Life Patterns are patterns in our lives that were in the lives of our ancestors and which we can see in the lives of our children and grandchildren. The saying that ‘History repeats itself’, isn’t as insignificant as it appears. The Bible even speaks of the sins of the fathers being visited onto the third and fourth generation. A subject of great debate among the scholarly, so we will leave the debate to them, but as stated in the previous post, the example of alcoholics is a good example that something at least tends to follow us from our past.
With this in mind, I want to look at one reason for these life patterns that we may be overlooking; Demons.
If you have been reading my posts, you know that I have written about the devil being cast out of heaven for his sin of pride and rebellion. In my reading and studying about this being, I find that Yahweh created Lucifer with the freedom to choose. Just as man has the freedom to choose whether we obey or disobey God, Lucifer, or Satan has this same freedom of choice. God created every spirit being with this freedom to choose, as He wanted living beings who loved Him in return for His love to them. He wanted angels to serve His universe in obedience because they chose to obey, not because He ordered them to do so.
God is not a mean, hateful dictator sitting on His throne demanding every living being to obey and serve Him. The Bible says that God is Love, Mercy, Holy, Just, Pure, Truth and dwells in a Light that know mortal can approach unto. He sent His Son to demonstrate this.
Jesus said that He came to do the works of His Father. The works that Jesus demonstrated were full of Love, Mercy, Justice, Truth, in all Holiness and Purity, while constantly referring to His Father’s Kingdom as full of Light. Jesus was without sin and obeyed His Father’s commands completely, even dying a horrible death on a cross, after surrendering to His Father’s will in a garden of agony.
Jesus shows us that His and our Father is not a mean dictator waiting to get even with us for disobeying Him. Many read scriptures about fearing God literally, and are afraid of God. The word fear can mean terror, as it would be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God who has power over your soul, but most often it means to revere or have reverence or respect for. Jesus showed us that instead of having a terror of God, the opposite is true; He is the Father waiting with open arms for His Prodigal sons and daughters to come home to His loving arms. In Fact, through Jesus and His Blood atonement, we can now approach boldly unto the Throne of Grace to find help in a time of need, while calling our Heavenly Father, Abba. Abba is a familiar term of endearment, as you would call your earthly father, Daddy.
This is one life pattern that I transferred to God. My earthly father was harsh, demanding, and short-tempered. He never used a belt or whip on me but one time, and I did deserved that one. But when he spoke, everyone jumped, for his voice was far worse than a whip. So, even though I felt God’s love in a very powerful way when I first came to Him in repentance, I still was always looking over my shoulder and waiting for the harsh command or reprimand.
It took me many years to break this life pattern, and it really was only broken after I had disobeyed His commandments a few times, and realizing that He was not yelling at me. The opposite was happening, He kept visiting me with His gentle love, trying to encourage me to grow closer to Him. Then I realized this is what David meant when he said that God’s gentleness had made him great. Psalm 18:35 I can attest that this is true in my life, and I love Him more today than ever before for His gentle loving ways with me. I was a prodigal son in many ways.
This is just one example of how we misunderstand God and what His real intentions are for us. He gets the blame for a lot of things, from why did the coffeemaker stop working, to why did He allow my child to die? He is used to it all, and He is big enough to handle it. We can voice words in anger at Him, and it is OK. He knows we need the therapy of getting off our chests. I am guilty of taking my hurts and anger to Him in the past. He just loves me back, waiting patiently for me to realize that He loves me anyway, while He draws me closer to Him, gently pointing out my immaturity and need to take some responsibility for my own selfish choices.
God has created all living beings with the freedom to choose. Lucifer is put in charge of the heavenly choir of angels, and he has a title of the covering cherub. He had a lot of authority in heaven, and seemed to have a lot of authority over earth before Adam arrives, as the Father has to hover over the hostile waters to bring forth dry land and an earthly paradise out of chaos.
It seems that the Father saw the pride and rebellion in Lucifer and cast him out of the third heaven before Adam, for Satan was here when Adam steps on the scene. Adam gave away his legal right to rule the earth, so Satan now has his own kingdom that he rules as prince and power of the air, and it includes 1/3 of God’s angels that he led away from their Father with lies and deceptions making false promises of power with him as their new god.
Eve is innocent and even though she knows what her Father has said, she can’t help but notice how enticing the forbidden fruit is on the tree in front of her eyes. Satan sees his opportunity, and speaks so softly that this fruit will make you a god, and very wise, knowing things that your Father doesn’t want you to know, and by the way, God didn’t really mean that you would die. The rest is history, and as stated above history repeats itself in life pattern after life pattern for thousands and thousands of years now, and will continue into the future generations, until the Lord returns to clean things up.
The Bible doesn’t give us all the details about the fall of Lucifer and his reasons for allowing the devil to continue to destroy creation and the lives of men. It doesn’t spell out for us what really happened before Adam stepped onto the scene. Many of these things are speculated about, but without solid scriptural proof, so we must leave them to speculation.
