Healing Our Family Tree

by Linda Strickland
Fall 2014

Before joining the staff of Christian Healing Ministries I attended the Schools of Healing Prayer^® as a student. My husband and I were new to Jacksonville, and we wanted to learn about starting a healing ministry in the church he had been called to help lead. Although I grew up in the church and felt comfortable with most of the teachings of CHM, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of generational healing. I was certainly aware of family predispositions for sicknesses and even emotional disorders, as this particular bit of information was reinforced every time I visited a physician’s office and filled out their paperwork. I also knew that just as blessings travel down family lines, so do predispositions to sin and negative behaviors. What I did not understand and was skeptical about, was that destructive influences and predispositions to these things could actually be broken through prayer.

I will never forget filling out a Family Tree (a tool used to diagram family history) for the first time. I felt overwhelmed as the irrefutable patterns of disease, emotional issues and negative behaviors emerged. Motivated by the strong desire to protect my son and his future children from inheriting these family patterns, I prayed a silent prayer and asked the Holy Spirit to heal what I knew about, and to reveal anything hidden in my family history.

If you have ever attended one of CHM’s schools you know that we use small groups to practice healing prayer. During these practicum sessions someone in the group is chosen to be the prayer recipient and the rest of the group prays according to the topic taught in the classroom that day. Much to my dismay, on the day we learned about generational healing, I was chosen to be the prayer recipient. Although I still felt uncomfortable with the whole idea, I decided to keep my doubts to myself, as everyone else in my group seemed to fully embrace the concept. My thought was, "I will just go along, and this will be over soon."

Not long after the group began to pray for me, someone discerned that there was a demonic influence in my family history that was "seducing" me. I cannot adequately express how offended I felt. My family tree may not be the prettiest one in the forest, but we have pastors and missionaries in my family for crying out loud! There was no way there could be devils and demons as well!

Deciding that my classmate was probably just overzealous in wanting to practice her spiritual gifts, I dismissed her words and agreed to continue. As the group began to pray again, some old suppressed memories immediately flooded my mind. I was eight years old and riding in the backseat of my Aunt Margaret’s car. We were driving down a street lined with storefront windows that displayed all shapes and sizes of crystals. In front of these shops were several women sitting at small tables holding cards. They wore dark makeup, large earrings and lots of bangle bracelets. I remembered how thrilling it was for me, and the intense feeling of being drawn to what I was seeing. Because it was on the way to a place where we loved to swim, this ride down the same street in the same little town repeated itself every summer. Each time we passed through that town I felt strangely connected to it, and to the fascinating people I saw there. On several occasions I made eye contact with one of the women, and it always exhilarated me. One night at the family dinner table, I innocently mentioned this little town to my parents. They gave me a stern warning to stay away from there because, they said, the whole town was "of the devil." They must have said something to my Aunt Margaret as well because we never went there again.

For most of my life I have felt a strong connection and lure to gypsies, fortunetellers and many new age practices. However, the fear my parents instilled in me always overruled any inclination to act on my fascination. I would often think about that town and the people there, and I even had dreams about them. Although my parents’ words frightened me at the time, the allure of it all never left me.

When the prayer was over, I was shaken by what I had remembered. I told my group what I had experienced and they all agreed that the Holy Spirit had helped me remember these events for a reason. The experience upset me because I was confused by the obvious discrepancy between my childhood as I remembered it, and the darkness that accompanied these repressed memories. The group encouraged me to ask my parents if they knew anything that could help me understand their significance, so reluctantly, I phoned my mom that evening. I grew up with parents who warned against evil of any kind, and the last thing I wanted to do was admit this secret fascination to my mom. After some initial small talk, I took a deep breath and told her everything that happened in my prayer session that day. My mom was very quiet while I shared, so I began to think she was either upset with me or I had offended her. Wishing I had never made the phone call, I simply asked her if she knew anything that could help me. Unexpectedly, my mom began to tell me a story about a well-guarded family secret.

I grew up in a family where our entire life revolved around church. My dad was the pastor and we lived right next door to the church. If we weren’t inside the church, we were outside it mowing, raking or sweeping. The neighborhood kids would gather in the church parking lot to play basketball, ride bikes or roller skate. Whether it was through potluck dinners, the youth group or summer camp, our entire social life was connected to our church. Most of my dad’s family lived in the same town and attended our church as well. My dad’s mom, my Nana, was a real sweetheart with whom I loved to spend time. Although Nana liked to put on a stern face and often threatened to switch our legs if we didn’t behave, we all knew she was as soft as a kitten. Nana’s job at church was the nursery, and everyone loved her. Nana was awesome and fun. She was quirky, and (although it seemed normal to me at the time) Nana was also strangely superstitious.

Superstition was natural and normal when you were with Nana. I remember once she and I were taking a walk together down her street when I realized that I had forgotten a doll I wanted to carry along. I turned to run back to her house and she frantically yelled, "STOP!" She lowered her voice and told me to slowly turn around and continue to walk to the end of the street with her. Tears stung my eyes because I thought she was mad at me. At the end of the street, she explained that she wasn’t angry but she had something very important to tell me. She taught me that once you left your house you must never turn around too quickly to go back for something you forgot. If you did, it would bring bad luck. I remember taking in what she said, but I don’t remember thinking it was strange. It was just Nana.

