I didn’t know you had to wrestle to cancel generational curses. I thought all you had to do was say a prayer and then believe by faith that God broke it. Which, it’s not that it’s not that. It’s just that you gotta wrestle and contend for all residue of that thing to come off you. You have to let God cleanse you by the washing of water with His Word (Ephesians 5:26). The demon may be gone, the curse may be broken, but the behaviors will continue if you don’t come out of agreement with those wrong mindsets and dismantle the strongholds! The demons can be gone but the stronghold they spent YEARS, possible even decades building are still going to be there! There’s no spitting up a stronghold! It takes wrestling. And, even to cast out the demon and break the curse in the first place, you’ve got to come out of agreement. I think that was where my parents went wrong. They told me that they had prayed deliverance prayers and that therefore the generational curses in our family were broken. They thought the power was in saying the prayer. NO. The power is in the wrestling and the journey it takes to come out of agreement with those doctrines of demons!
pulling down strongholds
What does it look like to come out of agreement? It differs for every person and every situation, but one thing is certain: it involves ACTION. What does the Bible have to say about strongholds and what we have to do to come out of agreement with them? We can find the answer in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5:
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,
[NKJV]
Pulling down. Casting down. Bringing every thought into captivity. What do these phrases have in common? They all start with verbs – action words. I grew up in the Word of Faith tradition, where we would have simply quoted this verse out loud and thought we were really doing something. I’m sorry, but where in this Scripture does it say that merely saying something out loud is enough? What I see are physical actions: pulling (other translations say “destroying”), casting (“demolishing”), bringing (“taking”). In other words, fight back against the stronghold! Smash it into pieces until it’s powder under your feet. Do something – whether it’s changing a habit, changing the music you listen to, or changing the words you declare over yourself.
For me, the Lord has been dealing with me on the spirit and stronghold of religion, especially as it relates to my prayer life. For months I struggled to feel free in prayer and to know what to say. After getting some advice from a friend, I started changing it up. Religion tells you that your prayers have to be long and fancy. So some days I pray for only 5 minutes. Religion tells you that you have to follow a certain prayer outline – worship, then intercession, then asking for your needs. So one day I reversed the order of that outline and I started out asking for my needs and ended in worship. Religion tells me that no matter what I say as praise and worship to God, it’s not good enough and not long enough. So today my praise and worship session lasted only 2 minutes (yes, I timed myself). Do what the devil thinks you won’t do. Do the opposite of what that stronghold wants you to do. Hammer away at that thing in the spirit.
It comes down Little by little
At this point, I don’t even know if the spirit of religion is cast out of me yet. But I do know that the stronghold is still there. It’s coming down, piece by piece. It reminds me of how God told the people of Israel in Exodus that He would drive out the Canaanites in the Promised Land bit by bit:
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.
Exodus 23:29–30 [NKJV]
We may want God to wave His hand and deliver us from all our problems in one fell swoop. But that’s not how He works. There’s a process. The people of Israel had to be taught how to fight and how to conquer and cultivate the land. If they had driven out the Canaanites all at once, they would have been left with a huge swatch of land with no knowledge of how to make anything grow, and no stamina to endure through hardship.
God drives out the enemy and all the residue left in you little by little so that the strength of character you need to sustain your deliverance is built up. It is by participating in each part of your own deliverance that you gain the strength you need to keep the enemy out. And it is only by taking the stronghold down piece by piece that you can know how it was constructed and the right strategies to destroy it so you can teach others and help them get free. Remember y’all – this isn’t just about us. Your freedom is connected to someone else’s freedom. How are you going to help them if you don’t even know how you got free?
I’m still contending to be free in my mind and soul concerning religion. Those mental pathways are still set, and I have to actively work to make new ones. The brain has neuroplasticity – it is malleable, it can change and grow. But we have to do active work to rewire those neural pathways. The Bible actually talks about neuroplasticity and the necessity of retraining our brains. It calls it, “the renewing of your mind”:
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 [CSB]
We as Christians get it all wrong and we set ourselves up for discouragement and disappointment when we think that freedom just comes easily and automatically when we get born again and step into the Kingdom. I know this because I used to think this way, and it kept me from serving the Lord for years. I was so angry at Him because He didn’t immediately fix all my problems and heal my family. I didn’t realize that He hadn’t done it because none of us had contended.
Yes, there are some things that in His mercy, the Lord supernaturally breaks off you without you having to do anything. But some things, I would even venture to say most things, you have to contend for! You have to wrestle until you get your blessing like Jacob. If the Lord just gave it to us automatically without us having to do anything, we wouldn’t have any faith. It doesn’t take any faith to stand there and let the Lord just pull out all of your mess. It develops our faith to work along with God to be set free. To push forward anyway and keep fighting and believing that you can be free, even when it seems impossible? THAT’S faith.
And, we wouldn’t get the honor of fighting the enemy and WINNING if we didn’t have to contend. There’s no winning if there’s no fight. Christians love to shout about “We got the victory,” but nobody wants to stand up and FIGHT! Yes, Jesus redeemed us from the curse by becoming the curse for us. AND, we still have to take ahold of the blessing that He died for us to have. We have to actually appropriate it. If that wasn’t true, then why wouldn’t you just automatically get healed, delivered, and set free from poverty the minute you got saved? Obviously that didn’t happen. So there must be something we have to do to get free from the curse and obtain the blessing.
Again, Jacob wrestled. And, he came away from the wrestle with a limp (see Genesis 32:22-32). When we contend, it will show. It will be evident that there was a battle. I don’t know if you knew this, but if you’re a believer, you’re a soldier in a war:
Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life; he seeks to please the commanding officer.
2 Timothy 2:3-4 [CSB]
Soldiers that fight on the front lines come home with battle scars. It doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you; it’s just a part of doing battle. But guess what? For each one of his scars, a war veteran has a story. Your story of how you fought and contended for your freedom will inspire others, refresh and rekindle their faith, and lead the way in helping them get free.
So don’t give up, my sisters in Christ. If you haven’t picked up your weapons and started fighting, start today. There’s no time like the present. God wants to do it for you – He wants your freedom more than you do. But He’s too loving to not require you to fight for it. Contend and be strengthened by the battle.