Katie's Quarrels

 On her break-up blog KatieLyn wrote:

    If you and your loved ones are constantly fighting about your relationship and you normally don't fight long term about things, you might want to take a good long hard look at what is causing the arguments.

Okay! Let's do this!

But this time our "good, hard, long look" is going to be done in the context of what the Bible says so that Joe is not erroneously blamed for her fights with her mother!  If you haven't kept up with this blog, reading some of the older posts could help you catch up on the characters. Briefly, there are KatieLyn, the runaway bride; Joe, the run from groom; and Gwen, the mother of the runaway bride. 

KatieLyn says that she was constantly fighting about her relationship (with Joe) with her loved ones. Remember, this is the way she presented it in a public blog, so it is likely toned down. The way that I heard the story as she filtered it through Joe was that she and her mom were having some arguments, but that KatieLyn was standing strong. In hindsight, I think she lied to Joe about how bad the fighting was. In fact, in her next blog paragraph, she admitted to burying things and not talking about them with anyone. Her blog says the fighting was continual. The fights must have also been huge to have the power to break up the engagement. 

We will start with James 4:

1What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4You unfaithful people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James says that the source of fights and contentions among people are cravings and passions which war within them.  KatieLyn's goal was to receive the answer to her life-long, God-given dream of becoming a wife and homemaker. But she also held her mother up as an idol in much the same way as is perfectly normal for a child, but is aberrant for an adult. There was a dependency there, apron strings that had never been loosened in a normal, growing relationship.  Gwen, who finds her self-worth in her matriarchal role, liked it that way. And because she liked it, Gwen's relationship with her adult daughter grew into a codependency.

We can see that scripture is right on the mark about the desires and pleasures that battle within; KatieLyn wanted to become a wife, and Gwen wanted to keep a daughter. Furthermore, Gwen was jealous of her daughter, even as she hated herself for feeling that way. Gwen's choice for a husband had been made largely by the fact that she was pregnant when she got married. KatieLyn had "done it right" and waited on the Lord. There was a jealousy stemming from guilt that had never been dealt with, and now Gwen was all set up by Satan to continue making KatieLyn pay the price. This was the source of Gwen's confusion, she'd given entrance to the devil through her jealousy of KatieLyn. Gwen was envious and could not get what she wanted, so she fought and quarreled with her daughter, exactly like James 4:2 says, "You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight."

The behavioral pattern continued further, right on the course identified by James. Even though I had brought up the topic of the knowing the Lord's will, once the reality of the engagement set in for Gwen, she never seemed to know. Either she never asked, or she asked but did not receive and answer because she asked with the wrong motives. I cannot say for sure which it was. Joe and KatieLyn were both praying for Gwen at that point, and from comments made later, it certainly appears that Gwen was given an answer but chose to be in denial.

Most definitely, James' next sentence fits the situation like a glove. Gwen was without faith. "You unfaithful people!" in verse 4 is literally "Adulteresses!" The King James Version translates the Greek moichalis as "Ye adulterers and adulteresses." The context here is not sexual adultery, but spiritual unfaithfulness. All of Gwen's "legitimate reasons" and "valid concerns" were fleshly and worldly. None had a trace of authentic faith. James goes on to ask, "Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?" Apparently she does not because she tried to argue that it was wise and appropriate.

James is pretty clear on what does constitute godly wisdom and understanding. In Chapter 3 we can read:

  13Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. 15This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. 16For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. 18And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Gwen's kind of wisdom is called "earthly, sensual, devilish." (verse 15) Every time that KatieLyn heard her mother speak against the marriage, she was hearing devilish wisdom. Wisdom that does not come from God is demonic. I didn't say that; James did. I am simply quoting him because I believe the Bible.

Think I am taking that out of context? Then compare:

Jude 1:19 ~ These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 3:19 ~ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.
1 Corinthians 2:24 ~ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

I am not saying that Gwen doesn't "have" the Spirit in the sense of not being born again. I am saying that she has chosen to repress it and is not developing or using it; she prefers to rely on her five senses and her human reasoning. I can't judge Gwen's heart, but I can judge her doctrine as seen in  the policies she announced after KatieLyn ran back home to her, and walking by faith "in the Spirit" seems to be a foreign concept for her.

James 3:16 ~ For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.

Although Gwen was jealous of her daughter finding love, once the jealousy worked its work, KatieLyn had an explosion of selfish ambition. If she could not be a princess bride, then she'd be a devilish diva. She was going to block all communication, I am not sure whose idea that was, but it doesn't matter too much; in the end, it could not have happened with out her consent. I remember telling Joe, "KatieLyn isn't the same person that you knew anymore. She has had a taste of power, and it will change her." What I did not tell him, because it would have been too cruel at that point, was that her power-trip was a devilish one. I am pretty sure he sensed it anyway; at least, he did not play into it.

KatieLyn set herself up so that she could have her ears tickled. The only people she would talk to were the ones who would pamper her "heartbreak" and tell her how brave she was being.  She determined that she'd rather hear fables than the truth, and so she shut herself away so that truth won't happen. She did not like quarreling with her mother and ...lo, and behold, KatieLyn found a way to work the codependency (that she'd previously claimed that she wanted to escape) into a a place where her mother was more than willing to pamper her. Back in the day when she (allegedly) wanted to escape the unhealthy codependency, the roles were reversed; KatieLyn was being a scrub woman for her mother and paying rent to share a bedroom with her high school age sister.

KatieLyn now claims that she should have made spending real time with our family a priority. But when she was in town, she stayed away and spent the bulk of her time with Joe and his friends—I thought she was enjoying the independence of not having to.  How was I to know that she was going to interpret my not making demands on her as a "lifestyle difference" that would have made a long term healthy relationship impossible."  Who knew? A mother-in-law rejected because she wasn't interfering enough! Gotta be one for Ripley's! Get back here and play Apples to Apples with me, girlie!

