Generational Curses, Identity, and Breaking Family Patterns

We say things like:

"I'm my father's son."
"That's how I was raised."
"I'm just not that kind of guy."

But what if some of the things we call generational curses aren't genetic at all?

In this episode of The Valiant Forge, Mark explores generational curses, identity, limiting beliefs, and the learned behaviors that often shape the men we become.

Sharing his father's powerful story of addiction, surrender, and transformation, Mark reflects on how one decision to follow Jesus changed the trajectory of an entire family line.

This conversation also looks at the biblical story of King Josiah, a young man who inherited dysfunction but chose obedience, repentance, and renewal instead of repeating what had been modeled before him.

Inside this episode:

• Generational curses and learned behavior
• Identity, limiting beliefs, and labels men accept about themselves
• How surrender can reshape what gets modeled for future generations
• The story of King Josiah and inherited dysfunction
• Why intentional obedience matters in personal transformation
• The launch of the 21 Day Microbuilding Challenge

If you've ever believed "this is just who I am," this conversation is for you.

The Valiant Forge exists to help Christian men forge strength, faith, and purpose in Christ.

Interested in joining the 21 Day Microbuilding Challenge?

Beginning June 1, we'll be practicing small daily habits in faith, body, identity, nutrition, and brotherhood.

If you'd like to walk through it with me, connect through The Valiant Forge community channels.

