Of all sad words of tongue or pen...

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

The words come from a stanza near the end of a poem titled "Maud Muller." The eponymous heroine is a poor farm girl. One day a man stops at a creek to water his horse near the meadow where she is raking hay. They strike up a conversation that neither will forget as long as they live. The man, however, rides away, marries for status, and becomes a judge. His relatives are dour and greedy, so while he is rich and comfortable, he is never truly happy. Maud marries an uneducated man and though her heart is both wise and good, her life continues with all the cares and sorrows of poverty.

Whittier describes them this way: 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

   The poem in its entirety will open in a new window and may be read by clicking here.

The poem does not end there, however. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker and his views of the afterlife take over the poem at this point as he expresses a hope that justice and love will win out in the hereafter.

The point is, though, that it did not have to be this way in the here and now. The "judge" turned out to be a lousy judge. His poor judgment ruined the lives of both Maud and himself. He had made his choice based on what the world thought was important. He had made the "safe" choice and had convinced himself that it was the right one. It was not. Both characters suffer despair at the decision made by just one.

He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But he who walks wisely will be delivered. Proverbs 28:26

In this poem, the judge's heart was not trusting in the Lord; it was using the 'intellectual criteria' of the world. The farm girl's wisdom, her sweet spirit, and even her good looks were not enough; the judge closed his heart to "health and quiet and loving words." The thing that made his decision for him was thinking of his mother and sisters! His mother valued status, and he realized that his family would not approve of him making a decision based on such a "flimsy emotion" as love. 

Yet the book of Proverbs would judge the man to be a fool. 

The Lesson
Ellicott's commentary on this proverb is rather blunt, observing that the man who is confident in his own reasoning will perish in his folly. It goes on to connect it to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 3:18, "Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become "fools" so that you may become wise."

As sad as the loss of "what might have been" was, there is potentially an even darker tragedy. It would be worse to be so blind and oblivious that the error was never discovered.









http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1193/  illustration public domain from a period textbook

James 4

I have known for a while that the day would come that I'd have to deal with James 4—and do it with honesty. It makes KatieLyn's family look bad; so I delayed. It is an important teaching lesson though. It covers what scripture says about why people fight, and it belongs in this discourse of the runaway bride.

One of the reasons that KatieLyn gave for breaking up with Joe was that she was fighting with her mother. That sounds ridiculous even as I type it!  It would be understandable if if she broke up with Joe because she was fighting with Joe, but no, that was not the case. It would even be understandable if she had set up a boundary for her mother, but that did not happen either.

James pulls no punches and he meets the issue head on:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.  James 4:1, 2 NIV

I've shown in earlier posts that Gwen, mother of the runaway, was jealous. She wasn't getting to control the wedding. She didn't get to control Joe and have him jump to her request for a private meeting. She coveted, but was not getting what she wanted.
James explains why such persons do not receive, and he offers a solution for this problem:

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your desires. James 4:3

Gwen blew it! The biggest adult decision of her daughter's life comes along and Gwen cannot hear from God because she is jealous and possessive of the codependency.
James' answer—

Submit yourselves, then, to God… Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. … Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:7, 8, 10.

In Learning to Recognize God's Voice, author Marie Yates writes:

   "The whole Bible is filled with stories of God choosing to be partners with people.  Respect is the bedrock on which love sits; without respect, love cannot exist.  If He did not respect us, our power of choice could not exist. He would just dominate us and would not respect our wishes or our word." 

This is the way God partners with His children. This is not the way Gwen partnered with her daughter.  Gwen did not respect her daughter, and she used the fights to teach KatieLyn to not respect what God had given her with Joe.  A person cannot truly love what he does not respect, and Gwen, although probably not intentionally, carried out the devil's plan to destroy the engagement. The devil exploited her protectiveness and covetousness. Satan helped Gwen feel good about expressing her fears because he knew that her words were incubating in an envious, materialistic heart that would go on to undermine the "bedrock" that Yates described. Gwen did not respect KatieLyn's wishes, and she did not respect that KatieLyn had heard God. So she picked fights and quarrels.  

