Break The Cycle.
But Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God.
Genesis 39:8-9 NLT
Sun Tzu, Chinese general and author of The Art of War once said that “If you know yourself and your enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Essentially, if you know yourself—the strengths and resources you have access to, weaknesses you’re likely to be affected by and the core drivers and desires you’re motivated by—as well as who your enemy is, what they want to do to you and how they’re likely to go about it, you have most of what you need to win the battle.
The Bible says that we find ourselves in a cosmic controversy. It’s a battle not of bombs and bullets but a war waged on a spiritual front. While God has won the war, if we are to benefit from all that comes from the victory, we must follow the advice of Sun Tzu to study ourselves and our enemy. The good news is that God doesn’t just give us the tools to know ourselves; He gives us insider information regarding our enemy's plan. The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. The devil's playbook to derail us from our kingly calling has been the same for millennia. Like a basketball player with only one hand, the devil is predictable. From story to story and generation to generation, he attempts the same derailing deceptions.
One of the devil's most famous attacks is that of familial cycles of sin. He knows that if he makes something destructive seem normal, he can destroy generations without lifting a finger. Suppose the people you grow up seeing, trusting and being nurtured by, engage in destructive habits that are never fully addressed and repented from. In that case, these habits can be engraved into what you consider a normal lifestyle and worldview. It creates a self-renewing stumbling block as all parties are affected but none seem to know how to get true freedom. These harmful habits left unchecked begin to grow as they are passed down, leading to compounding effects from generation to generation.
The first three rungs of the abrahamic family tree offer a discourse on the cyclical nature of familial sins. The devil finds what works and doesn’t seem to deviate from it. Abraham is seen lying about his wife. Abraham’s daughter in law, Rebecca, is seen lying to her husband and sons, Jacob and Esau. Rebecca’s son Jacob is seen lying to his father and brother, and Laban and Leah are seen lying to Jacob. The first and often unprovoked reaction and response of this family seems to be deception. The devil knows the weakness of their proclivity and seems to keep hitting the same button to get the same result.
This family's sinful cycles don’t just involve lying. They seemingly lie to protect themselves from potential conflict, but they also have a tendency to cut corners when what God called them to seems hard. You know the story. Abraham and Sarah are way beyond child-bearing years, but God has called them to produce nations. In order to “help God out”, Sarah tells Abraham to sleep with her servant, Hagar. Hagar gets pregnant and gives birth to Ishmael. This causes contention as Hagar starts to pick on Sarah for being infertile. Some time later, God shows that He still hasn’t given up on the original plan, as Sarah gets pregnant and gives birth to the promised son, Isaac.
As time goes on, we see the son from the short cut picking on the son of the promise. Ishmael, the son created because “God was taking too long,” starts to persecute Isaac, the son through which the promise would be fulfilled. Abraham and Sarah bringing Hagar into their lives in this intimate way added loads of unnecessary conflict and tension that could’ve all been avoided if they just trusted God through the dark season of infertility.
All of this tension is created because they opt to sleep with the servant instead of trusting God. The promised son is picked on by the son of the servant because they didn’t trust God. Marital conflict arises because they slept with the servant instead of trusting God. However it seems that Isaac never tells his son Jacob about what he learned from his family tree because he turns around and does the same thing.
Abraham should be an expert on why having two women in your life brings drama, and should have warned his children, but Jacob doesn’t get the memo and marries Rachel and Leah. Ok, so you could say that Jacob was tricked into that by Laben so we can give him a pass. At least he wouldn’t sleep with a servant to complicate things more, right? Wrong! He takes it up a notch and fathers three more children with two different servants. The cycle is continued.
These unchecked patterns seem to grow in severity as time passes! And the pattern doesn’t end there. You guessed it, the sons of the servants start to pick on the favored son. Joseph was the youngest son born to a favored woman like Isaac was to Sarah. Now the women they brought in because they didn’t trust the lord have contention with her like Hagar did with Sarah, and their sons start to pick on Joseph like Ishmael did to Isaac. It’s the same pattern. Joseph's brothers replay their mother's beef and pick on him just like Ishmael did with Isaac.
