Patterns That Run Down a Family Line
"You shall know them by their fruits." — Matthew 7:16
Discipline You Can Read
Discipline from agreement sins is usually easy to recognize — especially when it originated with an ancestor.
All you have to do is look for patterns, either in your own life or coming down through your family line.
The pattern you are looking for is usually some form of destruction or illness. Where you find that kind of pattern, there is a good chance a spirit of discipline is behind it, tied to an agreement sin.
The Clearest Example
Addiction is the pattern that appears most consistently.
In work with people struggling with addictions, a simple question gets asked: raise your hand if your parents or grandparents also struggled with addictions.
Around eighty percent raise their hands.
Addiction is often a spirit of discipline tied to an agreement sin. Which has a direct practical consequence: if you want to be rid of the addiction, you must first renounce the agreement. Repentance alone will not do it, because an agreement sin requires renunciation as well.
That is why so many people repent sincerely of an addiction, over and over, and remain bound. They have been applying the wrong remedy with great persistence.
The Other Patterns
Addiction is only one. Others commonly seen running down family lines:
Abuse. Divorce. Anxiety. Asthma. Cancer. Early death. Suicide. Financial collapse. Infertility. Rage.
Doctors typically describe these as "you are genetically predisposed to such-and-such." And within their frame of reference, they are being accurate — they are looking at it from a physical perspective, and physical predisposition is real.
But on a spiritual level, you will often find the true source is an unrepented sin — in this case, an agreement sin.
How do we know? Because working through this process frequently gets rid of those issues. And if it does, it was a spirit of discipline.
That is the test. Not theory — outcome.
The Pattern Matches the Sin
One more observation that will help you identify what you are looking at.
Spirits of discipline usually operate in a manner similar to the sin that gave them their legal right.
Consider the businessman whose enterprise collapsed repeatedly across twenty-three years. Through prayer it was identified as an agreement sin coming down his family line: his great-great-great-grandfather had been a plantation owner with slaves. Enslaving people is an atrocious sin — one of the few in the Old Testament punishable by death (Exodus 21:16).
And the discipline matched the sin. Slavery is a sin focused on economic gain; therefore the discipline coming down was economic destruction. Which was exactly what he had been experiencing.
He repented, renounced the agreements, and asked God to remove it. Within about three months, the storm ceased. From high stress to no stress. From no rest in sight to breathing freely.
The shape of what afflicts you may be pointing at what caused it.
Point to Ponder
The discipline often looks like the sin. What is being destroyed in your life may be telling you what to look for.
Verse to Remember
"You shall know them by their fruits." — Matthew 7:16
Question to Consider
What is being destroyed in my life — and what kind of sin destroys in that particular way?
Today's Practice
Work backward from the pattern.
Take your dominant family pattern and ask what kind of sin operates in that domain.
Economic destruction — greed, theft, exploitation, oppression of workers, dishonest gain, enslaving or dominating others.
Broken marriages — adultery, abandonment, betrayal, treating covenant as disposable.
Illness in the women of the line — abuse of women, abortion, sexual exploitation.
Early death — bloodshed, violence, sins involving the taking of life.
Mental torment — occult involvement, witchcraft, the seeking of knowledge or power from forbidden sources.
Addiction — anything used to replace God as a source of comfort or escape.
This is not a formula and you should not treat it as one. It is a place to start asking, not a diagnostic key.
Take your findings to God and ask directly: Father, what is at the root of this pattern in my family? Then write down what comes over the following days.
Prayer
Father, there is a pattern in my family that nobody has ever been able to explain or stop.
Show me what is at the root of it. If the shape of the discipline points to the shape of the sin, help me read it.
And whatever it is — even if it goes back generations, even if I never learn the name of the person who did it — I want it dealt with.
Let me be the one who ends this. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Slavery is a sin of economic gain. What came down the line was economic destruction.