It is Monday morning, and I woke up this morning to the sound of the waves outside, my husband and children around me – and the peace of God that hovers over us. How will I ever, ever, ever be able to thank Abba Father? Aldo is sleeping on a mattress in front of our bed at night, and Zozzie (because it is holiday) can sleep in between Mom and Dad. I say this to you in secret – so don’t let him know you know.
I was explaining to the kids on Sunday evening about the spirit, soul and body and how all of these have doors. The door to the spirit needs to be open to God at all times – and the name of that door is “first love”. That door can only be open to God if Jesus is truly our “first love”. Through that door our fellowship and communication with God can flow; because when God speaks to us, He speaks to our spirit, and when that door is closed His voice sounds far and distant.
Our soul also has doors, and these doors need to be closed to the influences of the world. To put it simply, your soul consists of your mind, will and emotions - things the enemy can easily manipulate if he has the territory. Every area of our soul needs to be under the control of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8 vs. 14 says, Those who are led by the Spirit of God is called sons of God. The doors of our soul need to be closed to hatred and be open to love. Our doors need to be closed to the love of the world, and open to the love of God (doing what God’s Word tells us to do not what our flesh tells us to do).
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2: 15-17).
The doors of our spirit, soul and body need to be closed to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life – for these things oppose the love of God.
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him (1 John 3: 10-15)
While I was explaining this to them, Aldo fell on his knees and started praying and kept on praying. He woke up this morning and his first words were “Lord Jesus, we pray that You will please forgive us in South Africa for all the blood that cries out from our land.” I asked him about his prayer and he said “Mom, the doors of hatred are still open in the lives of many families in South Africa (through racism) – just as it was open to us through generational curses.”
Like I explained in my previous letter, the Lord brought to light certain generational curses that were still a bondage to me and my family. We could break those curses through repentance and then forgiving those whose actions caused the curse. This un-repented sin tried to destroy my family through a spirit of death and destruction.
In Satan’s kingdom blood calls for blood. In the generations before me, my forefathers did have blood on their hands. Where there is un-repented sin in the camp, it gives Satan and his servants legal right to attack and defeat God’s children. The spirit of racism is not only a demon or a principality but a world order. It operates under the spirit of death and destruction. It can be any hatred that is in your heart towards another person, no matter what colour or race they are. When we disobey God, not only do we sin, but we also give Satan legal right to assault us. We often don’t realize that we serve a God who is completely just. Sin needs to be repented of, only then can the blood of Jesus wipe it away.
Righteousness is the nature of God’s activities; love is the nature of God’s essence. What God is, is love – and what God does, is righteousness. Love is inward, and righteousness is outward.
Faith in the Lord is the way for us to pass from death into life. Love towards our brothers is the evidence that we have passes out of death into life. To have faith is to have eternal life. To love is to live by eternal-life principles and to express our reality for all to see. You can start by forgiving your enemies, praying for those who hurt you and forgiving their sin, and praying for the sin of hate that has been passed on from generations before you. Ask God to bless your enemies, and do not curse them. That will turn curses in your life into blessings. This is why it is so important to be driven by God’s Word, and not by what the world says. The words says hate! But God says bless!
How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (Ps. 119:9-11).
How can we say that we are Christians, when we have hate in our hearts towards other people? For how long have people been in church, being a deacon, or an elder or on the church committee with hatred in their hearts (I am specifically talking about racism) with it being justified even joked about? It is pride, and lovelessness that keep us from acknowledging this as sin, and our stubbornness and disobedience will keep us chained if we don’t want to repent. Today so many families are eating death and destruction because of the un-repented sin of our forefathers. Destruction can come in many forms.
Always remember that Jesus paid the full and complete price when He purchased us on the cross – but our purification is a road of holiness that we walk. It is not an immediate place we arrive at once we get reborn; it is a journey through which the things we experience in life forms Christ in us. It is a road where we need to make choices.
If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all(Coll. 3:1-11).
