You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord
your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the
children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but
showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My
commandments. (Exodus 20:5-6 NASB)
I've had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing
generational sin first hand. Truth be told, it's a beast I've battled my entire
life. I know I’m not alone in this. As a matter of fact, I think everyone suffers
the effects of generational sin in some fashion. We all fall short of the glory of Christ,
therefore the generations that follow must deal with the consequences.
For a few reasons, this past Father's day was an extremely
difficult for me. One of those reasons
was the recent passing of my grandfather.
I got a call one afternoon from my parents: "Grandpa's in the
hospital. They don't think he has much time". My paternal grandfather. Over the previous two years, I'd received
this call on a couple other occasions. There was something different about this
time though, so I decided to make the almost five hour drive to go see him.
We'd never been close, my grandfather and I. To be bluntly honest, I harbored a great deal
of hatred for the man. He was an abusive
and hard man who ruled his family by physical beatings, verbal degradation, and
the spirit of fear. We're not talking
about the modern day definition of abuse, a little spank on the bottom. We're talking about tossed down stairs,
smashed into walls, black and blue with broken limbs abuse. And that was just the physical.
I'll never forget a story I was told about my father as a
little boy...