Story after story, generation after generation, this favored family falls the same way every few chapters. They experience unnecessary drama, trauma, and heartbreak by rehearsing a response that was considered normal in their family. You may wonder why no one stood up to point out and put a stop to this poisonous pattern. In four generations, no one noticed that the lies they threw out like candy always ended in heartache and pain? No one noticed how many setbacks, splits and scars were the direct result of the harmful habit this family seemed to rely on? No one noticed that even when facing infertility, going outside of God's playbook never seemed to work out? No one saw these patterns and cycles and said enough is enough?
While the cycle gets to Joseph, the good news is that Joseph seems to break it. Joseph displays an integrity that no one else seems to have. The betrayal and abuse that his brothers meant for evil is actually used to rescue him from the toxic environment he could've copied. You too can be like Joseph. You don't have to live like the rest of your family. Your context doesn't have to impact your character. If you are to break these cycles, we need to take a look at why so many others don't.
Why Many Don’t.
Familial cycles of sin are hard to break free from for many reasons. It is said that movement only happens when the pain of stagnation is greater than the fear of moving forward. To be honest with you, many are too comfortable in dysfunction to fight for a better life for themselves or their kids.
Freedom is also hard to find because we can become nose blind to what we’ve experienced for a long time. Negative habits become the norm. Have you ever been to someone's house or in someone’s car and it smelled crazy but they didn’t notice? They have been around the dysfunction so long that they no longer notice it. Dysfunction and disarray are now their normal, so it’s difficult to even know another option exists.
I have met so many people that desire to break the cycles of dysfunction in their families but have no idea how many of their habits are contributing to them because they’ve become so normal. They’re nose blind. Everyone in your family dealt with father wounds, but the only way you know how to parent is like your father… perpetuating the cycle. If infidelity is expected in your family, odds are you don’t even realize the lack of boundaries and emotional wounds you carry that have led to that result for years. Health problems and shortened life spans are persistent, but it's been so normalized that no one can stop and question the family diet.
This is why changing sceneries or connecting with an outside perspective is often needed to make us aware of the issues we don’t realize are issues. One thing we learn from this story is that getting away from the environment you are used to may be beneficial in the goal to get away from habits that may be hindering you. There is actually evidence of addictions leaving when addicts simply get a new environment. A new environment can not only take away triggers, limit opportunity to relapse, it can introduce you to people who can show you another way of life. It may only be after you go to your friend’s house for Thanksgiving that you realize families don’t have to fight and fuss like yours does at every function. It may only be after getting close to someone with financial health that you begin to see what is possible. You need an outside audit to see what lifestyle upgrades you may be missing out on.
People who don’t deal with the same setbacks often have completely different lifestyles. They have different perspectives and exhibit different patterns that could be utilized to get yourself out of persistent issues. Not only that, they can often see and point out the bad habits you’ve grown nose blind to from a mile away because they’re so opposite of what they know is working in their lives. We must pray for our eyes to be opened to the things we see as normal that are holding us back from the prosperity God intended. God often does this through interactions with people who have health in the area we have dysfunction.
Marriage counselors will tell you to be careful getting relationship advice from immature, jealous and single friends. Why? Because they likely don’t have the buy-in, experience, or perspective necessary to give you advice in the season you’re in. They don’t know how to hold a healthy relationship so why would you trust them to steward yours? This is why spiritual and trusted counselors and mentors are needed. Get advice from people who are where you want to be, not people who are stuck where you’re trying to leave. Don’t ask a current drug addict how to get off drugs. Ask someone who’s clean. That person may be outside of your current bubble or sphere of influence, so be open to being stretched. How much hurt, harm, and danger could be avoided in your life if the reckless responses you have grown nose-blind to were addressed and stopped? Let someone who has a healthier perspective be your eyes to help lead you out.
Freedom is also hard to find because it comes on the other side of honesty. In order to break free from familial faults, you have to admit familial faults. Many of us ignore or turn a blind eye to the harmful habits and sinful cycles found in our families because admitting them would put a damper on our support system, community, and perceived foundation. Many of us don’t have the courage to fully face the faults of our loved ones. I get it, but I want you to recognize that when you choose comfort over healing, you’re choosing continual abuse and suffering for you and your children. It’s ok to honor your loved ones while also being honest about the generational habits you want to stop with you.