Unfortunately, some Christians believe that they don’t have to bother with curses at all. They assume that God will take care of it automatically, and that the blood washed them once and for all when they accepted Jesus. Yes, your spirit has been born again – but the brokenness of our soul still needs to be rebuilt just as Nehemiah rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem. Jesus specifically told us that He has given us the authority and the strength to do this – this includes healing and deliverance. He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness (See Matt. 10:1).
With authority comes responsibility. It is our responsibility to break these curses brought on us by the un-repented sin of our forefathers or our own deeds. Jesus Christ gave us the power to do so, and He expects us to use the authority given to us in His name to undo the works of the enemy.
Now that we know how Satan can acquire the right to curse us, as well as other sources of curses, we can do what God asks us to do with the keys of the Kingdom:
Acknowledge your own sin and the sins of your forefathers.
Confess them to God with a heart of pure repentance. Ask forgiveness and to be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Take your sin, and their sin (generations before you) to God - name the sin what you know of.
Break all the generational ties or ungodly soul ties between you and those in the generations before you.
Ask God to strengthen the Godly ties in those relationships that you just broke the soul ties from.
Bless those who hurt you in this process.
Then you can ask God to remove the curse that is on you and your family’s life.
Command any demons that came to destroy your life through sin to leave you at once in Jesus name. Command all the demon spirits associated with this curse to leave you immediately. (In our situation I did not even have to command them to leave– as soon as I was at the “blessing stage”, praying for their sins, all the darkness and sickness fled!)
Throughout the whole history of Africa there has been a continual warfare among white and black, and among the different tribes of the blacks. Until the Christians unite as one body and cry out to God in repentance for the sins and hatred of our forefathers, witchcraft, demon worshippers, racism, rebellion and murder they practised - the curses of the forefathers will not be removed from people’s lives, and they will eat the blood and death and destruction of the hateful generations before them.
Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers' sins they will waste away (Lev 26:39).
The same problem can be seen all around the world – not only in Africa. Even in America people can be wasting away in the iniquities of their forefathers.
How I praise God there is a solution! Only one name in heaven and earth can bring freedom: JESUS CHRIST! He died on the cross to pay the price for all our sins. That is why He clearly shows us through His word how to break this evil cycle of sin:
But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land(Lev. 26:40-42).
God said to me, “Retah, what you as a family went through, was only one family that ate the destruction of a family or generational curse. I want you to pass this baton to the nation and ask them to start praying for the sin, and the blood that was on the hands of their forefathers. Start repenting for racism in your generation, start repenting for the hate in your family line. Do it one family at a time and you will soon see the difference.”
Start now says the living God. “Start now and repent! This is the way that you will stop this curse lying as a blanket over a nation. Bring everything to the light through repentance. Bless – don’t curse. Love – don’t hate. For too long you have been fooling yourself to say that you love Me, but secretly (or even sometimes publicly) hating your brother, cursing your brother, calling your brother names that you would never want anybody to call you. Pray for the sins of your family, pray for the sins of your enemy – pray , pray, pray! Remember, I am only moved by faith, not by your situation; and when you pray for their sins, and your own - you walk in faith and not by sight.
“What is this I see going on in the churches? People know about the hatred and racism, but no one is talking about it. Certain people are ruling the church because they have power, influence and money – but they don’t have Me in their hearts. Remember, a tree will be known by its fruit. Look to the fruit to see if the tree is good or bad. Even if they can manipulate with money and power, they won’t be able to manipulate My righteousness and the law of the spirit. Remember, you will reap what you sow - Repent now!!!!! Bind the perverse spirit of rebellion and the spirit of lust that goes hand in hand with racism. Bind the spirit of death and destruction that follows. Repent of past sin done through your forefathers.”
So shall we close the doors of the past to the darkness that wants to destroy our families and our land.
As you go through this process of repentance and are being set free with the blood of Jesus – you also need to sever any ungodly soul ties.