KatieLyn and her mother were constantly fighting because KatieLyn had an answer to prayer and her mom could not believe it. And then the devilish codependency kicked in, so now...  Katie and her mom can live happily ever after.

Eliminating Confusion

I introduced this truism on Monday's blog, but I could not develop it there without going off-topic. Today I can make it the topic!

The Bible has a lot to say about confusion. It is actually a punishment for not listening to the Lord!

That is what He told Moses:  “The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration ... because you have forsaken me." Deuteronomy 28:20. Eight verses later, the curse for disobedience is reiterated: "The LORD will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart." Deuteronomy 28:28. The blindness here is a blindness of the mind, actually a judicial blindness, meaning that one cannot make good judgments because of the hardened condition of the heart.

David copied God's idea and used the curse of confusion in the lyrics for his psalms. Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt. Psalm 35:26. May all who want to take my life be put to shame and confusion. Psalm 40:14. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt. Psalm 70:20

Confusion, doubts, misgivings, and such are always identified with evil. Even where the verse from Deuteronomy says that "The Lord will smite..." you will find that by putting it into its larger context, that the Lord smites by removing His protection. It is the devil that fills the void that is left with confusion. God does not have confusion that He can send directly. When a person pushes God away by rejecting Him, God takes His protective hand with Him. Either way, whether God removes His own hand because the evil has grown too great, or because the person made their own decision to shove His hand aside, confusion and perplexity come from the enemy. 

This fact is established quite literally in a review of some battle scripture. Here is a "for" example: The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, so Joshua and the Israelites defeated them completely at Gibeon. Joshua 10:10. Here is an "against" example: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured us, he has thrown us into confusion, he has made us an empty jar. Jeremiah 51:34. The confused side was the losing side. When Gwen chose to remain in confusion and to transplant her confusion into her daughter's heart, she made KatieLyn a loser too. Those are the hard ugly facts. 

The way to overcome confusion is to get back into obedience; to repent and listen to the Lord again, to make His priorities your own priorities. When God's and KatieLyn's priorities matched, she was happy and focused. Joe was WAAAY focused; he was far more focused than I had ever seen him in his life because he was seeking and listening to the Lord more closely than ever before. It was God's plan for them to be married. The confusion that set in after KatieLyn made her mother's priorities her priorities was a destructive evil that ruined God's plan.  

Matthew 6:33 holds a key to ending confusion. Seek ye first the reign of God and His righteousness, and all these shall be added to you. That's Young's literal translation. You may be more familiar with the King James Version: But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.  The difficulty with the KJV in this case is that the "kingdom of God" takes on a nebulous connotation; thought of as being "God things." But the kingdom has a King, and Young's emphasizes His reign. Here's the difference: Gwen's concerns could be called "God-related things," but they most certainly were not "reign of God misgivings." 

Here is how those differences played out—
Joe was seeing the reign of God in his life. He started with God and looked for His authority in his life. He was confident that this marriage was God's reigning plan. 
Gwen was looking at her life experiences and trying to figure out if these were God things. In an approach that is almost exactly backwards, she encouraged her daughter to look at the potential for the devil to reign havoc and asked her if she was willing to live with that. Somehow, KatieLyn convinced herself that since she was looking for God using her mother's approach, her conclusion was the right thing. 

When Joe prioritized based on the reign of God in his life, decision making became easy and doubts fled away. When KatieLyn prioritized by trying to arrange worldly issues in a godly fashion, she was overcome by the immensity of the situation. She followed her confused mother. 

The way to eliminate confusion is a two-step process. First, listen to the voice of the Lord, and then line up your priorities to match His. This gets rid of all double-mindedness as you think and act on God's thoughts after Him. It takes concentration and practice to hear the voice¹ of the Lord consistently. Good parents teach their children how to do this early in life. 

God does not always speak the same way, and only rarely does he shout, but He has promised that His sheep hear His voice. (John 10:27) If we consent and obey, then Isaiah 1:19 promises that we will eat the good of the land. 


¹ "Voice of the Lord" is being used broadly to include all means by which God may communicate. At one end of the spectrum, it could means simply that you have and impression in your spirit, but it could mean a voice in your head, or an audible voice in your ears, all the way up to a full-blown vision. In this context, it could also mean a prophesy given to you that you have evaluated against the Bible standards and found to be truthful.



   

The Sin of Destroying Another's Confidence in the Lord

Since the earliest posts, this blog has reflected the idea that it is a really, really bad thing to destroy someone else's faith.  I believe that it is one of the sins that will blindside on Judgment Day—some folks will have no idea that they ever committed it. And yet, in some cases it will be judged as worse than murder if that destruction of faith was the reason someone missed heaven.

Jesus taught about the sin of destroying trust in God from a framework of child abuse—abusing God's children.¹ And in keeping with this blog's policy of comparing real life to scripture, here is the support for that statement in three gospels and a letter from Paul:

Matthew 18:6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Mark 9:42 Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

Luke 17:2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

1 Corinthians 8:12 Thus, sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

Note that both Matthew and Mark use the phrase "ones who believe in me." Although that phrase is missing in Luke, it is clear from the previous verses that Jesus was continuing a discourse on those who would believe. Paul's letter was written to the believers in Corinth.  We will get back to that "sentencing phase" of judgment at the end, but first we need to establish (a) Who You Are in Christ's eyes, your value, and (b) How the Enemy Attacks what God values.

