Generational Curse

I ran across a startling news report about a high school in Memphis that has 90 girls that are either currently pregnant or have had a baby since the school year began. Stories like that absolutely devastate me. The teen pregnancy epidemic is one of those issues that will probably never go away, at least not in our life time. Someone I know recently had a baby shower for her pregnant teenage daughter and I had the same gut feeling that I had when it came to my mom wanting to throw a baby shower for my pregnant 17 year old self. Why are we celebrating a teenager having a baby? Yes babies are blessings from God and no we shouldn't shame the pregnant girls either, but something about celebrating teen pregnancy just isn't right.

When thinking about the 90 new or soon to be moms in Memphis, the teenager coming off the high of her baby shower, and my own experience as a teen mom, the idea of generational curses came to mind. Numbers 14:18 says "The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." This scripture doesn't mean that children will forever be paying the price for crap their parents did. However it does mean that sins that our parents commit can have damaging affects on their children and create a cycle of those same sins being committed from one generation to the next.

Teen pregnancy is a generational curse. A huge percentage of babies born to teen moms are being raised by mothers that were teen moms themselves. My mother was a single mother at 18 and I had my son at 17. Am I blaming my mother from me getting pregnant? Not at all because trust me, I knew what I was doing when I made the conscious decision to have sex. But did my mother do her part to break the generational curse of pre-marital sex and teen pregnancy in her children? Absolutely not. I wasn't told how precious and worthy I am to God and that I should honor Him by remaining pure until I was married. I didn't have my worth validated and reaffirmed by a loving and devoted Earthly father. Despite all the good grades, amazing friends and promising academic future, I still had a longing to be loved because I didn't know the love of an Earthly father or my Heavenly Father.

Generations are punished for the sins of the father when parents don't make the effort to break those generational curses. Parents are the gatekeepers and protectors of their children. We are responsible for their well being which means physical, mental and spiritual. Most people get the physical and mental down but often leave the spiritual up to them to handle in their adult age. Parents have to be diligent about identifying those generational curses and making the decision to break off those spirits and not allowing them to become to burdens of their children.

If you take a look at any family, you can see the sins and spirits that have been passed down from generation to generations. Insecure parents pass down the curse of insecurity to their children because they are not taught confidence and self worth. Abusive parents pass down the curse of being an abuser or being abused to their children. All these issues and spirits can be broken if someone takes a stand and seek God for healing and redemption. No spirit, curse, sin, or issue of brokenness is too great for God to tackle. Every parent wants their child to have a better life than they did. Maybe it's time to really be intentional about ensuring our children do have the full life that they deserve.