What does a curse mean and how are men cursed? In the New Testament, there are only two sources of curses. Those bound to the law and by the law, without freedom and conversion of the shed Blood that gloriously delivers, are under a curse. Apostle Paul wrote to the church of Galatia and warned them of this. “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” (Galatians 3:10-13) External righteousness and holiness without a transformed heart is a curse. I have known many people that lived very narrow lives by Biblical standards but were hard-faced and cold because of this curse.

The only other curse in the New Testament is simply the result of sin. Every man or woman living in sin is cursed. Sin is like a cancer or leprosy that constantly devours one’s life and drags him or her deeper and deeper into the mire. Sin makes its victim a captive, quickly extending its powers to every aspect of life. The majority of sicknesses are nothing but the curse of sin acting out its evil in the body and in the flesh. All sicknesses relate to original sin and, to some degree, affect all of us. The extent that sickness affects us is determined by our bondage to or freedom from sin. Jesus spoke to a soul He healed and said, “…sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” (St.John 5:14b) There is a horrible curse that is attached to all sin. You must learn that you yield yourself to sin at your own risk.

The only curse that God pronounced on anyone in the First Testament was because of sin. God spoke to Cain because Cain had killed his brother Abel. “And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” (Genesis 4:9-12) This fourth chapter of Genesis reveals how sin became a stronghold in Cain’s family, and they descended deeper and deeper into vileness. Cain’s great-grandson in the fourth generation named Lamech, took to himself two wives. Listen to his own lament because of sin. “And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” (Genesis 4:23-24) Was his family cursed and unable to escape that curse, or were they simply bound by the strongholds of sin because they continued under Cain’s influence? The answer must be the latter. They were cursed because of sin in their own lives.

The Biblical story of Balaam the prophet and Balak the King of the Moabites is important to this study. The king hired the prophet to curse Israel because he and his people were afraid of them. The king said, “Come now therefore, I pray thee, curse me this people; for they are too mighty for me: peradventure I shall prevail, that we may smite them, and that I may drive them out of the land: for I wot that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.” (Numbers 22:6) The prophet went forth to curse Israel but God spoke and Balaam told the king, “…Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel. How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied?” (Numbers 23:7-8) Only sin against God and His truths can curse a living soul.

Let’s try to understand family genes. Every living soul has the Adamic nature. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5) “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) The weakened flesh of every individual has been affected by sin. Every one of us in different ways has the tendency to be affected by whatever is in the air of our environment. Are there specific weaknesses that appear in certain families because of eating habits or environmental differences? The answer would have to be yes. Can a mother or father pass on disease genes that are dormant in one of them? Probably yes. We pass our interests on to our children; we pass our habits on to our children; we pass our love of certain sins to our children; and on and on this parental influence affects our offspring. These lifestyle issues carry certain vulnerabilities to diseases. A diet of sweets can affect family members with diabetes. This is true of different diet issues, but the fear of what we may reap from our family genes is probably more dangerous than the genes themselves.

The real issue is strongholds. Strongholds are mental and spiritual and affect the way we think. The Bible says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…” (Proverbs 23:7) The greatest effect from our families is the fact that family life, experiences and relationships teach us how to think and what to think. This is the whole foundation of strongholds. Changing the way someone thinks is the greatest battle of Christianity. We win or lose every soul we encounter by whether or not we affect their thinking.

Yet, strongholds are deeper than just how we think and what we think. The mind is a deep reservoir that goes down to the level of our soul. If all we had to do was to affect thinking on the mental level, it would be easier. It is the real you, your person and your developed personality, that is at the core of how you think. Satan has been successful in affecting our soul at this deep level. The Bible calls this bondage of human life “strongholds” because pulling them down is like pulling down great walls of resistance. The word “strongholds” used by Paul means a “castle”, a “fortification”, something that holds “safely”. Look at this passage by the Apostle Paul. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5) Our greatest battle in the spiritual is the pulling down of these “strongholds.” Family life is the foundation of all learning. Satan has succeeded in filling our homes with television programs, books and magazines, internet, etc. All of these sources are loaded with satanic filth. Its inescapable, and the only answer is a revival of truth in our homes. The strongholds developed in homes have America under Satan’s lock and key.

Let’s Understand What the Bible Offers as an Answer
The problem is not “family curses”or “family genes”, but “family strongholds.” A “father and a mother”, or “a father” or “a mother” can win the battle for their family. It is God’s plan for this battle to be won by the “father and mother” together. Divorce in America has devastated a multitude of families. Divorce alone has destroyed and established more strongholds in lives than any one additional sin. It is the horror of our American culture. To a multitude of you, let me promise that either a mother or a father can save your family and take them to heaven with you. The solution I’m going to share can be the experience of the parents together or, when that is impossible, the one parent. God never judges the innocent with the guilty. Men do, but God does not.

