Blessing Generations Session 1

bjbj Welcome to Blessing Generations! We re excited to start this seminar. And you know
it s always interesting every time we have a seminar because people come for all kinds
of different reasons, and I know that probably there are people that have been anticipating
this seminar, waiting to come, excited about it, and other people just heard about it a
few days ago, and we always have people that somebody drug you here, somebody paid for
you to be here, your mother-in-law, your wife, a parent. Somebody said re coming, and one
thing that we ve found is that even though people come for all kinds of different reasons,
we ve found one thing s consistent, and that is God brought you here. He has a plan for
you. It may be totally different than your plan, but God has something He wants to do
this weekend, and if you ll open your heart and just allow Him to do it, we find incredible
things happen in people s lives. Now I m going to be presenting this seminar from a Biblical
perspective. I realize that we may have people here from all kinds of different worldviews,
all kinds of different backgrounds, and it s really not possible to present something
objectively. So I m just going to present it from the way I see it, and if you need
to translate it into a different worldview or a different understanding of life, I ll
give you permission to translate into any way you see it, if you give me permission
to just present it from my perspective. Is that ok? Will that work for everybody? Ok,
great. Well what we re going to be talking about this weekend is, as the name would indicate,
blessing generations. And would it stand to reason that it would be God s plan and God
s idea that every generation ought to be a little bit more blessed than the last generation?
And if you put this in a spiritual context, God s plan is to bless every generation Satan
s plan is to curse every generation. So there s always opposites that are taking place.
So we re going to look at how is it that we release greater and greater blessing in every
generation? The idea being that your children really ought to be blessed just because they
re your children. You know what we find oftentimes is that many people are having to go through
recovery programs, and when you look at recovery programs, what are people recovering from
basically? Now by and large, people are actually recovering from their childhood experience.
And so our goal would be that your children don t have to recover from their experience
with you. The idea is that your children would be blessed as a result of their experience
with you, and would be launched like an arrow toward a target and that s sort of the idea.
And so we live in a continuum, all of us have come from parents. Many of us have children
or will have children. So we re in the midst of a succession of generations coming from
the past and going on into the future. And so what we want to look at during this time
in this seminar is how do we terminate cursing of generations and how do we accelerate and
release blessing of generations? I want to just start with looking at a Scripture, Jeremiah
6:16. We call these Ancient Paths Seminars, and that name comes from this Scripture that
says Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is,
and walk in it; and you will find rest for your souls. So this word ancient caught my
attention, and it s the Hebrew word Olam. It doesn t mean just old or old-fashioned
it actually means universal, timeless, eternal, perpetual, from before time, or even out of
eternity. And that phrase really grabbed me out of eternity. So we re talking about ways
of God that just cause life to function on planet Earth - universal principles. In the
physical realm it would be things like gravity. Gravity affects everybody. Gravity doesn t
care whether you re young or old, what color skin you have, what part of the planet you
were born on. Gravity just affects everybody exactly the same. So when we re talking about
ancient paths, re talking about principles of life that just cause life to function.
I want to look over in Genesis 12:3, and this is sort of a foundational principle here of
God s plan for people on planet Earth. And this is a promise that was given to Abraham,
it says in verse 3 I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses
you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now the thing I like about
that is it doesn t just say all the individuals of the earth, it says all the families of
the earth shall be blessed. So family is a basic unit that was established on planet
Earth, and God said My plan is to bless every family on planet Earth. So if you think about
your family, the family you grew up in, or perhaps now you re married, you have children,
the family that you re now a parent in perhaps, what s God s plan for your family? Well it
says right here His plan is to bless your family. So that s God s purpose, God s plan
is to bless your family, and again the opposite would be Satan s plan is to curse your family.
So let me talk for a moment about those words bless and curse. The way that we re going
to use them this weekend, when people hear those words, all kinds of different ideas
may come to the mind in terms of what does it really mean to be blessed? Or what does
it really mean to be cursed? When people hear that word curse, that s a very strong word.