Whining to your daughter that her fiancé is "going to take you away from me" has got to be some of the worst parenting that I have ever encountered.  If KatieLyn has even halfway normal emotions, the effect of her mom's words would be to steal her joy and make her feel guilty for being in love. And worse—a love which the Lord had orchestrated. No bride should ever be made to feel guilty for being in love. 

Yes, Gwen was worldly. She was complaining about the house, about the car, and about all kinds of things hypocritical.  The fact is, Joe and KatieLyn were in a far better place spiritually, emotionally, and financially to get married than Gwen was when she got married.

The Lesson
Bitter jealousy can make a person be false to the truth. Not admitting to having envy in the heart is a from of self-deception. It can wear an altruistic face for the world, but eventually their behavior will betray them. James declares the cure to be humbling oneself before the Lord. But instead she doubled down, dominating her daughter, controlling all communication, and furthering the lie that served her own pleasure.  


Yates, M. (2000). Learning to Recognize God's Voice, Lamb Publishing, Largo, FL. page 49

Isolation = Snarling Against All Sound Wisdom

Proverbs 18:1 is awkward to understand in the King James Version:
   Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.

At the other end of the spectrum a contemporary paraphrase, the Message Bible, oversimplifies it, making the main point but losing the nuances:
   Loners who care only for themselves spit on the common good.

The JPS Tanakh, 1917,* has in interesting interpretation using verbs that were already rather dated when they were first translated a century ago:
   He that separateth himself seeketh his own desire, And snarlest against all sound wisdom.

The Bible In Basic English, which uses a core vocabulary of 850 English words plus another 150 religious or poetic terms, making it a good choice for beginning readers or those who wish to practice English as a second language—about as basic as one can get—puts it this way:
   He who keeps himself separate for his private purpose goes against all good sense.

The New American Standard, the translation that I use most often for its balance of staying literal while employing modern English, reads:
   Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.

The New English Bible, which is probably the strongest translation in the area of literary imagery, delivers this:
   The man who holds aloof seeks every pretext to bare his teeth in scorn at competent people.

So, do you understand Proverbs 18:1 yet?
I found the two translations that used a form of the root separate to be ambiguous. Separation can be a 'distinction' for refining, as separating gold from dross, or it can mean a cloistered 'isolation' for sequestering one from another. By comparing the different versions, it becomes clearer that it is the isolation that is meant.

Another tricky part was the use of intermeddleth in the KJV. It is not a word that you hear in every day usage. Inter- is a prefix meaning among, or in the midst of. Meddling is usually defined as intruding into other people's affairs; in this case, however, it's not with people but with wisdom and sound reasoning. The Hebrew root word holds a connotation of contention, so it becomes "a meddling dispute with wisdom or sound knowledge."

In late August, 2015, I made several posts about Triangulation. The one that explains it in the greatest depth is HERE.
The topic becomes important again as it relates to Proverbs 18:1 because triangulation separates or isolates a person from being able to hear big-picture wisdom. Moreover, a person who agrees to have someone else be in charge of monitoring and bowdlerizing the communication that he receives is being foolish—it is nearly impossible to get an accurate, realistic picture when some other person is controlling what you see and hear. The following verse, Proverbs 18:2, says, "The foolish have no interest in seeking to understand." They don't even enjoy understanding. This is a tragic state to be in! 

The Lesson
When KatieLyn isolated herself, the scriptures say that she was lashing out at common sense: she was seeking her own desire, and "breaking out" or rebelling against all sound judgment. Proverbs 18:1 says that; I did not make it up.
I don't know what boogeyman she believed that she was protecting herself from. No one on this end was angry at her. Deeply hurt, yes, but it was a feeling of loss from betrayal at broken promises and of desolation at the shattering of trust, not anger.
I think her family expected anger. Gwen behaved as if she were defending against anger, but she misjudged the response. There is a lot that she misjudged. 
As to the lesson, scripture is clear that KatieLyn's desire to isolate herself the way that she did was not what the Bible instructs a person to do.
The updated King James sheds the archaic seeketh and intermeddleth and says this: A man, having separated himself, seeks his own desire, and rages against all sound wisdom. 


* (JPS=Jewish Publication Society)

Jump

Jump - a YouTube video
Steve Harvey talks to those who feel that their life ought to be more than what they are experiencing.