♦  ♦  ♦

 Who You Are in Christ's Eyes

I belong to a race of conquers, priests, and kings. So does everyone who has been born again. One day I was asking God about this: Why do so many people seem to be off the road on this? They are either in one ditch thinking that they are a miserable sinner or they are in the opposite ditch thinking of themselves 'more highly than they ought'; why can't Christians be more middle-of-the-road about this? His answer surprised me. "There is no middle of the road." But it made sense. God does not look at us on a sliding scale. We are who He made us, and while our personal choices have substantial influence over outcomes and circumstances, they do not change who He says we are. We are precious enough to die for.  You did not notice Jesus coming down, hanging on a cross for the redemption of Lucifer, did you?

 How the Enemy Attacks what God Values

If I were your enemy, I'd seek to dim your passion,  dull your interest in spiritual things, dampen your belief in God's ability and His personal concern for you, and convince you that the hope you've lost is never coming back—and was probably just a lie to begin with.
~ These are the opening words of Priscilla Shirer's book, Fervent.

She goes on to say that if she could dim your passion, she could lower you resistance to discouragement. She could chip away at your hope, at your belief in God and what He can do, and she "could chisel down your faith to a whimper." She'd make you want to give up and never try again.

That is how the enemy attacks. That is what happened to KatieLyn. That is what happened, and those around her aggressively refused to believe that she was, as Shirer puts it, "a victim of satanic sabotage."  True, the enemy's attacks are usually covert and inconspicuous, but you do not have to be hit in the noggin with a tire iron to realize that KatieLyn's dream was sabotaged.

All the while that the enemy was lying to her, "You're not up to this, that's not really God's plan for you!" God was there holding out her dream if only she would run to Him and take it.

The Sin of Destroying Confidence in the Lord

Whatever is not of faith is sin. ~ Romans 14:23
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. ~ Hebrews 11:6 

The fourteenth chapter of Romans speaks to not judging your brother.  (Brother here means your fellow believer.) Specifically, Paul uses diet choices as his example, but the principles of how to treat other believers are applicable to all issues. The main thrust of the teaching is that you do not cause your brother to stumble and lose faith—even if you know you are right.
But you, why do you criticize your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the tribunal of God. ~ verse 10

When your criticism has destroyed someone else's faith, your criticism has made it IMPOSSIBLE for that person to please God. Damaging, wounding, or destroying another person's faith is sinning against the Messiah. I did not invent that idea; I read it in the Bible.  cf 1 Corinthians 8:12


Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. ~ Romans 14:13

Gwen deliberately put stumbling blocks in KatieLyn and Joe's engagement. Even though Gwen admitted that she was not clear on God's will for the marriage, she passed judgment anyway.  I know she'd argue that her judgment was "smart thinking," but she'd be wrong. Judgmental people are not thinking God's thoughts, and when you are not thinking like God, then you are deceived.

KatieLyn's confidence that she had heard from God on New Year's Day was totally shattered by these stumbling blocks. Her exuberance and joy in receiving an answer to her prayers on Valentine's Day was undermined as her faith in hearing God drained away.  Every new argument that her mother would provoke ate away at her faith. In just a few weeks, her mother's doubts were louder than God's promise. Her confidence was destroyed. If her own mother had misgivings, how could KatieLyn know what was right? That was when she needed her faith most, but the enemy had destroyed it.
  
The Consequences

The penalty for destroying another person's confidence in the Lord is severe.  As regards the three selections from the Gospels at the beginning of this post, drowning in the sea with a millstone around the neck is called "better" than causing the little ones to sin. And although sin certainly includes wanton lawlessness cf 1 John 3:4, its simplest meaning is "missing the mark." The blocks that KatieLyn stumbled over pushed her off God's path for her life. Not walking out the path that the Lord had already shown you was the right path is also sin. cf James 4:17.

If the psychiatrists are unhappy with Jesus' assessment that drowning a person is better than causing one of God's children to sin, they won't be much happier with Paul. He suggests self-castration for those who hinder God's children from obeying the truth. He argues that penalty is just because they severed others from obeying Christ. cf Galatians 5.

In the fleshly, life-on-earth world that is limited to physical senses, it may seem like a minor thing. Those who discourage and dishearten God's children defend their actions: "I have a right to express my opinion!" and "She needed to see the potential problems!" But no, you didn't, and she didn't; not in God's economy. The First Amendment may give you freedom of speech in America, but in the kingdom of God you should not be spouting off faith-destroying opinions that put your thoughts on a level with what God already revealed, and other people do not need to hear your doubt and unbelief that speaks against what the Lord told them previously.

In the fleshly world, dispiriting a child of God may seem like a minor sin, but in the realm of the spirit, destroying another person's confidence in the Lord is at the level of kidnapping. You are taking a child of God away from his or her Heavenly Father.

The Lesson
Destroying another's confidence in the Lord is evil because it destroys the very thing that person needs most to get back to the Lord. No longer able to trust that they heard God, they are left in a position where it is hard to see or hear anything clearly. The enemy can easily deceive them. They will believe they are escaping the frying pan, only to find themselves in the fire.




¹ John Gill, (Exposition of the Entire Bible, 1763) wrote that "little ones" did not mean little in age, but referred to adults who were little in their own eyes or little in the eyes of the world, that is, adult persons that the world likes to pick on.

The Dream Sets the Agenda ♥ Part Two

When KatieLyn was growing up, she never learned that it was okay for her God-given Dream to set the agenda. How do I know this?  Know it by the excuses she was making for calling off the wedding. She said that it was wrong to be in love with the idea of getting married.

Where did she get that false perception, anyway? From a guest expert on on old Oprah Winfrey telecast? Because that show was chock-full of spiritual-alternative humanism. Or maybe from ELLE magazine? Because it sounds like KatieLyn plagiarized her answer from an article about "How to Move On" that was written by a freelancer who just got a master's degree in psychology, only to find the diploma was virtually worthless.