Sometimes people think of witchcraft or powerful types of curses being pronounced over people,
but really this weekend we re using these words in a very, very simple way. To bless
, if you look that up, the Biblical definitions are these: in the Hebrew the word is Baruk,
and it simply means literally to kneel in front of someone, or the spiritual connotation
is to empower to prosper. So when you bless someone, what you re actually doing is empowering
them to prosper. And when we use that word prosper, re not just talking about finances,
but we re talking about every aspect of life. So when you empower somebody to prosper, when
you bless them, you potentially empower their relationships to succeed, to thrive, to do
well. Their finances to succeed, to thrive, to do well. Their physical health, every aspect
of their life to thrive, succeed, do well that s to bless. In the Greek, the word bless
is Eulogia, from which we get our English word eulogy, that we oftentimes read or speak
at someone s funeral. It literally simply means to speak well of. So when you re blessing
someone, you re speaking well of them. Now the opposite then, to curse someone, is to
not speak well of them, or to speak ill of them or evil of them. Or if to bless means
to empower to prosper, then to curse means to disable from prospering, or to disempower
someone from prospering. So in a family, at any moment in time, we can empower other family
members to prosper, or disempower other members of the family to prosper. So we can bless
them, or we can curse them. Now what I find in most families is that most people are not
at any particular point in time purposefully trying to disempower other family members
from prospering. Most parents don t wake up on any give day and say to themselves, Gee
I wonder what I could do today to curse my children. I wonder what I could do today that
would disempower my children from prospering in their future adult lives. Most people are
not thinking that way. So in order for that type of disempowerment or cursing to happen,
it has to happen through blindess - it happens through things that people don t see. It happens
through areas in which people are blind. So we will disempower children, or disempower
or literally curse other family members, in areas where we re blind, where we don t see
that we don t realize that that s what happening. Now blessing, it said in that Scripture in
Jeremiah 6:16, it said when we walk in God s ancient paths, it brings the soul into peace.
I began thinking about that and I found that blessing is a powerful factor that brings
something on the inside to rest, brings things into peace. And as I began to think about
that, I discovered that blessing and cursing in families will impact especially two critical
areas: it will impact identity and destiny. Now identity is simply this, let me define
the way we ll use those terms this weekend identity and destiny. Identity means the answer
to this question: Who am I? Who is this ? So every one of us have to relate to a in here
everyday of our lives. And destiny is Why am I here? What s my purpose? Where am I going?
So identity s the answer to the question Who am I? Destiny is the answer to the question
Why am I here? Now again, if you put that in a spiritual context, God has an answer
to those questions, Satan has an answer to those questions. If you look at what is Satan
s answer to the questions Who am I and why am I here? Well his answer goes something
like this: re nobody, you re nothing, you shouldn t be here, there s something wrong
with you. As a matter of fact, you re a mistake. You don t belong. Nobody loves you, nobody
will ever love you. Nobody wanted you to be here. You re ugly, you re stupid, you re unspiritual,
you ll never amount to anything. If you have a destiny, you d probably blow it anyway.
So you re just here, taking up food, air, and water on the planet, marking time until
the day you die with no real purpose. That s Satan answer. Now God s answer is just the
opposite. God s answer is I love you. I planned for you. You re exactly the right person in
the right place at the right time. I knew what you d look like. I knew you d be a boy.
I knew you d be a girl. You re right on time, the right person in the right place. You have
exactly everything you need to accomplish your purpose. And God said, I have a destiny
for you. I have a plan for you. I have a purpose for you, and I ve well-equipped you to accomplish
your purpose. As a matter of fact, nobody else can do what you were put on the planet
to do. Nobody else can be a father to your children. Nobody else can be a mother to your
children. Nobody else can be a daughter to your parents, or a wife to your husband. I
ve equipped you to do what nobody else can do, and you have unique experiences in your
life that equip you to accomplish certain things on planet Earth that nobody else can
accomplish. God says, Your mother only carried you for nine months in her womb. I carried
you in my Spirit for thousands of years, and right at the right time I released you on
planet Earth. You re here because of a purpose and a destiny, right on time, loved, valuable,
you have everything you need. Now these are opposite messages, and what I ve found is
that both God and Satan use human agency to impart their message. As a matter of fact,
I discovered that it was so important to God to get His message of blessing, identity,
and destiny to you at certain critical times in life, that He puts some very specific agents
in your life to ensure that you d get His message and not Satan s message. I found that
there are certain times in life that are a little bit more critical than other times,
when the heart is open, where you can receive a message of identity and destiny, and that
at those critical times in life, God put agents there to ensure that you d get His message.
Those agents are not called teachers, they re called parents. Parents. And so if parents
do nothing else regarding their children, the primary thing that they were designed
to do is to be God s imparters of identity and destiny. So when we go back to blessing
and cursing, the way we re going to use these terms is like this: Blessing is simply God
s mechanism of imparting identity and destiny into your life. Cursing is Satan s mechanism
of imparting his message of identity and destiny into your life. And both God and Satan primarily
will use human agency. And so in families at any moment in time, parents are really
prophets. They re prophesying either life or death into the lives of their children.