This is your call to break the cycle. How many problems would be avoided if Abraham and Sarah told their children and grandchildren about their cyclical sins and proclivities? What if Abraham manned up enough to tell Isaac and Rebecca about the dangers of dishonesty? What if they admitted their mistakes and how much the “little white lies” who’s intent was to protect actually hurt them? What if they talked about their infertility journey and how hard it was to trust God through it? What if they warned their children and grandchildren of the temptation they’d have to sleep with other women and how much damage it would do to the familial unit? Would Joseph’s brothers, the sons of extramarital affairs, have had a chance to pick on him if Abraham had warned his offspring of what happened when the son of his extramarital affair did the same thing?
I’m asking you to stand up and break the cycle. Every man in your family becomes an alcoholic after joining the army. Your son is about to enlist. Don’t you think it’s time to tell him what to watch out for? Everyone in your family is in their second or third marriage. Divorce seems to have been the norm in the last three generations. You’ve seen how damaging the effects are. Now your son is about to get married. Are you going to let him go in blind or will you own up to your mistakes and break the curse? You and your father have struggled with porn and you haven’t talked to your son about the likelihood in his own life? Do you want to stay comfortable or stand up and confront the crisis?
I get that comfort and community is found in what you're used to. However, these harmful habits are killing your purpose. Be bold enough to say the abuse, neglect, fear and blind eye stops with you.
I’m grateful to have family members who put up fights and even broke some ties so that their familial baggage didn't rest on me. I’m grateful for the cycles my parents warned me about before I’d have to face them. It's a blessing that when I went to high school and college and was around alcohol, I could remember my mom saying that we had a family proclivity to addiction. I was able to avoid something that could derail my life and greatly impact my future children because I was warned about something that may have been viewed as harmless before. Your kids are asking for honesty from you. Talk about the failed marriage. Talk about the abuse. Talk about the pregnancy and what the statistics say it will likely mean in your kids' lives. Prepare them for the fight and give them the confidence to defeat the generational foe. Many parents try to hold back and soften the truth for the sake of emotions, however, that is truly selfish pride at work. You would rather your children see you and your family in a positive light than save them from the potential hell that is around the corner? You’d rather avoid a few hard conversations and sobering truths than protect your child from heartache that will be tenfold in their life if it doesn’t stop with you?
You may be wondering when the right time is. I get it. Some children are too young to hear some things in their full color, but prepare them. You’re never too young to hear your parents admit that they aren’t perfect, and that they’ve made mistakes they desire to repent from. Some of your kids have never heard you admit fault and take real responsibility for anything and it’s holding them back from freedom. Another point to consider when determining how to prepare your children is the stage of life they’re at. If you got pregnant at 16, you can have some real conversations about it when your kid is 14. If the overdose happened at 20, be honest with them before they're 20. Be honest, if you were old enough to fall, they’re old enough to be prepared.
The devil is banking on the fact that you will be too cowardly to speak up and admit your mistakes. The devil is counting on you to shut up about how he caught you so that he can get your kids in the same way. This is how most scams work. They bet on the fact that being scammed is so embarrassing that people won’t warn the people around them. Are you going to be so image conscious that you avoid honesty?
This is why the gospel is so important. Finding identity in Christ makes it possible to be fully known and fully loved. If you’re having trouble with the concept of fully admitting fault or coming to terms with brokenness, odds are you haven’t fully experienced the gospel. The gospel is the good news that you can be honest and still loved. Your works don’t earn salvation so they also can’t turn it away. Putting all of your brokenness on the table doesn’t make God love or choose you less. Many of us believe that what we do determines how we’re viewed and how we’re viewed determines our safety and security in the communities we find ourselves in. That’s why we always try to keep up a facade of perfection and pedigree. However, the gospel throws it all on its head. Jesus says that He came for sick people. Could it be that the key to God healing your family is admitting you’re sick and that you need a doctor?
I ask that you ask God to open your eyes to what cycles you may have grown numb to. Ask God to bring mentors and counselors to show you a better way and to make you humble enough to accept those outside perspectives when they come. Ask God to give you the boldness and opportunity to stop the cycles that your family, culture, church or community has silently struggled with for centuries, before you pass them off to another generation. Freedom will come when you are honest enough to break the cycle.
If this message blessed you, I’m asking that you share it with a few people who you want to break a cycle with. Send it to people who you are committing to move forward with as you step into the better that God has called you to.
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