You are undoubtedly familiar with the Biblical story of God delivering the Children of Israel from Egyptian bondage. What you may not be familiar with, is that at the moment God decided to set them free, the Children of Israel had been in Egyptian bondage for 430 years. And not only were they in physical bondage, they were enslaved mentally to a “generational culture of bondage.”
Bondage to their generational culture controlled how they saw life, understood life, reasoned, lived, heard, behaved, and how they taught their children to behave. Their greatest aspiration in life was simply to survive. Their lives reflected the culture in which they were immersed. Each generation had imposed its view of reality upon the next. And by the time 430 years had passed, they had become bound by the chains of their generational culture. I believe they may have adopted the credo I find in many Baptist Churches today: “It’s always been like this; we’ve always done it this way, and we’ve never done it that way before!”
All too often, we encounter people bound by the chains of their generational culture today. We encounter them in our churches, workplaces, schools, and even in our own families. This generational culture manifests itself in a hundred different ways. It could be poverty, broken homes, physical and mental abuse, bullying, sexual immorality, illegitimacy, illiteracy, elitism, racism, addictions of all sorts, low or no self-esteem, anorexia, depression, or you name it! It’s there.
So, what’s my encouraging word to you today? It’s simply this: Learn to be a Moses. You see, Moses’ pronouncement to Pharaoh to “Let my people go,” was nothing more than God’s pronouncement to the Children of Israel that after 430 years, the chains of their “generational culture” were about to be broken! Their culture was going to change! So, be the person who looks into the eyes of the people that God brings across your life path who are bound by their generational culture and announce to them that they no longer have to be bound by those chains! Assure them that while it’s true that they cannot control where they started – they can control where they’re going! Just because something has always been the way it is – doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way. They may be the one God uses to break the bonds of somebody else’s generational culture! For the Children of Israel, generational culture change was manifested in one person: Moses.
What we fail to realize in this story is that for 430 years the Egyptian slave owners determined what the structure of the Hebrew family unit looked like. They had decimated it! The slave owner determined if the Hebrew husband/father would be in the family unit. At his whim he could sell him to a new owner. The same was true for the wife/mother and the children. His actions impacted the culture of the Hebrew family, which in turn, impacted the Egyptian family, which in turn, had a tremendous impact upon the Egyptian government.
As the Hebrews, America suffers from a generational culture today that has decimated our families. The American family unit is in chaos! This adversely impacts every segment of society. We need generational culture change. And this change has to start somewhere. Perhaps it will start with you taking a stand. I wonder – will you dare to be a Moses?
Bro. Aaron