Why I believe curses are real, and how Christ breaks them

I’ve spent decades watching Jesus set people free. I’ve also spent decades confronting one of the most misunderstood subjects in the Church: family curses. For years, I thought I understood my own testimony.

I grew up with an alcoholic, schizophrenic, and sexually abusive father from Hollywood, California, whom I saw intermittently between the ages of four and seventeen. I was raised in the Mormon Church and later discovered significant family ties to Freemasonry. There were also large sections of my childhood that I simply could not remember. I assumed those missing years were normal and never questioned them. When I was forty-seven, everything changed.

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I had just finished speaking at a prayer conference in Perth, Australia. That night, while I was alone with the Lord, the Holy Spirit encountered me in a way I will never forget. He didn’t simply comfort me, He resurrected something inside me.

In that moment, I realized half of my heart had been emotionally and spiritually dead.

In that moment, I realized half of my heart had been emotionally and spiritually dead. I had no idea. I had learned to live that way. Trauma has a way of shutting parts of us down so we can survive, and when it happens over many years, you often don’t realise you’ve stopped feeling altogether. A dead heart doesn’t know it’s dead. That’s one of the cruelest effects of trauma, it convinces you that surviving is the same thing as living.

The Bible says that God can remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). That is exactly what it felt like. His love flooded places inside me that had been unreachable for decades. It wasn’t emotional hype or wishful thinking. It was the tangible, healing presence of God. Scripture tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). If our hearts shape the course of our lives, then healing the heart is not optional, it’s foundational. But that beautiful encounter wasn’t the end of my healing. It was the beginning.

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As my heart awakened, long-buried memories from my childhood began to surface.

As my heart awakened, long-buried memories from my childhood began to surface. There was a reason those memories had been locked away. As painful as they were, the Holy Spirit wasn’t exposing them to harm me; He was uncovering them so He could heal me.

By then I had been following Jesus for nearly thirty years, having come to faith at eighteen. My healing unfolded over time. I began receiving prayer from an experienced inner healing and deliverance minister while also working with a trauma therapist. I needed both. Trauma impacts us spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and even biologically. God cares about every part of us, and He used both prayer ministry and wise clinical care to restore what had been broken.

As I walked through that process with the Lord, I came to understand that I had experienced severe occult abuse and exploitation as a child. The healing journey was costly, time-consuming, and deeply painful, but it was also nothing short of miraculous. God proved Himself able to restore even the most shattered places of a person’s life.

While I had long believed in the reality of curses, my healing journey revealed just how deeply they can affect individuals and families, and how much greater the power of Jesus Christ is to shatter them. I didn’t just study this truth; I lived it. Whenever I teach on family curses, I usually encounter two extremes. The first says, “Christ became a curse for us, therefore Christians cannot experience curses.” Galatians 3:13 is absolutely true. Jesus bore the curse of the Law completely. His work on the Cross is finished.

But here’s the question: if every believer automatically walks in complete freedom, why do so many Christian families battle the same destructive cycles generation after generation? Addiction. Abuse. Occult involvement. Fear. Mental torment. Broken relationships. These patterns don’t disappear simply because we ignore them.

The second extreme is just as dangerous. Some Christians become obsessed with deliverance, chasing dramatic experiences instead of biblical transformation. They spend years looking for another prayer line, another minister, or another manifestation, yet never become rooted in Christ or His Word. Freedom isn’t found in sensationalism. It’s found in Jesus. The Bible gives us a better framework.

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Throughout Scripture, God describes His relationship with His people as a covenant. Like a faithful husband, He binds Himself to His people and the generations after them with promises of blessing, protection, and inheritance. When Israel repeatedly turned to idols, God called it spiritual adultery because they had entered into counterfeit spiritual allegiances.

The occult still works that way today. It imitates what God established. Whether through idolatry, witchcraft, Freemasonry, occult rituals, or other forms of spiritual darkness, these counterfeit allegiances can leave generations living under oppression until someone decides the cycle ends with them. That is why Jesus came.

He didn’t simply forgive our sins; He came to destroy the works of the devil. Through His death and resurrection, He established a new covenant that is stronger than every counterfeit covenant of darkness. As we repent, forgive, renounce every agreement with darkness, and fully surrender ourselves to Christ, His victory becomes more than a theological truth—it becomes our lived reality. I’ve watched Him do exactly that in my own life.

The enemy had worked for generations to build an inheritance of occultism, abuse, and bondage in my family. Jesus dismantled it. He didn’t merely forgive my sins or make me feel better, He broke the power of darkness, severed counterfeit spiritual inheritances, and established a new covenant that now defines my family line. What Satan spent generations building, Jesus Christ has the authority to destroy.

Maybe you see recurring patterns in your own family. Perhaps fear, addiction, abuse, rejection, or spiritual darkness seems to have followed one generation after another. Don’t believe the lie that this is simply your family’s story. Jesus has the final word. Your past does not define your future. Your family history does not determine your destiny. The Cross is greater than every curse, and the covenant of Christ is stronger than every counterfeit covenant of darkness. You don’t have to carry everything you inherited. In Christ, you can become the one who breaks the cycle, and leave a legacy of blessing for generations to come.