 A God-given dream is a gift that can keep you centered and on course. A God-given dream should not be dismissed because it seems unattainable or fanciful. God specializes in the impossible. Just ask the man whose iron axe head floated, or the men whose fishing nets nearly broke with a haul made in the morning light after a night (best fishing time) of catching nothing. Or ask the men who found the prison doors opened when they sang. Ask anyone who has experienced a miracle of providence or grace. The apparent obstacles did not stop any of these people from completing their heavenly vision. 

My Part One post quoted two scriptures showing that God gives His children dreams. Here are two more that show God wants to fulfill these dreams:
Psalm 21:2 - You have granted him his heart's desire.
Psalm 145:19 - He fulfills the desires of those who fear him.

If God gives you a desire, ✔check,  and if He wants to fulfill that desire for you, ✔check, and if He has begun doing just that by bringing new people who love you into your life, ✔check,  and then you say that you "cared too much" about all that the Lord was doing for you— don't be surprised if God is not pleased with your lack of faith or if others find you to be horribly ungracious.

When God puts a dream in your heart, that is part of His guidance system to get you to where you are supposed to be in life. God had put the dream and call of being a wife and homemaker in KatieLyn's heart as a very young child. She spent years praying and seeking. And then in God's timing, as He was bringing it to pass, she ran away and announced that she was content and at peace with her singlehood.

I have one word for that: Bunk!

And it works with both meanings, bunk meaning hogwash and nonsense! Or as in done a bunk, hightailed it and headed for the hills. Either way shows disrespect for what God was performing.

Your God-given dream is supposed to set your agenda, not be run from. It is the thing that gives you clarity for decision making. Here is how that would work:

Your God-given dream is for marriage. The devil blows you a doubt and you have an impulse to run home to mommy. Ask yourself, "Does running away help me achieve God's plan for my life?" The simple answer is, "No." The right choice then, is to not run.

Focusing on the priorities of the God-given dream eliminates confusion. Obedience to the heavenly vision means that you fill your agenda with things and people who promote your dream. You avoid activities and people who do not promote the God-given dream. One thing you cannot do is change God. You can agree to His plan and receive His blessing, or you can rebel against it and deal with the consequences. Pinning your hope on the possibility that God might come up with a Plan B alternative redemption someday does not come with an automatic free pass.

When KatieLyn ran off in the middle of the night, she ran away from a childhood dream, planted long ago by God. Her mother was perfectly fine with and wholly supportive of KatieLyn running away from the Lord's plan for her life. Bizarrely, KatieLyn, (who had once told Joe that, as a second child, she never felt her mother accepted her as much as she did her older first-born sister) was now, for the first time, finding the maternal support that she had always craved. In a twisted way, she got something else she always wanted, her mother's support; but she paid for it by refusing the heavenly vision.

And again, Joe's friends have told him he probably dodged a bullet if KatieLyn's relationship with her mom is that dysfunctional. Except it was a bullet that he would have taken for her; he loved her that much. He would have accepted a slightly crazed and seriously meddlesome mother-in-law to have KatieLyn.

If KatieLyn had let her God-given dream set her agenda, there would have been no confusion about where to set priorities. She would have known that her mother could no longer be in the #1 spot for meeting her needs. If her mom could not support the marriage, then KatieLyn should have separated herself from her mother to a distance that was more workable. Instead, KatieLyn took her mother's bait and argued with her. Now she was guilt-tripping over the commandment to honor one's parents! This is the downward spiral that demons like to get someone started on.

And that has happened.  Remember earlier when I wrote that people need to avoid becoming too involved with activities and people who do not promote the God-given dream? KatieLyn is doing that avoidance stuff now, only with a dream that came from somewhere else. She cast away her confidence in the Godly dream and cut off all contact with those who do not support her disobedience. Her life has borne the fruits of recalcitrance and stubbornness from spitting on her dream.

Here is another Bible verse, and as you read it, take special note of the order in which things happen:
35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.…  (Hebrews 10) 

You do the will of God first, and then you may receive the promise. KatieLyn wanted to see the promise first. She was unwilling to move until she did. She had voices telling her that was the reasonable thing, but it was not a faith-in-God thing. She had voices telling her that she had to see 100% of the promise first. They lied.  She allowed the fearful voices, not the godly dream, to set her agenda. 

The Dream Sets the Agenda ♥ Part One

Technically, today's post isn't a lesson "from" a runaway bride. This post is a lesson "about" a runaway bride.
The difference is that no one ever taught this particular runaway, KatieLyn, that it was not only okay for her God-given Dream to set the agenda, but that for maximum blessing and favor, your God-given dream is supposed to set the agenda. God intends for it to work that way.

That dream, that desire that God places in your heart is your anchor, your lodestar, your bull's eye, your cynosure, your navel, your watch tower, your pathfinder, your lighthouse.  Your God-given dream is what keeps you centered and on course. Your dream helps you find your way.

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
That's a promise. The Lord will give. The Hebrew נָתַן has a wide range for translation, and it would not necessarily be wrong to say that the Lord will put upon, bestow, or produce the desires, requests, and dreams of your heart.

The promise in this verse is conditional.  For the Lord to give you your desires, you must first take delight in Him.  If you have been a consistent reader of this blog, then you already know that is where KarieLyn missed it. She allowed the devil to replace her exquisite delight in the Lord's answer to her heart's desire with troubling doubts and fears. When she stopped trusting and delighting in the Lord, her engagement fell apart for her. 


Grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfil all thy counsel. Psalm 20:4
I quoted this verse in the King James first because it emphasizes "thine own."  That is, your human heart that is the object here. But because modern culture has altered the meaning of the word counsel since King James' scholars finished their translation in 1611, I am also adding, for comparison, the rendering of the Holman Christian Standard Bible® (2009).
May He give you what your heart desires and fulfill your whole purpose. Psalm 20:4

The updated translation gets across the idea that the Lord wants to prosper your plans much better than the King James Version.  Inappropriately, wrongly, and regrettably, KarieLyn got zero support and encouragement in the "Lord's prospering" from home. No one was there to reassure, let alone embolden her, that the Lord did indeed want to prosper her plans and purpose in life. They were still dithering in their own minds and never fully trusted KarieLyn to know God's plan either. No, the poor girl got confrontational misgivings and faith-sapping doubts that provoked her into fighting with her mother.   

How in the world could KarieLyn ditch her God-given dream because fighting with her mom was becoming uncomfortable? How?  It must have been much, much worse than she ever admitted to Joe.

A few disagreements with mom doesn't usually cause a person to lose sight of her polestar.  I have had way more than one person tell me that Joe "dodged a bullet" if KarieLyn is that entangled under the mother's control. No doubt that is true. She is a lovely girl, but she tied her future to her mother's concerns rather than upon God's promises, and that disqualified her from becoming a good wife.

I still hope that someday she will be able to figure that out—that she disqualified herself from receiving the promise of the Lord.  Unfortunately it will probably be very painful for her to realize how over-protective her mother is. And we have seen that KatieLyn does the ostrich thing and sticks her head in the sand when it comes to unpleasantries.

I am now past the 500 word-count and I haven't really started to explain how the dream sets the agenda, so this will be a two-part post. It is critically important to lay this foundation first though:
God gives you your dreams. He does this in two senses, (a) He created you as an individual, forming the dream within your heart, and (b) He gives you the answers to your requests as you walk out the dream. You have been delegated a co-creative role in making the dream come true. It is not all just up to God. Some of it is left up to your own decisions on how much you are willing to submit to the God-given dream. The outcome depends on your choices. God is not sovereign over your will.

The God-given dream, your heart's desire, is a reliable bellwether for finding your purpose in life and charting the direction for your next step.

The enemy was successful in derailing KatieLyn on this point. She stopped trusting this leading and began to think it was just a castle in the air, a pipe dream.  For her, it became a chimera that she needed to run from. Except Joe's love was real. KatieLyn bought into the enemy's lie that her hopes were pie-in-the-sky fantasies of girlhood. But they were not. God had given her a real dream to leave her parents' home and grow to completion in her womanhood. He was bringing it to pass.

Unknowingly, (I did not know her mom was reading all the email that I sent to KatieLyn,) I gave Gwen some ammunition to destroy KatieLyn's dreams. I had written a couple of things that I thought would encourage KatieLyn and help her hold on to the dream. I had no idea that the enemy was using her mother to twist it to make me look like I was being oppressive and manipulative.  If KatieLyn's mom had respected my boundaries, I'd be able to respect her today. (I found out about the disrespect when Gwen bragged about it after the engagement was broken, so I took that to mean she is proud of her behavior.)

Bottom line: KarieLyn deserved to have her God-given dream supported and encouraged, not questioned and berated. In Part Two I will explain why.Until then, here is a hint: The dream sets the agenda.

Treating God's Word like Garbage

35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.…
Hebrews 10

Back on September 22, I posted an overview of the tenth chapter of Hebrews. Today, I am looking more specifically at verse 35 from that chapter. At this point, the author is writing in a fairly straightforward manner. He is not being poetical, allegorical, or metaphorical.
He is giving a command:
   Do not throw away your confidence.
…and he gives the reason:
   It holds a great reward for you.

Oh, that KatieLyn, the runaway bride, would have heeded that command! How differently blessed our lives would be today.

The Hebrews, the early messianic Jews to whom this was written, were having struggles which are outlined in verses 32 and 33, a great conflict full of suffering and public spectacle. But they proved their courage in the first round of trials. They were now being told to hang on to the end of this round because the great reward for trusting the Lord was coming. This trust is so important that the author went on to spend another 40 verses in the next chapter expanding on examples of others who had faithful, overcoming trust in the Lord.  

Notice that these verses make a conditional statement. The reward comes only when the condition is met. First, the confidence has to be maintained. Some translations use the term "confident boldness" to capture the right shade of meaning. This was free and uncluttered, valiant and courageous, trust and assurance. It was not bashful, fretful, nor anxious. It was not a reactive emotion. It was a choice made from the heart. They "willed" to trust. They "decided" to not throw away confidence. Tossing away their trust was an option, but they chose to keep it. They chose to believe God was going to do what He said. 

Once you have heard God, it becomes disrespectful and dangerous to continue in doubt. John Gill, writing in the mid-1700s, made the point that losing one's faith and trust here was like a soldier losing his protective shield, "This shield of faith is by no means to be cast away; it was reckoned infamous and scandalous in soldiers to lose or cast away their shield; with the Grecians it was a capital crime, and punished with death; to which the apostle may here allude."
Indeed, within the next few verses the writer of Hebrews quotes the prophet Habakkuk and warns about shrinking back. Doubts that destroy courage are neither astute nor prudent; they are destructive. They destroyed an engagement and prevented a marriage that the Lord had arranged.

The Lesson
Throwing away your confidence in the Lord means that your reward gets tossed out too. 

2 Timothy 2:25, 26

Perhaps God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth. 
Then they may come to their senses and escape the Devil's trap, having been captured by him to do his will.
2 Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 25 and 26


Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, believes that the "devil's trap" was the engagement. She told me that her daughter, KatieLyn, had not been thinking straight for six months—basically the entire time that she she knew Joe.  Here is the precise quote: 

"Her mind is not tangled with lies, fears, or the devil.  For the first time in six months, she is seeing and thinking clearly."