(His audience warm-up before taping Family Feud. If link does not work, then copy and paste: https://youtu.be/yFltqHCTTVo )

Five Traits of Indecisive People

Usually I'm not a big fan of pop psychology. If I am stuck in a waiting room, I might pick a magazine article on why introverts make effective leaders over one that tells which new car models are big in Europe or what a Hollywood celebrity was seen wearing when spotted in New York, but with those few exceptions, I'm not too interested in data that has been collated by a psychology grad student to reaffirm what a thinking person assumes is common sense.

But...

But I came across a listing of five traits of indecisive people and ... well, I think KatieLyn must have submitted her questionnaire to this grad student's study. If we use a baseball analogy, she knocks it out of the park on four of them, and still scores with a bunt on the other one.  Here's the list:

1.  Indecisive people have parents, usually the mother, who never allowed them to make decisions.
In the parents' desire to guard their child from getting hurt, they cripple them instead. What few choices the child has been allowed to exercise are usually limited safe ones that keep him from finding his limits and strengths on his own.

2. Indecisive people are insecure.
People who are immobilized by insecurity might make a visceral decision at first, but they have trouble sticking with it when their self-doubt starts to question and second-guess that choice. Their head won't trust their heart, or much of anything else

3. Indecisive people are people pleasers.
Sorting out one's own evanescent feelings is tough enough, but those who are impelled to please and appease the passing persuasions and passions of other people, (all alteration aside,) are puzzled and perplexed.

4. Indecisive people don't want the work involved.
People waver over the big decisions when they become frazzled over having to make all the little ones that go along with it and following them through to their conclusion. They may be wishy-washy because they are lazy or because they are simply overwhelmed by the task; either way, they are hesitant because of the work.

5. Indecisive people are afraid of the consequences and the shame of being wrong.
People who sit astraddle the fence often fall off in the end. Their fear of making the wrong choice almost assures that they will falter.

The above listing of five traits works with the secular psychology taught in universities. The poster to the left side here is straight from the fantasy genre of fiction.  Neither directly support the mission statement of this blog— to compare real life with scripture; yet all express the wisdom of their intellectual province.  Each one is an ingredient in the complex mixture that sent KatieLyn bolting off on the middle of the night. And each one is a reflection of a concept that can be supported in scripture.

1. Parents can stiffle a child's growth.  This was covered on my September 24th post called Smothering Mothering. The example used there was that of Rebekah, whose son Jacob was not able to come into his destiny until after she was removed from his life. Of course, we don't want it to get that bad for KatieLyn!  But one of her unintended consequences of calling off the wedding was that she also removed herself from God's provision to overcome the codependency with her mother.

2. There are many Bible verses that I could have chosen to illustrate the importance of knowing who you are in Christ as a way of overcoming insecurity. There are many Bible characters who had to overcome insecurity to fulfill their mission; Gideon, Moses, Esther, Elijah, Timothy, just to name a few. But the verse that I keep coming back to is John 8:32, "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Knowing the truth allows you to think as a realist. It gives you confidence. An example is Elisha's servant who got up one morning to see an army with horses and chariots circling the city. Fearful of his future, he asked Elisha what they should do. "Then Elisha prayed and said, "O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." And the LORD opened the servant's eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha." 2 Kings 6:17. In the previous post, "Which thou knowest not," I wrote about how the truth is often hidden for a reason and that God expects us to dig it out.

3. It's not so much that pleasing people is wrong, but that it can so easily become unbalanced, especially when there is an overlay of insecurity. In 1 Corinthians 10:33, Paul admits, "I try to please everyone in every way," but he does this with the purpose of their salvation and not seeking to look good for his own advantage.  It is one of the passages where scoffers say the the Bible is full of contradictions because in Galatians 1:10 he writes, "If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ." There has to be a sorting of priorities; and pleasing God, which is a higher priority, does not always exclude pleasing men. Joe did not want KatieLyn to please him before she pleased God, but he did want her to please God before she pleased her mother.