Ungodly soul ties are relationship bonds of spiritual darkness that provide an environment for the activity of the powers of darkness, including demons or unclean spirits. An abusive dominating relationship, for example between a father and a daughter, follows the sinful ways of the world and indeed the ruler of this world. The darkness underlying the relationship can allow an unclean spirit to operate and do so as to maintain and promote the ungodly control. It is then not merely the strength of the father’s behaviour that empowers the spiritual control but can also be a demon working through the ungodly tie. We can understand this by viewing the ungodly soul–tie as the underlying “tunnel” of spiritual darkness that exists through the wrongful aspects of a relationship. Where there is sin, there is a spirit of darkness and the enemy is given a right to rule. (Excerpt from “Soul Ties” – by David Cross.)
The week all of this came to light in our lives, I went for prayer and deliverance counselling to break that curse. In the week before the prayer session I had a dream. The dream was about a very dark and dirty room in my house. It was as a basement. I was so disgusted when I opened the room and saw all the dirt. I even saw a piece of raw meat and the rats were eating away at it. I just shut the door and cried out to God in my dream “Abba Father, this cannot be my house!” But indeed it was.
For the days since then it feels as if all I have been doing is to REPENT. At one stage I said to Tinus, “Do you think that maybe I am going to die, and that God is doing this for my purification and cleansing?” All the things that happened throughout my life passed through my mind, and I just kept on forgiving and repenting, forgiving and repenting. One night I ask Tinus again, “Where can this room in my life still be hidden? Because I clearly heard and saw that God said that room was in my house? And I don’t know of any room like that!”
I kept on asking the Lord to let His Glory Light shine in my heart - in ALL the rooms of my heart. A couple of days later I went for the prayer counselling. When the woman said the spirit of death and destruction was on me and that it was a curse, I immediately repented of all my father’s and forefather’s sins. When we broke the ungodly soul tie I realized that my unbroken connection to the sins of my forefathers was the room that I saw in my dream - and the enemy had free access to that room under my house. It was a dark room – hidden by my ignorance and lack of knowledge. Ask God if you have ungodly soul-ties in your life.
After Aldo came out of the hospital, he wrote one day about this dream I had even though I never mentioned it to him.
“Wisdom says the fire is gone, He sent them to hell. Jesus says Ma’am, in your dream that room that was so dirty was what He freed you of. You are now set free from that room. He says hell’s fire is now gone from your life. He says grandpa is very sorry for what he did.”
Today – we are free indeed! It was Father’s day on Sunday. I phoned my dad as I landed in Cape Town, “Dad I love you! Dad I bless you! Dad I will keep on praying for you! And Dad, please know that Jesus loves you so very much, so do I.” The tears fell from my eyes – I am free, I am free! Thank you for the blood of Jesus.
My family watched soccer and I just heard the shouts that came from the living room. My cup is running over, it is the first time in years that we are on holiday and Aldo is healthy.
May you keep on building your wall just as God asks of all of us... “Nehemiah, go and rebuild the walls of your soul, so that I can pour out My anointing in you, and so that the enemy can’t get into your city. After that - Watch and Pray.”
I looked over the ocean, and saw the waves that kept on rolling towards the shore. “Yes My child, this is just like My faithfulness – it will keep on rolling over your lives.”
I will post more of Aldo’s letters later this week. For a long time I did not have the time to read through his letters and post some on the web. We are all so relaxed and enjoying every moment. I just laughed as a walked through the lounge where the kids were watching soccer. Aldo sat with his Bible reading, while the rest were cheering for the soccer teams. Here in Cape Town you can really feel the soccer fever! The stadium is beautiful and we took the children yesterday to go and see. The vibe with all the tourists in the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront is amazing to experience. The South-African hospitality is contagious – and the beauty of our mountains is mesmerizing. I know that they will go back and also pray for our beautiful country South Africa!
God bless your spirit.
Retah and the family.
For more resourses on the above topic of generational (and other) curses and soul-ties, you can use the following material:
Teachings from Kanaan Ministries: http://www.kanaanministries.org/downloads.html
From Curse to Blessing – by Derek Prince. (www.derekprince.org)
Soul Ties – by David Cross. (www.ellelministries.org)
(See also Truth and Freedom series by David Cross)
Books on healing and deliverance by Rebecca Brown.