We do know that God is a God of order and harmony, and that when He created the foundations of the earth, the angels sang for joy at what they saw. We also know that when God hovers over the face of the deep, that it is all empty and without form in total chaos, as though some kind of judgment fell upon the planet. Then God proceeds to make everything good again, placing Adam in the Garden of Eden.
In light of God’s true character, and in light of the devil’s true character, I conclude there has to be something going on between God and the devil that we humans are not privileged to know. This hidden cause for allowing Satan to rule this earth for thousands of years as its ruler, killing, stealing and destroying the lives of men and nature itself, will only be revealed to us when we stand before Him, and see as He sees.
In the meantime, consider some examples in the Bible of Life Patterns. They certainly show that what the parent does, can also be continued in the children for generations to come.
Sexual sin (2 Samuel 12:9-14)
Murder (2 Samuel 12:9-14)
Theft (Zechariah 5:3-4, Habakkuk 2:9)
Lying (Zechariah 5:3-4, 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)
Idolatry (Exodus 20:3-6, Ezekiel 14:6-8)
Hating God (Psalm 21:8-10)
King Asa repented from his father’s sin by destroying the idols in the land and serving the Lord (1 Kings 15:11-14).
King Josiah humbled himself and mourned his forefathers’ sin before the Lord. God spared him of the disaster He was bringing on Judah because of the earlier generations’ sin (2 Kings 22:11,13,19-20).
Nehemiah confessed fathers’ and Israel’s sin (Nehemiah 1:5-7)
Ezra confessed forefathers’ sin (Ezra 9:5-15; 10:1)
The Israelites with Nehemiah confessed their fathers’ sin (Nehemiah 9:1-37)
Daniel confessed forefathers’ sin (Daniel 9:4-19)
Then consider the life patterns sown by divorce. Here are some excerpts from Wolfinger, a assistant professor at University of Utah.
“Growing up in a divorced family greatly increases the chances of ending one’s own marriage, a phenomenon called the divorce cycle or the intergenerational transmission of divorce.”
These children are more likely to marry as teens, cohabitate and marry someone who is also a child of divorced parents. And they are also one-third less likely to marry if they are over age 20.
“Divorce is an important topic because it has so many consequences for well-being,” “Its transmission between generations adds a whole new dimension by perpetuating the cycle of divorce. The divorce cycle, in short, can be thought of as a cascade. Ending a marriage starts a cycle that threatens to affect increasing numbers of people over time, a sobering thought in an era when half of all new marriages fail.”
Wolfinger’s research also suggests that if one spouse comes from divorced parents, the couple may be up to twice as likely to divorce. Spouses who are both children of divorced parents are three times more likely to divorce as couples who both hail from intact families.
“One reason children from divorced families get divorced more often is because they have a tendency to marry as teenagers,”
On the other hand, the more transitions children experience while growing up, the more they will experience as adults.” “What is the hardest for kids is how many disruptions they experience — the up-and-down cycles. Many will have stepparents, and some will see their new families dissolve. A disruption occurs any time they lose a parent — except from death. That’s different, and doesn’t have the same negative effects on children. Whereas divorce is ambiguous. Children wonder whether the divorce was their fault or who is to blame. And they wonder ‘Is he coming back?'”
Wolfinger writes, “It is certainly good news that people are less likely to stay in high conflict marriages than they used to.” However, “ending a low-conflict marriage may hurt children as much as staying in a high-conflict family,” and the odds of divorce transmission are actually highest if parents dissolve a marriage after little or no conflict.
Children of divorced parents often bitterly vow not to repeat the same mistakes. They want to avoid putting themselves and their own children through the pain that comes from the dissolution of a marriage. But, these children’s aspirations face unfavorable odds.
Life Patterns do exist, whether from just purely natural circumstances or being encouraged by destructive forces in our atmosphere. Some believe in generational curses, some don’t, and some believe they just relate to those who hate God. But, given the background of Satan to lie, deceive, to promote pride, self and violence, while stealing, killing, and destroying everything he has touched, I believe there has to something more going on then man making wrong choices. The world of demons that Jesus stepped out of the wilderness to attack, are still around us, invisible to our natural eyes, but readily seen by our spirits when filtered through the Word of God. They know our every weakness and seek to exploit it to the max. Jesus said just as ‘Violence’ filled the earth in the Days of Noah, so shall the end of time be. Do we see any ‘evil imaginations’ or any ‘violence’ around us today? The world is ready for her Antichrist, and those who believe in their Father are ready for their Jesus Christ.
Then when we see that only a few men can live in obedience to Yahweh without persecution, it makes the meaning of Jesus words more efficacious,”For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Matthew 7:14 Was Jesus telling us that man is so bad that he can’t get it right? Or, is He saying, there is more going on around us than meets the eye? He immediately came off a forty day fast and started attacking the devil’s kingdom, indicating that there are things we need to understand about our thoughts, words, actions and pattern of behaviors and their affect on the spirit world around us.
Click here for Life Patterns-Part Four