In other words, they re speaking things forth and imparting identity and destiny into the
lives of their children. And again, many times parents don t realize the power they have
in the lives of their children. And these messages are not just coming through words,
but they re coming through attitudes, they re coming through voice intonation, they re
coming through actions, they re coming through the way we interact in a family. And so for
example, in areas where parents are blind, they can impart to their sons or daughters
Satan s message of identity and destiny. For example, if a child fails at something, the
parent might say ll never amount to anything. Now whose message is that? So that s Satan
s message. Many times in frustration or anger, parents will declare things into the lives
of children will speak things, re stupid, or If you keep acting that way, you ll end
up in jail. You keep wearing clothes like that you ll probably end up pregnant. These
are proclamations that are coming out of the mouth of parents, but yet if you look many
times, the impartation is worthlessness, lack of destiny, no purpose. And parents don t
realize that they were imparting that, and it s actually creating wound on the inside
of the son or the daughter, and depositing deep on the inside Satan s message, and parents
didn t realize that. What we ll be talking about this weekend is seven critical times
when God intended for impartation of blessing to take place. But what I began to see when
I began to look in the Bible, and not only in the Bible in the Hebrew culture but in
many different cultures around the world, what I began to observe was this: That God
placed ceremonies, customs, various protective mechanisms in culture that would ensure at
these seven critical times that we re going to talk about, that people would receive an
impartation of God s message and not an impartation of Satan s message. And what has happened
in our Western culture, so-called civilized culture, what s actually happened is the enemy
has really ripped right out of our culture most of the protective mechanisms the ceremonies,
the traditions, the things that have been in place that would ensure that impartation
of blessing would happen at those critical times. Those have been ripped right out of
our culture, and now instead nothing is there, and guess who fills vacuums? When there s
nothing there, oftentimes Satan is able to impart his message and people don t realize
it. So we re going to be talking about how can we re-implement safeguards in our culture
traditions, customs, things that would cause children to naturally be blessed at those
critical times in life, that s what we re going to look at through the course of this
seminar. s incredible how generationally, cursing and blessing impacts people how things
pass down from one generation to the next. I want to just read you a true story about
two families right here from the United States of America, and this is two families that
lived two-hundred years ago. Listen to this true story of two American families: It says,
Max Jukes was an atheist who married a Godless woman. Some five-hundred and sixty descendents
were traced remember that number, 560. Ok so here s a man, Max Jukes, 560 descendents
over 200 years. Out of these descendents, 310 died as paupers or in poverty. 150 became
criminals, 7 of them murderers. 100 were known to be drunkards and more than half the women
were prostitutes. The descendents of Max Jukes cost the United States government more than
1.25 million dollars in 19th century dollars that s probably more than 250 million dollars
today in current prices. Jonathan Edwards, on the other hand, was a contemporary of Max
Jukes. He was a committed Christian who gave God first place in his life. He married a
Godly young lady and some 1.394 descendents were traced. Now out of these 1,394 descendents,
we re going to hear what happened to them, but remember how many Max had? 560. Jonathan,
1,394 two and a half times numerical increase in Jonathan s life over Max s life. Now out
of Jonathan s descendents, 295 graduated from college, of whom 13 became college presidents,
65 became professors, 3 were elected as United States Senators, 3 as state governors. Others
were sent as ministers to foreign countries. 30 were judges, 100 were lawyers. One the
dean of an outstanding law school. 56 practiced as physicians. One was the dean of a medical
school. 75 became officers in the military. 100 were well-known missionaries, preachers,
and prominent authors. Another 80 held some form of public office, of whom 3 were mayors
of large cities. One was the controller of the U.S. treasury, and another was vice president
of the United States. Not one of the descendents of the Edwards family was ever a liability
to the government. Now isn t that a contrast in blessing and cursing over 200 years of
time? And what you see when you hear something like that is you realize that there was seed
on the inside of this man Max Jukes that was so potent that it apparently carried down
generation after generation after generation, and devastated generations of people. On the
other hand, there was seed on the inside of this man Jonathan Edwards that was so powerful
that it also passed down from generation to generation to generation, and made it almost
impossible for his descendents not to fulfill a powerful destiny for which each one of them
was placed on planet Earth. Now when we hear a story like that, some of us think - in our
own history - we look back and say Oh my goodness, it s Max Jukes all the way. He was probably
my great, great grandfather himself. And we think, What chance do I have? Well the good
news is, the very fact that you re sitting here at this seminar today is probably indicative
of the fact that God picked you out in this generation to change this, that you ll see
something change from your generation forward. You get to be the first Jonathan Edwards,
perhaps, in a long lineage of people that have been in a Max Jukes type of lineage.