Obviously, I do not concur. I would say that (back at that point in time) for first time in six months, KatieLyn cast aside her faith in God's plan for her life in order to have peace with her mother.

Either that, or KatieLyn deliberately lied to me, which truly seemed to be against her nature.  It is a grave sin to destroy someone else's confidence in the Lord; and I believe that is what Gwen did to her own daughter. (To me, it looks like Gwen thought it was unnatural for this sensible daughter to be in love, so she thought KatieLyn must have been smitten-crazy and not in her right mind.) That, however, is a topic for a future post. Today we are looking at this passage from Second Timothy Two.

The Greek word used for "come to their senses," and translated "as "recover themselves" in the King James, literally means "to recover from drunkenness" or "to awake."

To me, it seems that KatieLyn was deprived of her own will and made subservient to the will of another, the devil.  The sticky part, the elephant in the room so to speak, which is not acknowledged is that the devil used the person KatieLyn was closest to, her mom, to destroy KatieLyn's trust in the Lord. So from my point of view, she was metaphorically drunk and fell into the devil's trap when she ran off in the middle of the night;  she has yet to awake and come to her senses.

If God had told KatieLyn to break off the marriage, then He'd have told her to do it in the broad daylight of his grace, and those who were also seeking the Lord would have been able to see that was, indeed, His will. That is one of several reasons that I believe KatieLyn was in the devil's trap when she broke off the engagement, and not as Gwen claims, when she accepted the proposal.

In this passage, the Apostle Paul was writing to Timothy about his hope that God would grant repentance. The people he was writing about had fallen into Satan's trap and were not thinking soberly; their actions were not truly of their own, but were done "under the influence."

(Another one of many reasons that I believe KatieLyn was in the devil's trap when she broke off the engagement is that the devil can apply more intense pressure upon a bride in the days before the wedding than he could when the question was first popped.) The devil uses pressure and coercion. The Holy Spirit does not.

A theological debate is set up with one side saying that sometimes it is God's pleasure, as in the Book of Job, to have people caught in the devil's trap. Someone who took this approach would say that it was God's will for us to all be tricked, that we never really heard the Lord's will for this marriage, or that if we did, then we didn't interpret it correctly and it wasn't what we thought. I do not take this view. Things changed after Jesus' resurrection. God equipped the Church to be able to see the schemes of the devil and to stand against them. Things changed after Jesus' resurrection. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit so that believers can hear the Word without having to go find a prophet to seek God for them.

The other side of the debate, and the one that matches other New Testament teaching, is that "His will" refers to the repentance, escape, and recovery; not "His will" that believers were captured! Using this interpretation, God's will is that a person repents of his error, which allows him to escape out of the live-trapping of the devil, that so he might do the return to the will of God, which is the Lord's sovereign good pleasure.

The first view leaves us with a cruel God who is just fine with having his children tricked in order to teach them something. The second view holds that the Lord has equipped us to deal with trickery and expects us to (a) stand against the devil and (b) be merciful and help those who do get trapped to recover. 

The Jamieson Faussett Brown Commentary (1882) makes a note that, "There are here two evils, the snare and sleep, from which they are delivered; and two goods to which they are translated, awaking and deliverance." The snare and sleep are the spiritual intoxication of a loss of faith; the awaking and deliverance are the recovery to spiritual sobriety. 

Now, here is another reason that Gwen is wrong in her interpretation: You cannot run away and leave someone else with your hangover. 

Worry ♦ A Twisted Form of Pride

This is, perhaps, the "greatest magnitude" lesson that was learned from the runaway bride—
   that worry is a form of pride.

And as proof, let's look at some things that the Bible says about pride and see if they don't apply to worry just as well:

○ His pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the LORD his God. 2 Chronicles 26:16 NIV
   Worry indicates a lack of faith.

○ The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. Psalm 10:4  KJV
   Seeking is inquiring after God's thoughts. Worry is meditating on one's own thoughts; a worrier is not seeking God.

○ How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust, And has not turned to the proud... 
Psalm 40:4 NASB
   The trusting man is contrasted with the proud man; a trusting man does not worry.

○ The pride of your heart has deceived you... Obadiah 1:3 ESV
   Worry deceived Gwen. I know she'd argue that worry was "smart thinking," but she'd be wrong.Worried people are not thinking God's thoughts, and when you are not thinking like God, the you are deceived. 
 
○ Though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud.
 Psalm 138:6 NLT
   This verse explains why Gwen was having such a hard time hearing God's will for her daughter. She was proud of her misgivings, deceived into thinking it was wise to doubt; God keeps his distance from those people.

○ And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. Luke 16:15
   Worrying is being faithless. Faith is necessary to please God. Since she ran away in the middle of the night, KatieLyn has desperately tried to justify herself.  I know, it's tough trying to justify why you ran off in total rebellion to God's plan for your life. Pride forces her to insist that what began as nebulous worries are in actuality valid concerns. They are not. Her attempt to legitimize her fear is, in God's eyes, pride in her lack of faith.  
 
○ Pride only breeds quarrels. Proverbs 13:10 WEB
   See, the very strange thing is that KatieLyn and Joe were not quarreling. The one she was fighting with was her mother. KatieLyn called off the wedding because she was fighting with her mother, not because of fights with her fiance. Maybe in some Eastern culture where parents choose their children's spouse this might make sense, but in America it makes her come off as mentally out of kilter. But I am beginning to digress...   Back on point, to make the correlation between pride and worry, this is what was causing KatieLyn to get into arguments with Gwen.

