More on Healing Generations

I have come across some valuable information since I wrote my book.  Here are a few wonderful paragraphs relating to healing generations by Truman Madsen. Thank you Tresa for sharing this.

And, therefore, as you look back at your seventy or so forebears...  you might recognize that you have inherited the blood of many generations.  And blood may not be a correct word scientifically, but in the scriptures it stands for seed, which means heredity, the inheritance of tendencies, and all of us have them.  You have the blood of this generation, from which we must become clean - 'clean from the blood of this generation' (D&C 88:85). If you do, you will be clean from the blood of every generation, because it is compounded and accumulated into now- and that includes the blood of some degeneration. 

So perhaps you do have problems that you can blame on your ancestors, and if you
forgive that and choose to stand close to the Lord in the process of purifying your life, that will affect  your whole family in both directions.  You are not alone. There is no way you can gain solitary and neutral ground.  You are in it - you are involved. And this, I believe, is one of the profound meanings of the tame and wild olive trees. If you take a wild branch and graft it in to a tame one, if the branch is strong enough it will eventually corrupt and spoil the tree all the way to the roots. But if you take a tame branch and graft it in to a wild tree, in due time, if that branch is strong enough, it will heal and regenerate to the very roots. You will have then been an instrument in the sanctification even of your forebears.

...To be that kind of branch and achieve that kind of transformation backward and forward is perhaps the greatest achievement of this world.  But to do it one must be great, one must be linked, bound to the Lord Jesus Christ.  One must be mighty.  One must be something of a savior.  And that is exactly what the Prophet Joseph Smith said we are: 'saviors on Mount Zion.'   (Truman G. Madsen, "The Temple: Where Heaven Meets Earth," p 84)

The following is the ending excerpt from an  excellent article by Larry Barkdull on Meridian Magazine.  Who knew that Elder Hafen and Isaiah touch on healing generations?! Thank you Sylvia for sharing this.  Brother Barkdull wrote:

Becoming a 'Repairer of the Breach'

Isaiah counseled, “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh [your own family].”(14) That is, love them, pray for them, and fast for them. We expect the Lord to stand by our children despite their waywardness. Would He not, therefore, expect the same of us? Our willingness to sanctify ourselves through fasting and prayer in behalf of our children, and our continuing to love and reach out to them, serves to repair relationships. Through fasting and prayer we sanctify ourselves to become, according to Isaiah, “the repairer of the breach.”(15) That is, fasting and prayer empowers us to repair anything that has torn the relationship apart.

Concerning our becoming repairers of the breach, Elder Bruce C. Hafen taught that we, through fasting and prayer and applying the Atonement of Jesus Christ, gain power to repair even generational family problems and to stop the “intergenerational flow of affliction,” which plagues one generation of our family after another. These generational problems are often the reasons our children are presently suffering. Some damaging family traits reduce agency and continue to afflict several generations of a family. But by means of the sanctifying principles of faith, fasting, prayer, and diligence, these negative traits can be halted and severed.

Repairers of the breach can seek heavenly power to ensure that those harmful traits will never again distress subsequent generations. Elder Hafen said we can “fill the void left by a former generation and raise a new foundation for the next, thus repairing the breach in the intergenerational linkage: ‘They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach; the restorer of paths to dwell in.’ (Isa. 58:12) (Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen, The Belonging Heart: The Atonement and Relationships with God and Family Heart, 119.)

Promised Blessings 

"Isaiah’s doctrine concerning the fast is astonishing. Generational healing becomes possible. Evidently fasting yields a power that extends to our deceased loved ones, allowing them to be healed and set free. Through focused fasting, we become repairers of the breach to our present families and our ancestors. Moreover, our children-- “they that shall be of thee”--will “build the old waste places.” In other words, because of our fasting, our children will also be empowered to repair the generational injuries and help to save their forefathers. What will be the result? 

“Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations [to follow]”; that is, you will help your children lay a new foundation for their lives upon which salvation will come to them and to those your grandchildren. Therefore, you will be given the honorable name, “repairer of the breach”—the one who helped them overcome their weakness, repair their broken lives, and brought them back to the correct path. (See also John H. Vandenberg, Conference Report, April 1963)

Does the fast still sound too simple, too easy? Perhaps we should reconsider the fast as an incredible principle of power and do as Moses encouraged his people to do: simply look up and live."  (Larry Barkdull, "Rescuing Wayward Children through Fasting and Prayer," Meridian Magazine, Thursday July 10, 2010, www.ldsmag.com/article/5880)

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY READING "GENERATIONAL QUOTES"
http://tamarasbook.blogspot.com/2009/08/generational-issues-quotes.html