a sycamore tree, as Jesus was going to pass that way.
- Zacchaeus expected to see Jesus from afar, but what Zacchaeus ended up receiving was a personal encounter with the living Jesus Christ!
“And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house’. So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, ‘He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner’. Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold’. And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.’”
Luke 19:5-10
- Zacchaeus hoped for an encounter of one sort, but what he received from God was an encounter that forever changed his life.
When we experience a personal encounter with the living Lord Jesus Christ, we are so touched by the power of God that it is impossible for us to remain the same.
If you have never had a life-changing personal encounter with the living Lord Jesus Christ in a certain area of your life, or you would like to receive more of the same, one of the first steps we can make is to ask Him. If you would like to make that first step toward Him today, please pray the following prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, in certain areas of my life I need to receive a personal encounter with You (name the areas in your life where you most need to encounter His love and His resurrection power). It is in these areas of my life that I truly need and desire to experience Your unconditional love and Your life transforming power. I invite You, Lord Jesus, to come and meet with me in the same unexpected way that you met with Zacchaeus. As you did with Zacchaeus, I ask You to come and surpass all my expectations by giving me a living encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray also, that when there are others who are needing support in the things of the Lord, that You would lay these people on my heart. Help me to recognize that You show me certain things, so that I can ascend to the throne of the Lord on another’s behalf, to intercede for the needs that You show me. I ask all these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
