Negative family patterns can be awful things. Take, for example, 2 Samuel 13. It’s an incredibly heavy chapter, where we see King David’s serious problem with lust play out again in his son Amnon’s life. With the help of another family member named Jonadab, Amonon tricks his sister Tamar and rapes her. Similarly, selfish deceit trickles down the generations in Abraham’s family. In Genesis 20 Abraham lies about his wife, saying that she is his sister to protect himself. In Genesis 26 Abraham’s son Isaac does exactly the same thing. In both instances, those around them warn them how disastrous this could be if another man chose to pursue these married women. It’s not only in the Bible that deep-seated problems pass down from parents to children. The same cycles of negative behaviours happen in families all around the world, and can often seem impossible to break free from. In human strength they often can be, but 2 Corinthians 10:4 reminds us that ‘the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds’ (NIV). God is always ready to share His power to break negative patterns, and to give us complete freedom from anything that could pull us away from Him. Just take a look at Gideon. His father, and the society around him, had strayed from God. It would have been so easy for Gideon to do the same, but God revealed Himself, and Gideon destroyed his father’s idol altar, choosing to build a ‘proper kind of altar to the Lord’ (Judges 6:26 NIV), instead. God gave Gideon the power to change his legacy, and He gives the same power to you, today.

What Now?

Book in a time to talk to a trusted Christian friend. If there’s a particular habit or personality trait that you’d like God to remove from you, talk it through with that person, and ask them to pray with you.