And for others of us, we look back and we see Jonathan Edwards types of people in our
background, and we realize we re riding on a wave of blessing that we didn t work for;
that somebody else has sown seed that s made life very, very simple and easy for us in
certain areas of life, where we aren t going to have to fight battles that perhaps other
people need to fight that have had different seed that s come down from past generations.
So whichever way it is, what we realize at this point in time is God is trying to establish
and do something in your generation for the future; that you can take seed and allow God
to deposit seed in your life that s going to impact your children, your grandchildren,
your great grandchildren. For many generations, people will look back upon your life and say,
Thank God that my great, great grandfather got hold of something in his generation and
deposited seed into his children that passed on down and made it easy for me to fulfill
my destiny in my generation. That part excites me, when I think about that the potential
of what God will do even here this weekend to impact our children, grandchildren, great
grandchildren for many generations. Now in this seminar, we re going to be all together
here in a large group like this for part of the seminar, and then we re going to be breaking
up into small groups. And so we re going to have our first small group time in just a
couple minutes. Sometimes when people hear small groups they get fearful Well what are
they going to do? Are they going to force us to do something we don t want to do in
a small group? Are they going to make us say something, or pray something, or do something?
I just want to set your heart at rest. The purpose of the small group is not to force
you or make you do anything. It s just an opportunity - to make an opportunity available
to you - for you to allow God to do whatever you want to let Him do in your life. So there
will be things that are shared in that small group, there will be things that people will
pray in that small group, but I just want to remove the pressure from you. You re not
going to have to do anything. You re free to just allow yourself to share whatever you
want to share, to ask for prayer for whatever you want prayer for, and the goal is not for
anybody to pressure you or force you or push you into doing anything that you don t want
to do. Does that make sense? So the purpose of the small groups is just an opportunity
that you can take advantage of to allow God to do things in your life to whatever extent
you would like that to happen. So we re going to go ahead and go to our first small group
in just a moment. I d like to invite the seminar coordinators to come back up now and they
ll share with you the mechanism for releasing you into your small groups. So let s have
the seminar coordinators come on back up right now. [Content_Types].xml u$Nw @8Jb _rels/.rels
theme/theme/themeManager.xml sQ}# theme/theme/theme1.xml G$$DA :$BR si-@R r,[L bX*x KfN1 ,tV@ .EML
M .c =6K 0i1; P0!Y ?sE/ ?J&l p)af theme/theme/_rels/themeManager.xml.rels
6?$Q K(M&$R(.1 [Content_Types].xmlPK _rels/.relsPK theme/theme/themeManager.xmlPK theme/theme/theme1.xmlPK
theme/theme/_rels/themeManager.xml.relsPK
accent2="accent2" accent3="accent3" accent4="accent4" accent5="accent5" accent6="accent6" hlink="hlink"
folHlink="folHlink"/> Jason Dudley Normal.dotm Jason Dudley Microsoft Macintosh Word PICT.