4. I believe that when KatieLyn looked at the task of setting up her own household away from her parents, that she was more overwhelmed by the size of the endeavor than it was laziness. It is usually easier to overcome the feeling of dismay than to correct the sin of sloth. Either way though, the outcome of Proverbs 18:9 remains the same: "One who is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys."  The use of the term "brother" means that they have a lot in common. Not being willing to work on a marriage is just about the same as destroying it. 

5. I'm pretty sure that Gwen would have a conniption over my response to making the wrong decision, which is: It's better than nothing! But that is her personal issue. Indecisive people usually are afraid of the consequences of being wrong; but usually trying is better than doing nothing. Wizard's First Rule is sort of a middling book, good but not great, however, its characters do have moments of great insight. The quote on the poster illustrates one of them. If you do not move forward, you will never get to the next level. 

The Lesson
There is a lot to be said for the courage to go forward. It takes more courage to go forward than to call it quits. There is no good way to get around Hebrews 10:38, a verse this blog has quoted previously, "Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." God is the speaker here, as the writer is referencing Habakkuk 2:4. The righteous should live by continued confidence in God. And again, in Romans 1:17, "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith." The revealing is from faith to faith; never flowing backwards, not standing stagnant, but from one step of faith to the next, moment by moment.

Some may try to argue that KatieLyn's decision to call off the wedding and run home in the middle of the night was a real decision. I don't see it that way because she has never provided an authentic reason for her behavior. It was not a decision so much as it was a retreat. 


        

Which Thou Knowest Not

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.  Jeremiah 33:3

I have read this verse.  A lot.

Most of the times that I have read it, my mind would 'hear' it as meaning, "Call, and the Lord will answer."

Sometimes I would read it and my mind would 'hear' it as saying, "Ask God to help you understand."

But when I read it again several months after the bride ran off in the middle of the night, the "which thou knowest not" really jumped out!

Only this time, the "thou" wasn't me. This time the "thou" was KatieLyn,  as in 'KatieLyn knowest not.' The Holy Spirit was witnessing to me—He was letting me know—that KatieLyn didn't know the 'great and mighty' thing.

The question that would usually be asked at this point is, "Well, what doesn't she know?" But this time was different. This time the question was, "Why doesn't she know?"

Let's set aside the 500 year-old style of English and use a more recent literal translation of Jeremiah:

Call to Me, and I do answer you, yes, I declare to you great and fenced things — you have not known them.

And the Amplified translation:

Call to Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things, fenced in and hidden, which you do not know (do not distinguish and recognize, have knowledge of and understand).

What the King James translators called "mighty" in 1611 has changed in meaning over time. What we think of as mighty/strong today had a different shade of meaning back then. It was a "might" that came from being fortified or fenced in.  The original Hebrew word (בָּצַר) can mean restrained, fenced, fortified, made inaccessible, enclosed.

Remember, the question is not what she did not know, but why she did not know it. And the answer is: because it was inaccessible, hidden behind a fence.

Okay, I realize that on one level that sounds, Duh! Of course things that are hidden are not seen! That is the definition of hidden.

But at another level, the level at which the Holy Spirit was communicating with me, I understood that God had fenced it in; He had done the hiding. And the question remained, why would He put a fence there?

And I called on the Lord and got the answer.

KatieLyn and her mom are in a co-dependent relationship. God's plan for Joe was to give him all of one wife, not a wife who is still living in a partial co-dependency.  Throughout April and the first half of May, the Lord had been working on both KatieLyn and her mother, Gwen, to sever the dependency and heal the dysfunction.  To do this, God placed fences between them. The proper response would have been for each woman to call on God individually. They did not. Instead, they blamed Joe for erecting the fences between them. It wasn't Joe.

In the weeks following her run into the middle of the night, the devil had a heyday claiming his victory over spoiling God's plan. Their codependency, instead of being corrected by the Lord, actually deepened until Gwen controlled all communication. Gwen began accusing Joe's friends of lying about Katie,¹ which is untrue. At one point, she even patently accused the pastor, who was to have married the couple, of lying! And she wanted me to "move on" without answers. Meanwhile, KatieLyn was moving backwards.

The Lesson
 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
~Proverbs 25:2
Obviously, I decided to search out the matter rather than to move on without answers. That is what this blog does.

