In the late 80’s there was a blockbuster trilogy called “Back to the Future”; complete with a time-traveling DeLorean and puffy red vest coats.  The story’s hero, Marty McFly, gets sent back to 1955 by his friend “Doc” Brown.  This is when his parents are in high school – how weird would it to meet a high school version of your parents? – and they are supposed to meet, fall in love, and the rest is history … in the future.  Well, anyway, Marty gets all in the middle of everything and does a fine job of making a muddle of it.  His Mom ends up falling in love with him (Ewww) instead of his dad.  The most poignant scene of the whole movie is when he is up on the stage at the high school prom and he starts feeling funny.  He looks at his hand and it is beginning to disappear.  He had a family picture from the future.  The rest of the family had already disappeared and he was beginning to.  In other words, his parents better fall in love PRONTO or he would no longer be.  And lucky for him, they did.

We know so little about how time really works.  So many stories and movies are made about going into the past or the future.  We have some sort of sense that if we were to go into the past, we might have the same effect that Marty was having.  We could change what happened back then and the whole course of the future would change.  I suspect that one way or the other, we’d do a jolly good job of screwing it up.

I marvel at the God who does time travel with ease and perfection.

Have you ever thought about what you are really asking when you pray for generational healing?  Let’s say, for example, you discovered that your great-great grandfather on your father’s side was the crookedest politician the city had ever seen.  Just about every critter he could get into covenant with he did.  Well, you don’t want his junk coming downstream to you, so you go to the Lord and ask Him to do what?  You ask Him to go back to that time in history, to that particular person’s life and break all the unrighteous covenants that he spoke into real-time (like as in some real day of his life).  You repent for his sin, ask God to forgive, and then remove all the effects from your present life.  We have all done it on many occasions, but I invite you to stop and think what it really means.

You are asking God to fiddle with the past so that you don’t experience the consequences in the future.  How amazing is that?  Marty was in the past for about five minutes before he was causing problems.  God went back and removed all the toxicity of the deeds of your ancestor, and YOU are still here.  You didn’t suddenly disappear or wake up one morning on an entirely different continent.  He didn’t report back to you and say, “well, sorry, I kinda botched this one.  You don’t mind having different parents do you?”  All of the people before you may have made life decisions based on the defilement that you are removing from the family line now.  Yet, God can go in like a master surgeon and change the effect on you without changing the whole of your existence.  WOW.  When you think of all the things that are interwoven into the paths that lead to our lives, this is a staggering accomplishment.

All of us know what it is like to experience the literal, sometimes quite physical difference of generational cleansing.  It’s real.  It’s not just a warm fuzzy that we can comfort ourselves with knowing.  There are people who see overnight changes in their finances, relationships, connection to God, and physical well-being.  One of the most common physical changes happens when there is freemasonry in the family line.  Let’s say you have a choking feeling that comes on you from time to time, or is always present to a certain degree.  You go through the renunciations for freemasonry and mysteriously the symptoms disappear … but you do not.  Nor do your parents or your children or your nationality or family history.  God travels to the past without marring the present.  In fact, He leaves you with a better one than you had!

Sorry Doc and Marty.  You ain’t got nothing on the God of time!