https://www.skool.com/the-cave-of-adullum-1668/about

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We hear people say things like, I'm just not that guy. I'm not a mourning person. That's not who I am. I am my father's son. That's how I was raised. I come from a long line of losers. I come from a long line of whatever. And we say these things like they're some kind of out-of-control thing that we have. We like to call them generational curses. But what if I were to say that generational curses are not part of your DNA? It's something that you inherit through modeled behavior. But what was modeled can be reshaped.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome to the Valiant Warriors Podcast, where we help men overcome life battles, show what's better in the world, and become a valiant warrior for depth. This is a place where we have practical strategies that will be flipping on life's journey to help become a man of defeat. Are you ready to overcome your doubt and fulfill your purpose to my idiot? Yes. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I'm Mark Osborne, and this is the Volume Forge, where Christian Men Forge Strength, Faith, and Purpose in Christ. So I mentioned how we like to give ourselves these, give ourselves these labels that we call generational curses, but they're not part of our DNA. And I can give you a story that's very closely related to me. It's my dad's story. My dad, from my own generation, my dad came from a long line of alcoholics. My grandfather died at a young age through alcohol addiction. My father, until I was the age of fourteen, was following that same behavior pattern until he gave his life to Jesus. And I can tell you that one night of surrender totally turned my dad around. I had saw my father who had spent he was not a bad guy. He just wasn't present. He worked a lot and he drank a lot. So he wasn't always there for us. But the morning after he gave his life to Jesus, and I saw him at the altar surrendering, asking Jesus to come into his life. That morning I woke up, my dad sitting at the table with a Bible in front of him, a big smile on his face. I hadn't seen my dad smile a whole lot through most of my childhood. Asked me to come over to him, gave me a hug, and told me he loved me. Now that's not the first time that my father told me he loved me in those fourteen years, but they were few and far between. And there was just something different about that moment. I truly felt love coming from my father, and it's something I remember to this day. And I would every morning when I woke up I went to go get a bowl of cereal. That morning, I went to the pantry, and my father always kept beer stored in the pantry. All the beer and the shelf that had the whiskey bottles and the alcohol bottles, they were all empty. The beer was all gone, and there was an empty shelf there. And my father, from that moment I was fourteen, I just turned fifty nine last week, has never touched a drop of alcohol since that day. He changed what was modeled through surrender. Alcohol is a generational curse, but it's not part of our DNA. And through my dad's decision, it changed a whole generation after him. I am a Christian. I am talking to you today because of my father's decision. Who knows? Only God knows that if my father had not made that decision that day to surrender himself to Christ, if I would even be here talking to you right now? Probably not. I probably wouldn't end up drunk somewhere. Who knows if I would have maintained my marriage, my life, if I'd had children. I don't even really want to think about it. Because that that curse was broken, and it can be broken for you too. Just to add to my father's legacy, I am a Christian, my brother's a Christian, my sister's a Christian. Our kids are all saved. Some of their kids are saved. My brother's son is a youth pastor and has a powerful ministry, and he sees kids getting saved every week. And someday my nephew is going to be a pastor. I I can guarantee you, he's already a youth pastor. Someday he's going to pastor a church. It's just, and that all happened through my father's decision to change those limiting beliefs of this just who I am. This is how my father was, and this is how I am. He changed it through surrendering to Jesus Christ. Now, I myself, I grew up with some of those limiting beliefs through a lot of my own childhood that was shaped. I was always small, bullied, picked on, got made fun of, never felt much about myself. I have that identity that no one likes me, that I'm never enough. And that that caused a lot of my life to be shaped. I always stayed hidden in the background. The fact that I'm on a podcast now is a miracle of God because I surrendered to God and followed the obedience of the Lord. Forgive me because I have a new microphone to try to get better sound quality. And I I do love the microphone, but I talk with my hands. I don't I there may be Italian in my genetics, I don't know, but I tend to bump the microphone. So give me a little uh grace and time before I get used to not hitting the microphone. I digress. So, and also the way that I'm talking, I may be talking fast and not really sticking to a subject is because I'm trying to talk more off script. I have some bullet points in front of me to get me back on track when I need to get back on track, like right now. But just wanted to point that out. Anyways, I have my own, had, still have, my own issues that I had to deal with. Yes, my father made the decision and it changed a whole generation after him, but there's still I'll get into that in a minute. There's still you. Maybe your father made a good decision, and maybe that's why you're listening to a Christian podcast right now. But you still have to make choices every day. I had to make choices. So those limiting beliefs that I had that led me to this place of being in a deep depression when I was at the age of 48, and never really felt much about myself. Then one day I went and joined a gym, posted my membership card on Facebook, and I got all this all this attention, all this validation, they call it from social media, and I loved it. My ego ate it up, and then I became this fitness guy, again, a false identity. I like fitness, I'm into fitness, but I'm not a fitness guy. I am a Christian man. That is who I am right now. I'm a man, I'm more than a conqueror. I'm a man transformed by the renewing of my mind, which is in Christ Jesus. That's who I am right now, not a fitness guy. So I've I followed that, and I'm not gonna I've talked about this at nauseum at this point, but I followed that for a bit, and it almost destroyed me because my ego ate it up. I wasn't surrendered to Christ, I was surrendered to myself. I loved the attention again, the I, the pride, the me. But it isn't about me, it's about Christ. And if you've noticed from the beginning, what I'm talking about here is surrender to Christ. Jesus saved me from that. Because before the point to where my marriage was almost destroyed, and I almost went down the wrong path and went back to that generational curse that I always believed my family had, I stopped. I got down on my knees, I prayed, and I surrendered to God. And because of that, I'm here talking to you today about surrendering and changing the limiting beliefs you have about yourself that I'm just not that kind of guy. Because you can be that kind of guy. You can be more than a conqueror, you can be an overcomer through Christ Jesus. I've talked about myself, I've talked about my dad. Now I'm going to talk about someone in the Bible that you don't hear a lot about. If you if you read the book of Kings, you read all these different kings, and