If KatieLyn ever hopes to become a queen over her own life, then she will have to master this lesson. The lesson is one which the Lord has tried to lead her toward in the past, but she ran from it. It is the glory of kings, or in her case the glory of a queen, to search out a matter on her own. At nearly 30 years old, she should be taking on the responsibility of a woman. When she chose her mother's thoughts instead of God's thoughts, it put a fence-line between her and the Lord. When she depended on her mom to do (at least some of) the searching for her, that only put a double fence-line between herself and the Lord.

God hides some things so that we will have to call on and seek Him. Our codependency² should be with the Lord, not with another person. He wants part of our relationship with Him to be very personal, and he won't always give the answers to someone else to share with us, especially as we mature. Children learn a lot from teachers, but a time comes when they need to be doing the research on their own. This is the level which KatieLyn had reached, and the Lord knew that she would need to step up to that level to be successful in marriage. He wanted her to be a mature woman who would call upon Him, hear Him, and wholeheartedly step into His plan over all other voices.
As evidenced by her run into the night, she decided to act like a kid.


¹ You may notice that I always call KatieLyn by her full name. She told Joe that is what she prefers. Her mother always calls her Katie, without the Lyn.  I have attempted to retain that use of the name in this blog.
² It is a codependency from the point that Christ is the Head of the Church, and as we rely on Him, He depends on us to be his body on Earth.  

Photo Credit  http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Inspirational-Images/

Clothed with Strength and Dignity…

Strength and dignity are two qualities of a virtuous woman, as described in Proverbs 31. They are also, according to verse 25, the two virtues that impart confidence in the future.

KatieLyn lacked confidence in her own future, so she ran away in the middle of the night. This was an act that revealed neither strength nor dignity.  Courage does not flee, but stands firm. Dignity holds its head high and does not go into hiding.
Here is Green's Literal translation of the verse:

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she shall rejoice at the day to come.
Proverbs 31:25

"The day to come" is an intriguing phrase. The Catholic Church often teaches this as being the day of one's death—that when death comes, she will joyously enter into her rest. Other denominations explain that it means old age—that in the days to come on earth, she will find satisfaction in what she has accomplished and find joy in her grandchildren. Still others take the stance that "the day to come" is all future—that her strength and dignity make her the eternal optimist. Using a Hebrew lexicon doesn't narrow the interpretation by much.  יוֹם can mean day (as opposed to night), a 24-hour period, the work day, a day's journey, a lifetime, a year, or any general time period! 

A few translations, most notably the NIV, translate rejoice as "she can laugh at" the day to come. This implies making sport of the future with a mocking laughter, and it puts a free-from-fear spin on it. Whether you like the merriment interpretation or would prefer the scorning approach, the main point of agreement between these two attitudes is that this woman is confident in the Lord. Her pleasure of full confidence is what stands out here.

Cause and Effect
Implicit in this verse is that the rejoicing of the 'day to come' is a result of strength and dignity. It would be a mistake to arbitrarily decide, "I'm going to laugh at the future," without first loading up on the prerequisites of strength and dignity. Without confidence in your God-given worth, it is unlikely that you will be laughing for very long. A person who is full of self-doubt does not have the strength, and a person who allows other things or people to strip away her initial trust in the Lord does not have the dignity that it takes to laugh at the future.

The Lesson
In order to really laugh without fear of the future, one needs to first know that her strength comes from the Lord. The night that KatieLyn ran off, she did not have any confidence in the Lord's plan for this marriage at all. In order to really laugh without fear of the future, one must have the self-assurance of knowing that God is not going to abandon her to twist in the wind. The night that KatieLyn ran off, Joe was unable to convince her of that; other voices had so stolen, killed, and destroyed her self-worth that she simply had no faith left.

Strength and dignity impart confidence in the days to come. If KatieLyn had been clothed in strength and dignity, she would have laughed at the future. If KatieLyn had been clothed in strength and dignity, she would be happily married today. But she listened to other voices of condemnation and fear that drove her off, fleeing half-naked into the night.

