You may have missed the Blessing like I did, perhaps in even more dramatic or difficult ways. But all our paths lead to a turning point.
To a choice.
The choice I made at seventeen, the choice you may need to make, isn’t something new. We can see an amazing picture of it in the choice a young boy made centuries ago. If you’ve never read about him, it’s an amazing story of how anyone, even someone from the worst of backgrounds, can make a change. Josiah looked at the pictures of his life and made a choice. Not as a teenager like me but as a child.
The Bible’s Picture of Breaking Generational Curses
Josiah was only eight. He was one of the rulers of the southern kingdom in ancient Judah during the divided monarchy. The reign passed from father to son, generation after generation. Josiah had received it from his father, Amon, who had received it from his father, Manasseh.
Josiah’s Family History of Curses
In 2 Kings 21, the Scriptures describe the reign of Josiah’s grandfather:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hephzibah. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, in accordance with the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had destroyed; and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, just as Ahab king of Israel had done, and he worshiped all the heavenly lights and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put My name.” 2 Kings 21:1-4
Then here come some of the horrific things Manasseh added to his list of evils:
He built altars for all the heavenly lights in the two courtyards of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, interpreted signs, practiced divination, and used mediums and spiritists. He did great evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger. 2 Kings 21:5-6
Those altars he built were for child sacrifice. Those people he surrounded himself with were consorting with demonic powers. Manasseh’s reign was characterized by widespread apostasy and wholesale wickedness, with prostitutes offering their services in the Temple and children being offered as sacrifices on those altars and just outside the city in the Valley of Hinnom. So great was the influence of Manasseh’s wickedness that he pushed the entire nation into doing more evil than the Canaanites, who lived near them, people God had driven out of the land centuries earlier (2 Kings 21:9).
We are often told, “Like father, like son. Like mother, like daughter.” It’s almost a certainty that history repeats itself. Manasseh certainly succeeded in passing down a legacy of evil to the next generation. For we read,
Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. . . . He did evil in the sight of the Lord, just as his father Manasseh had done. For he walked entirely in the way that his father had walked, and served the idols that his father had served, and worshiped them. So he abandoned the Lord, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord. 2 Kings 21:19-22
That’s just what we and the social scientists would have expected. After all, Amon had been raised in a culture of death and evil. We shouldn’t be surprised that he followed his father’s pattern. In fact, we’re told that “he walked entirely in the way that his father had walked.” That is, until a palace conspiracy cut short Amon’s reign. Scripture tells us he was slaughtered in his own home by those terrible people he’d surrounded himself with!
When History Doesn’t Have to Repeat Itself
Now Amon’s son, a boy king, ascended the throne.
Think about the background Josiah brought with him. His grandfather was not just a king but the king of wickedness and evil. His own father, who had just been murdered, was every bit as bad.
Today, we’d call this a clear multigenerational, systemic, circular pattern—one repeated and passed down from father to son. We see it constantly, and for most it’s considered settled science. Thus we’d expect that the next words in Scripture concerning Josiah would be “And Amon’s son Josiah became king, and he walked in all the ways of his grandfather Manasseh and his father, Amon, and he also did evil in God’s sight.”
After all, why not? History is destiny, right? Yet while we absolutely do see generational transmission take place, it’s of a very different kind!
That Choice Many of Us Need to Make Today
Josiah’s Choice to Begin Breaking Generational Curses
Here is what 2 Kings 21 actually goes on to say:
“Josiah was eight years old when he became king. . . . He did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked entirely in the way of his father David” (2 Kings 22:1-2, emphasis added).
Wait a moment. He did what? Not evil?
And what about Josiah’s following a different father—David?
Is that an example of an error in the Bible? Certainly not.
Josiah’s biological father was indeed Amon. But Josiah, even at eight years old, realized he had a choice. History is not destiny when God’s love and life and blessing give us the ability to change the pictures.
Josiah chose a different generational pattern. He skipped back 350 years to pick a model for his life story, a king named David. He wanted a godly ancestor to follow and model his life after. King David wasn’t perfect, but he was still a man after God’s own heart. And such a man would Josiah become as well.
