Baby dedications must be renewed
God’s thoughts for us are always good. He lovingly wrote and knitted our DNA together in our mothers’ wombs before we were born and He has never forgotten us. He assigned angels to minister to each one of us and He makes His Spirit available for us at all times. This is our spiritual inheritance. Every child belongs to God because He created us, but sadly, some parents can make the grievous mistake of dedicating their children to idols, false gods, and evil spirits instead. Such baby dedications must be renounced in Jesus’ name so as to remove any foothold for evil spirits. It is the right of every believer in Jesus Christ to reclaim their spiritual inheritance from the kingdom of darkness.
(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 奉献孩童的罪必须被更新 | 繁體中文 > 奉獻孩童的罪必須被更新)
Psalm 139:13 ESV For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
Isaiah 49:15 ESV “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
Matthew 18:10 ESV “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.
Baby dedications in the occult realm
The Bible records Jesus as being presented at the temple in Jerusalem to be set apart as holy for the Lord. This practice of baby dedication is still prevalent today and practised by various religions, both Christian and otherwise. Some baby dedications are occult based and must be renewed.
Luke 2:21-22 ESV And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”)
1. Temple dedications
In many parts of Asia today, Chinese parents still bring their children to shrines and temples to be dedicated to various deities according to auspicious days in the Chinese Almanac, a divination guide based on the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, earth.
2. Spirit guardians
Some common “guardian deities” include wong tai sin, guan yin, tin hau, kwan gong, tudi gong, luk yum sin, or even a tree or a rock.
3. Spirit gifts and offerings
Parents will offer burnt incense, candles, food, golden or silver clothing to their “gods”, and present pieces of red or yellow paper that list their wishes and address, as well as the child’s name and birthday. Sometimes, they will include new clothes, bowls, cups or chopsticks to signify the “new life” the deities will give their children.
4. Consulting mediums and witchcraft
Chinese parents also consult monks, mediums or fortune tellers for their children’s name, birth date and birth time for improved “good luck”.
5. 100 days celebrations
Due to the high rate of infant deaths in ancient times, a baby’s survival in its first 100 days was reason for celebration. Many superstitious rituals developed that were meant to protect or bless the baby, as well as identify its future occupation.
6. Name selection
Often, specific names are chosen to balance out the five elements in relation to birth times. Highly symbolic Chinese characters are carefully selected, with the word for dragon (which the Bible uses as a symbol for Satan) being popular.
Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…
Such practices are an affront to the Lord of lords who created every single baby in the womb.
Isaiah 44:24 ESV Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,
Psalm 127:3 ESV Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Renewing our spiritual heritage
Our parents’ belief systems not only have an impact on our thinking but also on our spiritual well being. Families act as spiritual authorities and guardians over children. With such inherent control and power over us when we were relatively defenceless, they can invite the wrong type of spirits into our young lives through their idolatrous or occult practices. As a result, we may not be able to fully embrace the hope, joy and peace we are promised through the Holy Spirit – until we renounce the enemy’s spiritual foothold in our lives from childhood.
1 Corinthians 10:20 ESV No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.
1. Confess baby dedications to evil spirits
First, we need to confess and acknowledge out loud that our baby dedications were to demons and not to God, and that Jesus is our personal Lord and Saviour. His sacrifice on the cross took away our sins and we now choose to be forgiven, cleansed and resurrected to new life through Him.
Romans 10:9-10 ESV … if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
2. Repent and turn away from unholy covenants
Next, we should break all unholy covenants made with Satan through pagan temple baby dedications or name selections by means of fortune telling, superstitions or witchcraft. We need to turn away from such ungodly practices for good.
Ezekiel 14:6 ESV … Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations
3. Command the spirits to leave
Following our repentance, we must name the spirits that we were dedicated to as children and command them to leave us in Jesus’ name, never to return. We can ask the Holy Spirit to cleanse us and transfer us from the domain of darkness to our Saviour’s kingdom. If we were dedicated to people or places, we must name and cut soul ties with them too, by following the same steps.
Colossians 1:13-14 ESV He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
4. Be baptised and dedicate ourselves wholly to Jesus Christ
Baptism signifies our death and resurrection to new life in Jesus Christ. It is an important step in our faith journey and we must all be baptised. From this point onwards, we must also obey Jesus in our heart, thoughts and actions so that Satan cannot set up other footholds in our lives.
Romans 6:4 ESV We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Matthew 16:24 ESV Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
5. Parents can also do the same for our children
Parents can follow these steps described above for children and be faithful in teaching them the ways of the Lord from here onwards.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Testimony: Freed from spirits that entered during temple dedications as a child
“During a ladies fellowship meeting that I attended, the leader came around and put her hand on my back and said that we needed to pray for my back. Somehow, she sensed something by the discernment from the Holy Spirit.
She asked me to close my eyes and imagine my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). In the temple that I saw, there was light, but there was light only at the very front. Behind me, there was a lot of darkness and I felt very, very afraid of the darkness, but I didn’t know what it was or why I was afraid.
We continued to pray, and suddenly, she asked me, “Were you dedicated as a child?” I said yes. The leader then started to lead me in prayer, line by line, to cast out the demons that had entered me after I was dedicated at a temple when I was about a year old. I was brought to the temple as a baby because I was always sick. In both my grandparents’ homes, there are altars to ancestors and the gods of the land, and it was part of my childhood until I became Christian at the age of 12. My grandmother would get pieces of paper with “blessings” written on them and she would light them on fire then throw them into a cup of water for me to drink.
As we began to pray and I started to repeat each word after the leader, it became almost physically impossible to speak. I could barely hear my own voice. Praying was an actual physical battle for me, and I was seriously afraid the darkness behind me would never leave.
At this time, one of the other ladies from the group said that she sensed there was something behind me. But I couldn’t see it because it was always behind me. All I knew was that I was very afraid of the darkness behind me. The ladies praying for me didn’t know that all throughout my childhood, I had a recurring dream where I was walking round and round and carried a huge burden on my back. This burden was enormous and it was way bigger than me.
I knew at this moment that the fear that I could not name and did not know was these demons that were now reluctant to come out, and that they were invited in when I was dedicated at the temple.
As the demons were cast out, I started to feel my back straighten and become more upright. The demons were all gone, and I felt like something had been cut out from the left side of my back. In my vision, my temple is now brighter and bigger than before, and instead of darkness at my back, I feel Christ standing right behind me.
One of the ladies hugged me and said, “Oh, I just hope that you can feel Christ hugging you.” I was still too dazed to tell her that I felt as if Christ was standing so close to my back that I couldn’t move without bumping into Him. At the end of the meeting, my legs felt shaky as if I was learning to walk again because the thing on my back was gone.
I can say today that I am no longer afraid of evil spirits; they have absolutely no power over me. At the end of the prayer, two thoughts kept repeating in my head: “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.” I felt a deep sense of freedom.”
May this sharing be a blessing to you as you seek to love God with all your heart and renounce all baby dedications made to idols, false gods and evil spirits.