TOTEM

'Totem' by Cirque De Soliel is now here in Singapore. It started premiering on 28 Oct, my birthday. This was surely not a coincidence for I just read in Dr Marilyn Hickey's book that a totem is a symbol used by the African tribes in Zimbabwe. These totems represent their tribes. And the tribes take on the characteristic of that totem, becoming the object they worship. For example the Tribe with a snake as a totem has a reputation as a deceitful and scheming people.

I came across this book 'Blessing the next generation' by Marilyn Hickey and Sarah Bowling last Sunday. It talked about the family tree. They said that the passing of faith from generation to generation is a central theme in the bible. God desires for families to change, come to completion, continue and experience an increase in blessing. God wants to change everything negative, unproductive, ineffective or sinful into something positive, effective and good.

God desires a fullness that produces an overflow of abundance. From the beginning, God established a principle of multiplication. He commanded Adam and Eve to multiply. Multiplication produces abundance. God wants to heal us where we are weak or diseased - physically, mentally, emotionally and physically. He wants to make us whole. In Christ, the family or generational curse or sin has not only been broken but it has been reserved.

Whatever it is the devil desires to dredge from your family past, God desires to heal. What has been cursed, God desires to reverse it into a blessing. What has been a point of defeat, God desires to turn it into a testimony of victory. What we worship eventually comes to light, though the fruit of that sin may take years or decades to manifest, or maybe only fully visible until the next generation.

The bible also speaks of some demons as being 'familiar spirits'. Demons are familiar with history. They know your family tree, perhaps better than you do. They know the weakness and sinful behaviours lurking in your family history. However it takes only one person in a family to turn it around. And generational curses can be turned around into generational blessings. It is the creation of a heritage of goodness and wholeness.

Pastor Prince also mentioned that sometimes certain things that happened to us during childhood has affected the way we think or behave subconsciously. We may be even too small to understand all that or know that we have believed wrongly or have been hurt. But as we grow in the Lord, He will take us back to those hurts and heal them completely so we can move boldly into our future, set free from the ghosts of our past. This is so true of my life.

I was the first in the entire family tree to accept Christ. It was really tough back then. My dad threatened me when I chose bible study as a subject in secondary 3, but I persevered in my faith. My mum called me demon possessed and told my brothers to ostracise me. I was stopped from going to church by my dad in those early days. Talk about persecution! But I saw how it was true that when one in the family is saved, it's like God opened a door to work in the lives of other family members to come to salvation. Later on, I brought my youngest brother to accept Christ unbeknownst to my parents. Eventually my parents also came to know Christ. Now only my other brother has not yet come to know Christ.

After that I came to discover there were more of my extended family like uncles and aunts and cousins who are Christians. Not only, we all ended up attending NCC! I used to say that NCC is my family church! As I read this book, the Lord confirmed what He showed me years ago about my family tree: fornication, infidelity, adultery, gambling, mental illness, divorce, abortions, dysfunctional families, poverty etc. But once I accepted Christ, that curse was already reversed, so I am no longer under curse but under His blessings. I thank God that I can be used as a vessel to reverse that curse in my relatives' lives by telling them about Jesus. 

From my generation onwards, specifically my family, we have decided that as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Not just me and my hubby but also our children and children's children. The Lord also impressed upon me the importance of passing down this faith to my children because the consequences of not doing so may result in established blessings in a family lineage to be negated.

Like how Priest Eli failed to take his sons into his hands, like how King David was indulgent towards his sons especially Absalom, like how King Solomon had too many children to teach them the way of the Lord etc. Such are sobering examples. Now I better understand and appreciate my role as a mum and in praying for my children. It is really a generational relay race. And our children will go further than we have achieved in our lives, by the grace of God.