I’ve spoken with many people whose story of missing the Blessing involved far more pain and difficulty than mine. But I haven’t spoken to anyone whose background was any worse than Josiah’s. His grandfather slaughtered infants and led a whole nation into evil, and his father was just as evil until he was murdered in his own home.
Josiah inherited not only the throne but also a dark and distorted picture of what the person looked like who sat on that throne. But like us, Josiah had a choice: He could live by the pictures he was left with or he could look through the family album for some other picture to live by.
Choosing a Different Spiritual Father
Looking at the pictures, Josiah decided to step away from his physical father and into line with an ancestor from a decidedly stronger spiritual lineage. In doing so, he changed the story of his life. When he made that choice, he was able to reverse the curse that had been handed him and live out the Blessing. That choice changed not only his future, but also the future of Judah.
What changed is the same thing that can reverse the curse we’ve been surrounded with—that God-given grace and power to make a different choice. We can choose to change our story by changing the pictures that influence it.
What’s so remarkable about the power of that choice is that it doesn’t just stop the flow of negative pictures handed down from one generation to the next. It actually reverses the flow. We can choose which pictures we live by, and we can choose which pictures we leave behind. We can move from death to life, from curse to blessing, the same way Josiah did.
I’ve spoken with many people whose story of missing the Blessing involved far more pain and difficulty than mine. But I haven’t spoken to anyone whose background was any worse than Josiah’s. His grandfather slaughtered infants and led a whole nation into evil, and his father was just as evil until he was murdered in his own home. Josiah inherited not only the throne but also a dark and distorted picture of what the person looked like who sat on that throne. But like us, Josiah had a choice: He could live by the pictures he was left with or he could look through the family album for some other picture to live by. He needed to go back a number of generations, stopping at the picture of David, Israel’s greatest king. David was very human, his life filled with turmoil and tragedy. He failed in many ways. But he owned up to his failures and humbled himself and sought forgiveness. He was a man with feet of clay, but at his very core, he was a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22). Looking at the pictures, Josiah decided to step away from his physical father and into line with an ancestor from a decidedly stronger spiritual lineage. In doing so, he changed the story of his life. When he made that choice, he was able to reverse the curse that had been handed him and live out the Blessing. That choice changed not only his future, but also the future of Judah. The three decades of Josiah’s reign were among the happiest in Judah’s experience. They were characterized by peace, prosperity, and reform. No outside enemies made war, the people could concentrate on constructive activity, and Josiah himself sought to please God by reinstituting matters commanded in the Mosaic Law.1 The choice Josiah made can’t be mandated by committee, whether that committee is the Supreme Court or the local church. You don’t walk away from a background like his by having more education or indoctrination or legislation. What changed is the same thing that can reverse the curse we’ve been surrounded with—that God-given grace and power to make a different choice. We can choose to change our story by changing the pictures that influence it. What’s so remarkable about the power of that choice is that it doesn’t just stop the flow of negative pictures handed down from one generation to the next. It actually reverses the flow. We can choose which pictures we live by, and we can choose which pictures we leave behind. We can move from death to life, from curse to blessing, the same way Josiah did. A record of some of those pictures is found in 2 Kings 23. So remarkable was Josiah’s influence that the Scriptures memorialized him with this tribute: “Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might, in conformity to the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kings 23:25). Not a bad caption for the pictures he left behind. I’d settle for it in a heartbeat. Thankfully, according to God’s Word, we all can.
Reversing the Curse with God’s Blessing
In another dramatic Old Testament story, God shares an amazing truth with His people, a truth Josiah would have read about in his public reading of the Law. Under the inspired leadership of Moses, the nation of Israel had emerged from hundreds of years of slavery and crossed an inhospitable desert. But even then, their misery was compounded. For along the way, they received neither food nor water from the hands of those already living in the land. One king in particular even hired a noted sorcerer, Balaam, to curse them. But listen to God’s words to his own people in response to what they suffered: “The Lord your God was unwilling to listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loves you” (Deuteronomy 23:5). His love reverses the curse. His love replaces the curse with the Blessing. Did you notice how “the Lord your God” is repeated three times? It’s hard to miss that picture. Hard to miss the fact that, as Josiah did, as I had to do, and as you may have to do, we can choose pictures other than the ones we were given. We can pick new pictures of blessing, even if we never saw them growing up.