KatieLyn may not want to suck it up and deal with it, but her mother has demonstrated a prodigious amount of pride in the form of worry. Gwen's concerns and misgivings were not indicative of wisdom and brilliant insight. Her doubts and anxieties revealed her lack of faith both in her daughter and in God.  Worry is a twisted form of pride.

The Lesson
Although worry always connects with pride, the reverse may not be true. In other words, no equal sign is between them. It is possible to be so prideful and arrogant that worry gets shoved aside. But fears, doubts, concerns, and worries that run contrary to the word of God always have an element of pride. This pride-laced doubt is what caused the original fall of mankind. Worry that causes a loss of confidence in the Lord is a very serious sin. If you doubt God or doubt what He has said, then part of you thinks that you might know better than He does—and that, my dear, is Pride. 


BONUS:
I did not put this in with the original set of examples because I didn't want to be accused of taking things out of context, but I think you will see this sort of applies anyway:
○ But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. Daniel 5:20 NIV
   Worry hardened KatieLyn's heart with pride, and she was deposed from being a princess bride.

The Parable of the Sower - Soil

Matthew 13:1-23 Mark 4:3-9, 14-20 Luke 8:5-15

Jesus said to his disciples, "Don't you understand this parable? How will you understand all of the parables?" (paraphrase Mark 4:13) The key to understanding this parable lies in the proper interpretation of the four types of soil.

This parable's featured attraction is the soil.
Same Sower. Same Seed. Four Soils. Four Outcomes.

Understanding the soil type is so vital to understanding what Jesus was teaching that, as mentioned in the last post, some scholars prefer to call this the Parable of the Soils. However, all soils would be equally unfruitful if no sower had come along to toss some seed their way. It is the action of the sower putting word into people's hearts that allows them to either bring forth and bloom, or to shrink up and blow away. Without the sower, the soil would never have revealed its productivity.

Even though Jesus used parabolic language in public, when He explains this parable to His disciples later, as we read in these examples below, He makes it clear that the condition of the soil corresponds to the state of the human heart.

♦ "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart." Matthew 13:19.
♦ "These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them." Mark 4:15
♦ "Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe." Luke 8:12

 It is worth noting also that Jesus acknowledges a real, active, adversary—the evil one (Matthew), Satan (Mark) and the devil (Luke), who is out to filch and steal the word. Gwen, the mother of the runaway, was in denial about that. And because she flatly rejected any notion of demonic involvement, she probably never trained her daughter to have her guard up for it. That was horribly and disastrously naïve.

The soils represent the state of the heart.

Wayside
Different translations used slightly different terms to describe the first soil— seed along the path, beside the road, by the wayside, hardened soil of the road, the pavement. In each case, the description is one of hardness; nothing makes an impression. It's not hard to envision the seed bouncing as it hits the ground. The message it would bring stays on the surface and birds, agents of the adversary, come and take it away. The word will not produce a crop in the hard-hearted.

Stony Ground
This soil is described variously as rocky, gravel, and stony. The seed sprouted quickly here, but it never developed roots. When the sun came up, it quickly withered. Jesus described the people with rock-strewn hearts as the emotional "hearers." They received the word with joy, but when the affliction or persecution of a hot sun would rise, their character would prove to be as shallow as their soil. The happy emotions wear off and they are done for.

This is the category where Gwen placed her daughter, KarieLyn. She said the courtship had been too exciting, too enthusiastic, but that it was all thin-surfaced. She said KarieLyn's grip on the reality of marriage was superficial as well.

I don't know. Gwen has made darn-tootin' sure that I can't easily ask KatieLyn about it. But from the few hours that I did spend with KatieLyn, she never came across that way. Is she just a good actress? Did she really have a stony-layer heart right below the surface? Her mom says that all the people who have known KatieLyn for years saw that she was just getting too excited and didn't have any real root. Her mom could be right about that. If her happy emotions wore off, the devil would gleefully overwhelm her by supplying a hot sun that suffocates and wilts her soul with illusions that had nothing to do with Joe.

What I do know for sure is that deep-rooted faith never takes hold in a heart of stony ground. It is possible that Gwen is right: that KatieLyn's flighty emotion was a sign of shallowness that would not last. There was nothing shallow about Joe's love, however. He was prepared to stand for a lifetime. It is true that KatieLyn did not have the deeply-rooted faith that she needed to go through with the wedding. So either she never grew roots because her heart is too stony, or someone else yanked her out of good ground.

Thorny Ground
The "thorns" of this ground is also translated as thornbushes and briers. (In the quote below, the Message Bible uses "weeds.") These hearers have wandering thoughts which travel from worry to imaginations to desires, and then they repeat the circuit! The Message Bible describes them this way:

 “The seed cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.
(Mark 4:18, 19)

The stressors fall into three categories.
    Cares of this world — anxious worries and concerns choke the faith right out of the word that the thorny hearers heard. Often, a problem that was thrown at them by the enemy did need some attention, but instead of keeping it in proper proportion, it gets put on steroids! Some will whine and expect sympathy because they have convinced themselves that their fear is 'legitimate,'  but worry is a twisted form of a prideful sin that refuses to trust the Lord completely.
    Deceitfulness of riches — this deceit causes people to trust in transitory feelings and impermanent possessions. It destroys by dividing the heart.  "No servant can serve two masters;  You cannot serve both God and money." Luke 16:13 
    Lusts of other things — the desire for pleasure and feelings of entitlement. Mark uses the term enter in to specify the status of these desires. "... the desires for other things enter in and choke the word." Mark 4:19 One's affections are entering the soul at this point; they enter in and push God out. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary (1882) describes it this way:- "These 'choke' or 'smother' the word; drawing off so much of one's attention, absorbing so much of one's interest, and using up so much of one's time, that only the dregs of these remain for spiritual things, and a fagged, hurried, and heartless formalism is at length all the religion of such persons."