The Attack on Identity

This one surprised me. Ever since the runaway bride took off in the middle of the night, I've been asking God to show me and tell me what went on. I've also been keeping my eyes and ears open to understand what settles in my heart as He answers. So it was a light-bulb moment for me when I was reading on an entirely different topic and the words popped out, "her identity."

Many people, including the pastor who had been giving the couple premarital counseling, were of the opinion that KatieLyn was scared—that she bolted out of fear and then was too embarrassed to deal with her rash behavior—that it was easier for her to rationalize that her mother had been right all along. (But remember the earlier posts which show Gwen's indecisive flip-flopping; there was no "all along.") And, yes, fear was a major motivation for her run, but before I saw the words, "her identity," it had remained a nebulous fear; I had been unable to put my finger on the root cause of the fear.

Now it was as if a switch flipped, and I could see she had lost herself.  The real KatieLyn was still there, of course. I'm not saying that she was schizo. But there was (a) the KatieLyn that feared failure as a wife, which must have seemed incredibly real considering her behavior, but which was only a hologram set there by the enemy; (b) the Katie that her mother saw and that she strove to conform to, which I believe had only 2-dimensional accuracy; Gwen was so myopic seeing Katie her child that her vision of KatieLyn as a capable independent woman was blurry; (c) the KatieLyn that had so much common sense that it was difficult for her to believe that dreams can come true in real life (with a bit of work) and are not limited to books on the fantasy shelf. I really wanted her to feel like a princess on her wedding day, but she chose not to. There are probably d, e, and f versions of her identity too, the KatieLyns that she is in front of friends, coworkers, and churchgoers. But the first three thefts of her identity are the ones that I can write about without indulging in speculation. 

This might have been a valid reason to call off the marriage: the bride had not come to terms with who she was/is. I still believe that this was a "work in progress" that the Lord was in the process of attending to, however. God needed KatieLyn's cooperation. He needed her to sign on to His plan for her life, and she would have discovered herself by following the Lord's plan in marriage. I fully believe that.

But that did not happen. When the Holy Spirit prodded me with those words, it became evident that KatieLyn had/has an identity crisis—and it came as a result of external pressures being put on her.
Her God-given identity is still intact, but it was/is sorely suppressed.
The enemy got KatieLyn where he wanted her, suffering from her own case of mistaken identity!

Here are some evidences of the enemy attack on her identity that I alluded to in the previous paragraph: impaired by insecurity, hobbled by self-doubt, apron-strung to her mother, misled into curbing her strength, constrained by timidity, sporadically wilted by her elder sister's personality; and there may be others if I'd had opportunity to get to know her better. The point is that these are restraints that the enemy has used/is using to bind KatieLyn. The impaired, hobbled, apron-strung, curbed, constrained, and wilted KatieLyn is not the God-designed KatieLyn. They are not the spirit deep-down in KatieLyn. They were an enemy-imposed tempest in her soul.

Her authentic identity in Christ is not the one that she was seeing in the mirror the night that she ran back home through the darkness.

Her real identity is one of:

Ephesians 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
Romans 8:37 In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Colossians 2:7 (She is) rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.*
Philippians 4:19 God will supply all (her) needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

KatieLyn is loved, called, enlightened, and equipped by God. There are dozens more scripture promises of who she is and what she is capable of. A link is included at the end of this post. These are what she needed for reinforcing her identity. Stewing about what could go wrong was self-destructive. If I had known what she was doing, I'd have told her to quit. (Nicely, of course.)

The Lesson
I am drawn back to the identity building scripture of Ephesians 2:10, highlighted above.  We are God's handiwork. We should trust His craftsmanship! We were created for the purpose of doing good works! Sure, KatieLyn can still do some good things while sitting under her parents, but God had assigned her to a position of more authority, which she refused. Notice that God had prepared the work in advance. A place had been prepared for her to hit the ground running. There were good works, (not doubtful ones,) prepared beforehand so that she could walk in them. The work still needs to be done. Surely God can get someone else to fill the position (and receive the rewards), but that fact neither excuses nor resolves the runaway bride's problem of knowing who she is, listening to her (now-auxillary) assignment, and filling her place in life. She let the devil brainwash her and lie to her and keep her from her destiny once. She needs to cowgirl up, take the reins of her own life, head that horse in the direction that the Holy Spirit is pointing, and find out who she is so that she won't miss God again.