It is at this level that the Son of God made one of His grandest statements. He knew that the families of the world were bound in the strongholds of sin, and He knew that families that were freed were going to be often rejected. Every revival has divided large numbers of people between the redeemed and the bound. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:34-37) The Lord Jesus knew that when families or individuals were supernaturally converted, they would be delivered from the strongholds within that family at the same moment. Those still bound cannot understand the transformation. If the new believer is wise, some of those families or individuals can be won to Christ. Sometime the division is so great that His literal warning will be the immediate result. Wait on the Lord and His truth will be exalted. This truth proves that genuine New Testament conversion breaks every stronghold of your background and sets you free on a new course.

God’s Original Covenant Unannulled
Let’s go back to Exodus and look at the Father’s statement about family influence and the power of sin in the family lifestyle. This is God’s original covenant with man, and no covenant since then obliterates the Ten Commandments and their blessings in obedience or bondage in disobedience. God spoke and His words cannot be annulled. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:3-6) Truth obeyed becomes a power for blessings and truth disobeyed becomes the bondages or strongholds that hold families in destruction. But God has promised that no one has to remain under the bondage of sin.

New Testament Affirmation of Exodus Twenty
Apostle Paul, led by the Holy Ghost, knew that future generations that took lightly the Word of God would find a way to argue against the original truth spoken by God Himself. I’m delighted he included in his words support and instructions for the families in the New Testament that touches this same truth. He spoke these words to the church at Corinth. “And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?” (1 Corinthians 7:13-16) This passage of truth shows clearly the “strongholds” of sin that affect the families of the unconverted. Any father or mother that refuses to surrender to Jesus Christ imparts uncleanness to the children that become strongholds in their lives. At the same time, any parent that is sanctified by the cleansing Blood of Jesus Christ also sanctifies their little ones until they are old enough to become personally responsible. Even then, their minds will be unfettered by strongholds, and will be tender for spiritual truth.

Let’s look at the plain things that the Spirit has spoken. “…the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your children unclean but now are they holy.” The power of God’s holiness in a real saint of God is incredible. The unsaved partner in this marriage is rendered incapable of defiling the children because of the powers of righteousness in the godly partner. I have watched the opposite so often that this truth seems to be too much. But that is impossible because God said it. A little investigation will reveal a multitude of stories where God did exactly what this Scripture promises. He will do it for you if you have the tenacity to totally surrender and totally obey, and do it tenderly before God and your husband or wife.

The word “unclean” that Paul, by the Spirit, used means “under demonic influence.” The clear implication is that a Godless man or woman automatically extends his or her lifestyle of disobedience and a tendency to the devil into the minds and lives of his or her children. These influences are not curses that the children are under, but strongholds that control their thinking. These “strongholds” will affect how they relate to the Gospel. They will also affect the kinds of bondages that develop in their lives. Many children’s physical health will be subject to a “spirit of destruction” because of these strongholds. All kinds of habits - drug dependency, sexual sins, etc. - will follow the lives of these offspring because the lives of the mother and father will be repeated in their children.

But the Spirit said that the sanctified and godly mother or father, and certainly both together when possible, will raise children that are “holy.” If your children are unholy, something in your life or devotion made your children unclean. Could I name some of the things that I know have defiled the children in the homes of families I have pastored?

• A blaring television spewing filth.
• Mother and father fussing and arguing.
• A dominant mother that rules the husband and the home.
• A hard, strict, dictatorial father.
• A nagging father or mother.
• Favoritism to individual siblings.
• Unfaithfulness to God’s house.
• Defiling the Lord’s Day for personal pleasure.
• No family altar where the Spirit can work.
• The absence of the Living Word of God in family life.
• Overtime – fathers or mothers making excessive money.
• Homes that are a bore to the children.
• No solid Biblical discipline.
• An unstructured home where meals, etc., are slipshod.
• A home without tender and powerful intercessory prayer.
• Children That Are Full Of Christ

Nothing on the earth is more beautiful than children and young people full of devotion and godly in lifestyle. The devil trembles every time he sees a godly young life. Phillip the evangelist had three daughters that “prophesied.”Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and reminded him that his faith was first evident in his mother and grandmother. “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.” (2 Timothy 1:5-6) The happiness of the elder saints will be the godly character and surrender of their children and grandchildren. If we touch the world and do not touch our family, we are a failure in God’s sight; and we should be a failure in our own view.

Do Something About It
You will never change the circumstances of your family until you admit the truth accept responsibility. There is no stronghold in your household that God cannot alter by your devotion in intercessory prayer. Repentance is the first step. Your kids are going to hell because you failed. Let the pain of it break your soul; repent and surrender and ask God to make you a powerhouse of prayer for your family. Remember those great words of Paul quoted in this article. “Pulling down strongholds…casting down imaginations…bringing into captivity every thought… And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.” (2 Corinthians 10:4-6)

Do not wait. It may be too late tomorrow!