This. Is. Gwen. The mother of the runaway bride is a classic example of the thorny-ground hearer, the hearer with the wandering mind, who found it overwhelming to think that her Karie might have started a home of her own—without her.  These thoughts and concerns got down inside Gwen and filled in the spot that ought to have been reserved for the Word of the Lord.

These three things, (a) the cares of the world, (b) the deceitfulness of riches, and (c) the lusts after other things, entering in, choke the word, and the word becomes unfruitful. The NET Bible expresses Mark 4:19 this way: "But worldly cares, the seductiveness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it produces nothing."

That is exactly what KatieLyn and Gwen got —Nothing! Years of prayers and preparation had been sown into this.  Both Joe and KatieLyn had received the Word of the Lord that this marriage was His plan for their lives. But KatieLyn got her word choked right out of her. She got nothing. 

But, we must complete the parable...

Good Ground

The good ground represents the hearer with the steadfast mind. The seed of the word can enter the whole person, filling the soul's mind, conscience, and will, and sending roots deep into the spirit's heart. When the word is received and yielded to in faith, then comes growth and understanding.  Then comes the fruitfulness, then comes the thirty-, sixty-, or hundred-fold return. It is the fruitful harvest that brings glory to God.

♦   ♦   The Lesson   ♦   ♦

But Gwen and KatieLyn did not want to follow God's order for growing fruit. They decided that faith was too risky. They wanted the understanding first. And in Gwen's case, she wanted to be assured of a good harvest before she ever heard the word! God does not work like that. There is another parable in Mark 4:26-28, that explains the order: 

The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows— how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.

He himself does not know, but he uses faith and reaps his grain. KatieLyn and her mom wanted a guarantee for the grain before they'd consider casting seed. They considered what could go wrong.
Surely there are windstorms, flood, drought, insect infestation, fungus, and predatory crows. These might drop the harvest from one hundred-fold down to sixty- or even down to thirty-fold.  But when you do as Gwen did and demand to see the full grain before you are happy, or if like KatieLyn you run off in the middle of the night and aren't even around to get up by day, then in cases like that God gives a different guarantee: You are guaranteed no harvest fruits at all!  

 

The Parable of the Sower - Sower and Seed

Matthew 13:1-23 Mark 4:3-9, 14-20 Luke 8:5-15

Jesus said to his disciples, "Don't you understand this parable? How will you understand all of the parables?" (paraphrase Mark 4:13) Because Jesus said understanding this parable is fundamental to understanding His other teachings, it deserves our attention.

Most people who were raised in church or have read the Gospels in the Bible are familiar with this parable. If you are not, or if it has been awhile, the references are listed above. The allegory appears, with varying amounts of detail, in three of the four Gospels.  In Matthew 13:18, Jesus called this teaching "The Parable of the Sower." And indeed, that is how it's most commonly referred to, even though when He explains it to His disciples, He talks more about the soils than the sower. A few churches/pastors might refer to it as "The Parable of the Different Soils."

The Sower

When I realized that Jesus did not call his lesson the Parable of the Soils, I backed up and gave the Sower a second look. The sower sows the Word. The metaphor can legitimately be interpreted several ways; the sower could be:
  (a)  God Himself, this is consistent with an Old Testament typology established in Jeremiah 31:27 Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast.  The LORD is Yĕhovah.
  (b)  Jesus, this is consistent with another parable found in Matthew 13 about tares (bad seed) that were sown among the wheat (good seed). Verse 37 says that the one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man.
  (c)  Holy Spirit, although the Holy Spirit had not been given to all believers at the time Jesus taught this, the Holy Spirit was given on the first Pentecost after Jesus' resurrection and this application of the metaphor would apply to believers today. "For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God;" John 3:34
  (d)  All Believers, this interpretation can be valid because Jesus commissioned all believers to go into all the world and spread the word of the gospel.
All are true, each a facet on the gemstone of truth.

Ἕστιν δὲ αὕτη ἡ παραβολή Ὁ σπόρος ἐστὶν ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Luke 8:11

The Seed

The seed is the word of God; word is logos (λόγος). A word uttered by a living voice that embodies a conception or idea. Both Strong's and Thayer's Greek Lexicon extend the definition to apply to a thought.

Similarly, the seed, which is clearly identified as the Word, can have different facets.
  (a)  The Gospel is obviously the Word.
  (b)  Jesus is the Word made flesh cf John 1:14.
Some may object: How can Jesus be both the Sower and the Seed? Quite simply, the pattern for this is found throughout the Gospels where Jesus is both the Savior and the messenger of salvation. In Luke 4, when Jesus unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, reads it aloud in the synagogue, rolls it up again, and proceeds to explain that He is the fulfillment of that scripture, we have a picture of the Word sowing the Word.
  (c)  Word given through the Spirit cf 1 Corinthians 12:8
The seed is the start of the harvest cycle. Another facet of the seed-word is the personalized word given by the Spirit of God for individual guidance.  This is the seed that was sown in the Runaway Bride's heart on New Year's Day. She received a word from the Lord. She knew then that the Lord was calling her to be a wife to Joe.

KatieLyn will never be able to honestly claim that the Sower never showed up to answer her prayers. He did. KatieLyn will never be able to honestly complain that the seed was not sown over her heart. It was. She had a word of knowledge for guidance, and then she ran.

Today I have been building the foundation. Tomorrow's post, Part II, will look at the various soils and explore what can happen to good seed in poor soil.