LIVING FAITH

LIVING FAITH

I don’t wake up anymore dreading the day ahead. It’s because I studied familiar spirits in the Bible and got rid of the one that was bringing around the tremendous dread every morning. I’ve been delivered from many other generational curses passed down in the DNA of my parents, grandparents, and ancestors. Some generational curses we experience come from so far back, we can’t possibly recognize their origin. But we can get clues to our personal spiritual ancestral history from studying the Bible. God will use His written Word, and then add personal revelations to us when we desire them and or need them.

 

Any person can study up on generational curses and can even recognize them in themselves and others. But studying isn’t a requirement for deliverance. Faith is.

 

Hebrews 11:1 tells us: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The Amplified puts it this way: “Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].”

 

Faith believes a thing before it’s seen in our reality. God wants us to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7).

 

It’s in my nature to work. Even when I’m off for the weekend, I end up working in my yard. But faith is a different type of work. Faith is a yielding work, where we just believe God. The only way we even are able to claim that we have faith is because God gave it to us. It’s a spirit thing that is attached directly to Jesus’ spirit and the spirit of God Himself. We believe that what He’s said in His written Word or said to us by revelation, is true. It’s an intimate thing, personal, and based on is grace to us.

 

Jesus healed iniquities (generational curses) that the people did not know about: the man born blind, the man from the Gadarenes, the man with the withered hand. The Gospels are filled with the wonderful healings and deliverances God did through Jesus Christ. One that especially hits my heart is recorded in Luke 13:11:

 

“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.”

 

If we were reading in the original language, we would know that this infirmity could have been in her body and in her mind. The infirmity was an inborn weakness or frailty of the body and soul. It was a lack of strength or even capacity to understand a thing, the inability to restrain corrupt desires, to bear up under trouble or trials, or ever do great things. She just didn’t have it in her. We all know people like that. In this woman’s case, her inborn frailty even affected her posture, and she was bent over under the overall strain of life itself.

 

“And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ‘Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’ And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God” (Luke 13:12-13).

 

The woman knew this was from God and she honored and celebrated Him for healing her. Life could no longer push her down. Jesus gifted her with the understanding and the strength to do great things and overcome corrupt desires and bear up under trials, things she could never do before.

 

We all have things that bother us about ourselves, but Jesus is here to heal us of all that. As He said to the man whose son was suicidal: “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).

 

Got a problem? Jesus has the answer. Let’s respond like the man who had the suicidal son: “And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe” (Mark 9:24). And “When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, ‘Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him” (v. 25).

 

The spirit was causing the child to jump into fires and caused the boy to try to drown himself. So why didn’t Jesus cast out a suicide spirit? Because Jesus had to get right to the source. Instead of casting out a suicide spirit, He went straight to the spirit causing the son to be deaf and dumb.  It was a “foul” spirit, the definition is “unclean in thought and life.” Had Jesus cast out only a suicide spirit, the child would have been stalked by more suicide spirits later. Jesus got to the real problem of an unclean mind and lifestyle, a big foul spirit which resulted in him not being able to speak or hear.

 

“And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose” (Mark 9:25-27).

 

We have the faith in us to believe like the father for big deliverance, and we can be lifted up like the boy.  We have the kind of faith like the woman in Luke 13. She was lifted up—she was straightened up and set free, relieved from all her weaknesses. Faith makes us strong. And faith connects us to God.

 

Check out the Gospels this week and take a look at Hebrews 11 for great and small leaps of faith. :-)

 

Love, Carolyn

 

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