I am one of those who come from "bad blood." Our home life was filled with one traumatic event after another, resulting in death and destruction. We were a family that had great potential. My father acquired land from his family, and the future looked bright—but Dad was ensnared by the enemy and lost his life prematurely at age 39. Consequently, the land and three generations' worth of blessings were lost. This left great wounds in both my soul and spirit. And yet as I told my aunt, the Lord performed a miracle in my life.
When I was 18, God sovereignly visited me. I was in a hospital bed on oxygen, having been diagnosed with double pneumonia and an enlarged heart. By God's masterful design, He placed me in a room with a Pentecostal pastor who introduced me to a Person I did not know: the Holy Spirit. I had accepted Christ years before, and yet through this pastor, the Person of Christ suddenly became alive to me. Not only did the Lord seem so real and near to me, but so did His Word. I began to devour Scripture like never before. I remember two passages in particular that spoke to me during those two weeks in the hospital. The first was Proverbs 3:5-10:
Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear and worship the Lord and turn [entirely] away from evil. It shall be health to your nerves and sinews, and marrow and moistening to your bones. Honor the Lord with your capital and
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sufficiency [from righteous labors] and with the firstfruits of all your income. So shall your storage places be filled with plenty, and your vats shall be overflowing with new wine (AMP).
I chose to believe what the Bible said: If I would not trust in my own mind, thoughts and wisdom, then my nerves could be healed and my bones and marrow could be filled with life. (I also saw the connection this verse makes between health and giving.)
The next verse God spoke to me was Proverbs 18:14, which says, "The strong spirit of a man sustains him in bodily pain or trouble, but a weak and broken spirit who can raise up or bear?" (AMP). Wow! My eyes suddenly opened to a new understanding. With a fresh revelation of how my mind, spirit, health and healing were all connected, I saw that it was possible to withstand the sickness I was facing. If I allowed God to heal me from the inside, I could overcome sicknesses in my body.
In that meeting at the hospital, the Lord showed me the war that was going on inside of me. There was a war with my evil nature. There was a war with sin domination.
There was a war concerning my family and all its downfalls and failings. There was a war with my inheritance. There was even a war with my faith—did I really believe the Word of God?
In that divine time I heard the voice of God. As if reverberating through a mountainous cavern, His words rang inside me: "I can restore what you have lost." They echoed throughout my entire being, becoming my lifeline.
His words even began a process in my recreation. Almost instantly I could sense a breaking of the power of loss that was being held within my genetic structure. This was the very power creating infirmity and disease within my body.
Exposing a Curse
I never turned back from following the Lord after He met me so powerfully. And yet there was another incident several years later that brought me understanding regarding what we will discuss in this chapter.
Pam and I had been married for five years. I was teaching a Bible study at my place of employment. In the Bible study were five sisters in the Lord who worked for me. One of the women pulled me aside and said there was an individual who she noticed was drawn to me, and that I needed to be careful with my relationship with her. I wasn't aware of anything that was going on, but when I shared this with Pam after getting home from work, she informed me that during our five years of marriage she had noticed I had a stronghold in this area. I was not sure at that time what she meant by stronghold, but I listened to what she was saying.
Pam explained that if I fell to any temptation such as what I described to her that she would take care of me herself. Actually, her exact words were "I will just kill you."
Thinking she was joking, I laughed it off and replied,
"Sure, and how will you reconcile that before the Lord?"
With a dead-serious tone, she said, "That's not the best way, so I suggest you get before the Lord and ask Him to remove anything in your life that Satan could get a toehold in."
Now that spoke to me. I went and got before the Lord in the bathroom.
One of the things I have always done is read the Bible out loud to the Lord. There in the bathroom I began reading Romans 6 and got to verse 14: "For sin shall not have dominion over you ..." I stopped abruptly and asked the Lord a question: "Lord, is this a true statement?"
I heard a voice so loudly that I thought there was a person standing in the room with me. "Yes," the voice said.
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Seizing the opportunity, I asked another question:
"Lord, is this Book completely true?"
His reply was simply, "Yes, obey My Word."
At that moment I knew I did not have to submit to sin anymore. It did not have to be my master. Even though I had never been taught this before in any of the church services I had attended, it resonated within me as truth.
And at that moment, a power that had held control over my family was broken. I knew that I never had to do what my dad had done. I knew that I didn't have to fall to the same strategies Satan had used to entice my grandfather away from God's best. I knew that I could walk faithfully before the Lord and remain in faithful covenant with my wife. What had been in my bloodline for generations had now been detected, addressed and broken. My life took a drastic turn from that moment.
The War of the Word
Following that encounter with the Spirit of God, my daily Bible readings and time of prayer took on new meaning. I continued to read the Word just as I had always done since I was 18, covering three to four chapters a day. Yet when I began to read the next morning, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: "Don't go to the next verse until you believe the one you just read." God was going to make me a man of faith just like those I read about in Hebrews 11. He was going to make sure His Word penetrated deep into me and brought all my thought processes into alignment with His. Hebrews 4:12 says:
For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and
purposes of the heart (AMP).
This is one of the most incredible truths I have ever encountered. The Word of God is alive. It is full of power and, like a sword, can divide a person's soul from his or her eternal part, the spirit. As a result of this incredible power, the Word causes our hearts to change. I believe this change is both spiritual and physical. Romans 10:17 says,
"So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Satan's greatest strategy is to stop you from hearing what God has to say to you. He knows that when the voice of God penetrates you, it goes deep into your bone marrow and rearranges the cell structures within your body. He knows it has a powerful effect on the blood flow within your body. When the Word of God successfully penetrates us, when we allow it to be stored in our hearts and develop the way we think, our blood system begins to be purified. The Spirit of God literally begins to invade blood structures.
We will discuss why this is so important in just a bit;
for now, it is key to recognize that there is a war going on over command of our bloodline. The forces of darkness are constantly working to prevent spiritual life from entering into our physical being. I believe the enemy's greatest strategy is to separate us from the Word and the love of God. If he can separate us from the Word of God, we lose the power of life working through our life-giving blood system.
What is so important about our blood? And what does it have to do with the Holy Spirit's work in our life?
Allow me to take a moment to explain some things that will be foundational for the rest of this chapter. We know that God is spirit, and yet He is also the designer of every element within our physical world. Therefore, it is safe to say His works traverse every realm of life—
physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, and so on. When
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considering the physical and spiritual elements of blood, the same is true. I apologize in advance if some of this brings back memories of suffering through biology class.
But trust me, you will soon see how valuable that information is in relation to the wars—physical and spiritual—that we face today.