Another instance of Nana’s "quirkiness" happened one day when my sister and her baby were visiting Nana. The baby had been sick and still had a terrible cough, so Nana asked my sister to give her the baby’s drinking cup. She took it and placed it on the stove. She told my sister that her mother had taught her that if you let the cup sit over a low flame for a while, the baby would not cough anymore. Shortly thereafter, his cough completely disappeared.

What my mom told me on the phone that night not only helped me understand my own inner struggle, but it also explained why Nana was so quirky and superstitious. Nana’s mother (my dad’s grandmother and my great-grandmother) was a "white witch."

Although it is not used much anymore, the term "white witch" is mainly used to distinguish between good and evil. If you practice white witchcraft it is considered good magic (as opposed to black or evil magic). People who practice white witchcraft worship Mother Nature and tune into nature and the elements around them (the planets, the sun, moon, herbs, flowers, trees, crystals, and colors), in casting spells.

As my mom shared some of the stories about my great-grandmother using her powers for good (such as supernaturally healing sick or injured people and calming babies who would not stop crying using potions and spells), I was thunderstruck as my mind and spirit processed what I was hearing. The truth was that the power my great-grandmother was using was not from God, it was witchcraft — no matter what color you labeled it!

In his book, Healing Wounded History, Russ Parker states, "Whatever the status of our family story, it is beyond question that it has a repeated pattern for good or ill. The truth is that due to the fallen nature of all parents (and children), all families are flawed and therefore dysfunctional to a certain degree. Our family’s values and patterns are sown in us and later reaped in the way we live our adult lives. Sometimes these patterns are like secrets that we keep out of sight and not for discussion within the family itself. These secrets do not have to be extraordinary in order to be powerful. They only have to remain secret and undisclosed. The tragedy is that such patterns, sown in one generation, are reaped and repeated in the lifestyle of the next and so on down the generations unless they are recognized, owned and offered for healing and transformation."

In Deuteronomy 5:9, God told the people of Israel that He would visit the iniquities of the parents on their children to the third and fourth generation. The Hebrew word for iniquity in this case is avon, which translates to bend or to twist. In Florida we have trees that dot our coastline that have been relentlessly blown by high winds that have caused the trees to be permanently bent. These trees are a perfect illustration of what can happen to our family trees where there is generation after generation of negative influence, both in our physical bodies (disease and sickness) and our spirits (negative behaviors and sin). Although I was not the one that initiated the occult involvement in my family, I was definitely bent toward it. What I have come to understand and personally experience is that if you are bent, there is only one way to become straight, and that is by the blood of Jesus Christ. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted.

There is so much Good News in this passage of scripture, and part of that Good News is that Jesus took our family iniquities to the cross with Him, thereby providing freedom and healing for all our bent family trees!

Steps to Generational Healing

• The first step to generational healing is to recognize family iniquities that are present. It’s often difficult to admit the fact that rage, or addiction, or chronic illness, or suicidal tendencies are in our family lines. When my discerning classmate identified the presence of evil in my family, my first reaction was to deny even the slightest possibility of it.
  
  
• The next step is repentance. Acknowledging the fact that I truly did have a strong fascination and attraction to the occult was crucial for my healing to begin. God has promised that if we confess our sins He will forgive us (I John 1:9). After confession it is up to us to take responsibility for any way that the sickness, the behavior or sin has influenced our life. Another Biblical definition of repentance is to change one’s mind and purpose as a result of knowledge. Once I acknowledged and confessed my sin, turning from it was vital to breaking the iniquity, not only for myself, but also for my son and his children.
  
  
• The third step to healing is forgiveness. I don’t know where the occult involvement began in my family, but I believe it has been there for many, many generations. When I considered this, it was easy to see my family members as victims as well, so forgiving them was not a difficult part of the process for me. However, many generational sins are not as easy to forgive. Anger, abuse, neglect, and other negative behaviors can leave so much destruction in their path that forgiveness seems impossible. It’s important to understand that forgiveness is much more for our sake than it is for the person that wronged us. Unforgiveness is like an invisible umbilical cord that forever ties us to that person, and it perpetually feeds the problem. But when we forgive, the umbilical cord is cut and we can be free.
  
  
• The fourth step is to surrender everything to Jesus, asking Him to place His cross and blood between us and our past generations. At CHM we hold Generational Healing Services where we give our Family Trees as an offering to God and then receive communion. My husband, who teaches and officiates Generational Healing Services, believes that receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus through Holy Communion fills the empty spaces in our spirit that were previously occupied by those things that were harming us, thereby breaking the generational patterns by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Generational healing began for me the moment my mom revealed the truth to me. It has been my experience that even when truth is shocking, the power of truth immediately begins to do its good work. It has been ten years since I gave all of this to God, and since that day, all fascination I had with the occult is completely gone. Praise God!

For more information on this topic you can purchase the teaching Understanding Generational Healing from CHM's bookstore.

Linda Strickland is CHM's Associate Director of Ministry and Assistant to Judith MacNutt.