0g9Z o{g9Z g9o{c g9kZc g9g9c g9g9c o{kZg9 kZ-g9Z g9g9Z o{g9c g9o{c g9g9Z g9o{g9c g9kZ^
kZo{^ kZg9c g9kZc kZo{s g9o{c !o{g9c o{o{Z Bg9^ g9kZg9g9c g9g9c kZg9c g9o{c kZo{^ kZg9c
g9kZw kZkZg9g9o{^ kZo{^ kZo{c g9g9kZkZc kZo{kZkZg9s kZg9kZZ kZg9Z o{o{s o{o{w o{o{c o{o{w o{o{w
o{o{w g9o{g9 "kZZ 0g9c o{o{c kZo{kZ{ kZg9o{Z g9kZkZg9s o{kZs o{kZs o{g9kZw o{kZc o{kZkZZ
kZkZo{ kZkZw kZkZ{ g9o{o{s kZkZg9 kZkZw o{o{g9w g9kZg9o{w o{kZs o{kZs kZkZs o{kZo{g9 kZNsg9V
kZg9c kZkZZ g9g9Z NskZZ g9NsZ o{g9w o{o{c g9kZs g9o{s o{kZo{s g9o{s o{o{s o{kZo{s g9g9c
g9kZg9kZg9kZg9s g9g9^ o{g9Z g9kZg9kZ^ g9o{kZs o{kZkZ{ g9kZ g9g9c g9kZg9kZc kZg9g9Z o{g9g9o{
kZo{c g9kZZ 4kZo{o{g9{ kZg9c kZo{o{s o{kZg9o{kZs g9o{kZkZs o{o{g9c kZo{kZo{g9s o{kZ kZkZg9kZs
g9g9kZo{o{g9s g9o{kZg9g9o{o{kZkZs o{kZs g9kZg9o{o{g9s g9kZ o{o{s o{g9kZkZs g9kZ o{kZV g9kZ o{o{
g9g9kZs g9kZw g9g9kZs o{g9w g9o{s kZg9o{c kZo{g9o{g9o{c CkZ^ g9kZkZg9^ kZkZg9g9Z kZkZg9c
kZkZc 4o{w )g9g9w o{o{g9o{V g9o{^ o{kZkZc g9g9^ g9kZg9c o{g9{ o{o{s BkZ^ g9kZkZw o{kZo{w
o{o{kZs o{o{s kZg9o{kZg9s kZkZo{w o{g9g9o{kZc o{kZw o{g9g9{ o{o{w o{g9kZkZg9c o{o{w kZ#g9w
kZkZo{o{kZo{g9o{kZg9s kZo{w g9g9kZw kZo{kZg9kZo{g9g9kZkZg9w +kZg9g9V o{g9V g9g9Z g9o{V g9kZZ &o{c kZo{o{s
o{g9{ kZg9o{kZo{g9o{kZw o{kZ^ o{kZs kZg9o{kZo{ o{kZo{g9kZc o{kZs o{kZkZo{s kZkZo{kZg9kZkZg9{
/o{g9kZw kZg9s o{g9{ g9kZo{kZkZo{kZw kZo{o{s o{o{w o{kZg9w o{kZkZo{w o{o{kZg9kZs kZo{o{kZo{c
kZkZo{ Do{R g9NsZ kZg9Z o{kZV kZg9 kZo{w 3o{o{{ g9o{o{s o{o{s o{o{s g9kZ{ o{o{s kZkZs g9g9c
kZo{kZg9g9o{kZs g9g9kZ kZg9s o{g9g9kZc g9o{^ g9g9kZc o{kZ{ g9o{ ?g9^ g9kZo{Z g9kZc kZg9^
kZo{{ o{kZ o{kZ{ kZkZg9^ g9g9^ g9o{g9s kZg9g9o{o{Z g9kZc g9o{^ g9kZg9c g9g9Z o{kZo{Z kZo{c g9kZc
kZg9^ g9kZZ kZo{Z $g9c o{g9g9c kZg9^ g9kZ^ g9o{^ kZo{Z kZg9c g9kZc g9g9^ kZg9g9^ kZo{w
o{o{w o{g9^ kZg9g9 o{g9^ o{o{^ kZg9c *o{g9o{g9o{g9kZc g9g9o{Z g9kZc kZg9c o{kZc o{kZg9kZ o{o{^ g9o{^
g9o{ g9g9s g9kZc kZg9kZ^ o{o{w g9o{s o{o{s o{kZw o{o{w kZkZg9c o{kZs o{g9w kZkZ^ o{o{
kZo{s o{kZg9kZkZo{o{kZ kZkZo{ )o{g9c kZg9s kZkZw kZo{w kZg9w kZo{kZw kZg9w o{o{w kZo{w
kZkZs kZkZo{w o{o{kZo{ g9o{Z o{o{{ o{kZo{o{s o{o{s o{o{w o{g9g9kZkZ g9kZ kZo{ g9&s g9kZg9^
g9o{V g9g9Z o{g9g9o{g9kZo{g9kZs g9g9c kZkZc g9o{^ g9^ g9kZ^ g9kZc kZkZ^ g9kZ^ o{,s kZkZg9o{o{s
o{o{{ o{g9o{o{kZ{ o{o{g9o{s o{o{g9s kZkZo{o{kZ kZg9o{g9kZg9kZc o{g9o{kZs g9o{s kZo{g9s g9g9s
g9kZkZg9g9w kZo{g9kZg9Z g9g9o{kZg9g9kZc o{o{s o{g9w o{o{ o{o{c kZo{s g9g9o{^ g9o{g9c *g9w
g9kZV g9kZc kZkZc kZg9kZo{o{Z kZkZ g9o{R Family Foundations Title Microsoft Word 97-2004 Document
NB6W Word.Document.8