A popular Christian pastor known for speaking out on the spiritual matters of the day believes Christians need to take a deeper look at the generational issues he says can impede individuals and families.
Mike Signorelli, pastor of V1 Church in New York City and author of the new book, “Inherit Your Freedom: Break Generational Curses and Reclaim the Future God Has for You,” implored Christians to ponder the familial issues that could be opening the door to spiritual problems.
“If you’re listening to this podcast and you go to a medical professional and you’re just getting a routine exam, they’re going to ask you, ‘Do you have, like, a heart condition in your family?'” he said. “We understand this from a biological standpoint, right? That there are inherited conditions.”
Signorelli continued, “We understand from a genetic level and now what we’re starting to understand is from an epigenetic level that even things like musicality can be transmitted through the genes.”
With this in mind, the preacher takes a unique approach in his book to help assemble diagnostic tools he believes will help uncover spiritual issues with which people might be contending. Listen to him explain:
“I think, if we can make the logical leap from the genetic, to the epigenetic, to the spiritual, I also think things like addiction … alcoholism, many people have a genetic predisposition to that as well,” Signorelli said. “And, so, is there a spiritual side to that?”
He’s on a mission to help people uncover the “curses” impacting their families so they can find true healing and purpose. While some might find the solution to curing these issues is to simply perform a deliverance — that is, the expulsion of demons — Signorelli said it’s more complicated.
“I wish I could tell you that we’ll just cast demons out of you and that’s going to solve everything,” he said. “But, unfortunately, what happens if you do need deliverance is that those demons have been lying to you for such a long period of time that they’ve actually rewired your brain and you have what the Bible calls strongholds in your mind that need to be deconstructed and demolished.”
And once that happens, Signorelli said it’s essential to rebuild, so he’s hoping “Inherit Your Freedom” accomplishes that goal. Of course, it’s the demonic part of the equation that tends to get the most attention — and with good reason.
“When you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — and those are the first four books of the New Testament that give account of Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection — upwards to 30% of every account that you will read was Jesus confronting a demon,” Signorelli said. “And people were receiving freedom as a result of it.”
Some of these cases even contended with physical ailments, with the preacher mentioning a woman in Luke 13:11-13 who was hunched over and couldn’t physically stand up straight.
“What I find interesting is that Jesus did not pray in that instance for physical healing,” he said. “He actually — there’s a phrase, the spirit of infirmity, and he cast out the spirit of infirmity and then the woman was able to stand up straight.”
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Signorelli admitted this can be complicated for pastors, especially when they look to James 5, which instructs Christians to bring the sick to the church to anoint them with oil for healing. While this might be dealing with the physical, a theologically deep look at Scripture, he argued, would call people to look at spiritual illness potentially coalescing with the physical, as was the case with this woman.
“My challenge to pastors and ministers has always been … we don’t wanna obsess over demons,” he said. “We don’t want people being demon conscious. We don’t want to glorify the devil … as if we are powerless.”
Signorelli continued, “But we also don’t want to be unwise where we’ve dealt with it on every level except for the demonic.”
He said there’s a balance and Christians must recognize Christ has already won. Rather than seeing everything as a demon, he encouraged discernment, understanding when there might be times a generational curse or other spiritual element is at play.
Such curses are debated within many Christian circles, with some believers arguing people are free from any such evil the moment they embrace Jesus.
“There’s some Christians that say, ‘As soon as I accept Christ as my savior and confess Him as Lord and Savior, all the curses are broken,'” he said. “Even if I agree with you, which I really don’t, but even if I did, you will still be living under the consequences and the culture of that curse.”
It’s something he’s seen again and again in his ministry, with the demonic still finding ways to afflict believers. He cited patterns of infidelity in families as one example.
“We are dealing with the consequence of a curse, and I’m not denying the reality of your salvation,” Signorelli said. “But what I’m saying is: we have to go on a journey called sanctification, and those things are separate, and so sanctification means we gotta crucify our flesh, take up our cross and blood.”
Sometimes, this process means confronting the demonic. He believes “Inherit Your Freedom” can help people discern what they’re facing — and take action. Dealing with family lineage and issues that might run along those lines makes natural sense to Signorelli.
“If your goal as a demon is to be in a physical body, why would you not want to stay in a family?” he said. “Because generationally, you got really, really good at your job, and you know the intimate connection of their physical body.”
Signorelli continued, “They get good through family lineage and it’s almost like, ‘Hey, let’s stay on the job we know versus going to get a new job.'”
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