you it seems to be like there was a good king and there was a bad king, the people turned to Baal, the people turned to God, everything went well, the people did bad, everything went terrible. And it was, and it, you know, when you look at it from a 360 view, you're reading it right now, and you're like, man, why can't you guys get it? It's different when you get that different perspective. But the the king I want to talk about, his name was Josiah, and I'm kind of doing this off of memory. I think he was eight years old when he became king. But his grandfather, Manasseh, was one of the worst kings that Israel ever had. He was the one that sacrificed children to Molech, which was another false god, literally sacrificed their children. And then Josiah's father, Anon, I'm not sure I'm saying his name right, but he was also a wicked king. So Josiah and Herod inherited these generational curses. Josiah could have easily said, Well, this is who I am, this is what my grandfather did, this is what my father did. I have to follow the same behavior. I could I have to become a wicked king. But he didn't do that. What Josiah did was he began seeking God. And through seeking God, he commissioned the men, the people to start rebuilding the temple. And through rebuilding the temple, they discovered the Word of God, the Torah back then. And when he discovered the Word of God, he had the priest read it to him, and it convicted him so badly that he tore his clothes, repented, and changed his generational line. He changed, he broke the generational curse by repenting to God. He didn't shoot he didn't choose his inheritance. Now that didn't last, as I mentioned earlier. But it's about you right now. I'm talking to you. I'm not talking to your father, I'm not talking to the generations after you. But I you're giving the generations after you a better chance if you make the right decision right now and not stick to those limiting beliefs that you believed about yourself your whole life because that's how your family was. That's who your your generation was. You have this generational curse. It can be broken. And it can be broken by you taking action, choosing to become the man that God has called you to be. So I'm doing something a little different here. I'm gonna give you a practical challenge. And you can join my community. There's gonna be a link in the description. I'm going to create a separate tab just for this challenge. It's only 21 days. It's not difficult. I promise you, it's not difficult. Actually, I'm gonna read it to you right now what the challenge is. I have it here on my phone. It is like a microhabits challenge. If you've ever read Atomic Habits, the way he explains it is don't try to change everything all at once and like all of a sudden one day you're gonna get up and I'm gonna go to the gym seven days a week now. I've done that. It doesn't work, it's not sustainable. But if you start building some small daily habits, you can build up into better habits throughout time. So this is the and it's only for 21 days. You can continue it, and I would absolutely encourage you to, but it's only 21 days. So here's what it is Spirit. You you read five minutes of scripture and and prayer and then five minutes of prayer. Keep it simple. Just read one chapter a day. I say five minutes, may take you two minutes to read the chapter, but read at least one chapter a day and say a prayer to God. Five minutes. If you don't know what to say, say the Lord's prayer. The Lord's my shepherd, I shall not want, he maketh me to light. And in the in the the document, I'll have that scripture so you could just repeat that. But try on your own to just say a prayer to God. And prayer is communication. You just talk to God. Do it for five minutes. So a five-minute prayer and a chapter a day. The second one is it's for your body, it's some kind of intentional movement. Walk, lift, stretch, do some type of cardio, whatever you can do. And it should be purposeful. Like it's not something like, okay, I'm going out to go to work, so I'm gonna walk out the door and go to my car. That's my walk. No, that's something you do every day. If you walk a lot at work, that's something you do every day. Make this a purposeful, intentional type of movement that you're doing to change the habits, to break the limiting beliefs you have about yourself. Nutrition, this is again for your body. Make an intentional choice. Either eat something healthy, and if you need help with that, I can help you with that. I have some nutritional background, um, not by certification or anything, although I did study it. Um don't eat something that you would consider bad, that you know is not good for you, like too much sugar or a donut. I have this little tag in here that says, um, step into kale and walk away from donuts. That's just me trying to be clever and funny, which probably isn't, especially the way I just delivered it. But you get you get the point. Make a healthy choice. Or don't eat something that's not healthy. Just be intentional. Number four is identity, and it's all about what we've talked about. If you have one limiting label or identity statement, and you do this every day, now you have to think about this. You you ask yourself, what is a limiting belief I have about myself, and what do I need to do to change it? Now I have in here some scripture references that will you can help you change it, but then I want you to do an action. So Romans 8.37 is I am more than a conqueror. 2 Corinthians 5.17, I am a new creation in Christ. Romans 12.2. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus. There's a little bit more to that so that you may know the next steps to take. I'm I'm paraphrasing that point. I've not quite got it all memorized, but I'm I'm getting there. The point is, use those scriptures. And then so if you say I'm not a morning person, if that's one of your limiting beliefs, choose every day to get up five minutes earlier than you normally do. So you say I'm not a morning person means you just can't get out of bed. Let's say you hit your snooze button five times. Commit to tomorrow morning, I'm only gonna hit my snooze button once. And after that snooze button goes off, you say to yourself, I am more than a conqueror, and you are overcoming that snooze button because you are more than a conqueror. You are more than your snooze button. And then the last one is fellowship mind, body, and soul. Encourage someone, pray with someone, pray with a family member or a spouse if you have one, and do this every day. Also, text a brother, encourage someone, go serve at a church, go serve at a mission, do something at a homeless shelter, do something that makes you feel good about helping others. And I'm gonna have this challenge in my school community, which will be in the link in the description. It's totally free to join once you're done with the challenge, and I'm gonna I'm gonna have a tab. I think I can put a tab in there, I'm gonna have a tab in there showing uh every day I'll be checking in, and you can check in and you can say, Hey, I missed this. Can you guys pray for me? And if you miss something, don't worry about it. Just pick up and do it tomorrow. Because that's what Jesus did for us. He knows we struggle, he knows we fail. And all we have to do is say, Jesus, I'm sorry. I surrender to you. I give it all to you. And then continue. And remember, you are more than a conqueror in Christ. You are not these generational curses that you believe about yourself. You are not the guy that you think you are. You are the man that God sees in you. With that, stay strong, stay valiant, keep foraging your path, and be blessed.