* The next verse issues a caution showing that the enemy frequently adds pressure, verse 18 continues, "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ…" These are four directions attacks come from, (1) captivating ideas, (2) baseless deception, (3) traditions of men, (4) ideologies of the world. It is a mature Christian's responsibility to "see to it" that they are not a trap.

More scriptures on Knowing Who I Am in Christ may be found HERE       

Satan's Bonus Payment

Satan attacks families, all families. When he attacks a Christian family, it is personal. God the Creator designed the family as the chief administrative unit for carrying out His purposes on Earth; so Satan attacks it. It is a fact of life in a fallen world.

Let's look a bit more at the master design:
The marriage relationship parallels the relationship between God and a believer. Someday, the Church will have the opportunity to become the Bride of Christ. The skill sets needed in a successful marriage are the same ones that will be relevant in our eternal destiny. I will take time to copy Ephesians 5:22-33 here in Young's Literal Translation. It is stilted and old-timey, its origins dating back 150 years, but that may slow you down so that you can "read it again for the first time."

22The wives! to your own husbands subject yourselves, as to the Lord, 23because the husband is head of the wife, as also the Christ [is] head of the assembly, and he is saviour of the body, 24but even as the assembly is subject to Christ, so also [are] the wives to their own husbands in everything.
25The husbands! love your own wives, as also the Christ did love the assembly, and did give himself for it, 26that he might sanctify it, having cleansed [it] with the bathing of the water in the saying, 27that he might present it to himself the assembly in glory, not having spot or wrinkle, or any of such things, but that it may be holy and unblemished; 28so ought the husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies: he who is loving his own wife — himself he doth love; 29for no one ever his own flesh did hate, but doth nourish and cherish it, as also the Lord — the assembly, 30because members we are of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones; 31‘for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they shall be — the two — for one flesh;’ 32this secret is great, and I speak in regard to Christ and to the assembly; 33but ye also, every one in particular — let each his own wife so love as himself, and the wife — that she may reverence the husband.

Can you see that marriage is a very big deal in God's eyes? Can you see that is what makes marriage a very big target in Satan's eyes? Verse 32 in the ESV is: This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. This Bible passage lays the moral instruction that opens the secrets of the 'profound mystery,' (which is also the key as to why gay marriage does not fit in God's order; that is off- topic for this blog, but I threw it in so you can connect the dots on your own).
Just as a skit is a tiny portrayal of an event of life, marriage is the active living theater of the gospel mystery. God chooses a bride, He loves her and offers a covenant: He will give himself completely to her. She responds, receives his love, and becomes one with him. It is a big deal. It is the creation of unity, and Satan attacks that.

The title of this post refers to a "bonus payment." Today, I'm not talking about the marriage that Satan prevented between KatieLyn and Joe; I'm talking about his bonus!  Satan got his bonus payment because he went without being detected by the bride!

KatieLyn never once articulated a rational reason to break off the marriage. Put yourself in Joe's place for a minute. It's a couple days out from the wedding; you are totally focused on beginning a new and permanent phase of life by marrying a woman you are completely in love with. KatieLyn tells him that they need to talk. She tells him that he is "everything" she prayed for, but because of 'lifestyle differences,' he will grow to hate her, so she has to return his grandmother's ring and call off the wedding. He asks her what she means by lifestyle differences and she says, "I like to drink tea." 

I am struggling here to not paint her as a total ditz, she has many good qualities, but that night the best she could come up with was to play the prophetess and say that Joe would grow to hate her. He was expected to accept this on the basis of differing beverage choices. Her nonsensical explanation, of course, was a statement of total self-deception.

The devil broke up this marriage, KatieLyn was and probably is still deeply deceived about that, and her co-dependent mother and intimate confidant is in denial that Satan does this kind of stuff—if she thinks he is real at all.

Not only did Satan pull off his scheme undetected by the bride's family, he gets bonus points for keeping her family trapped in the dysfunction that the Lord had been working to mend. Instead of blossoming into a woman with a fully-grown purpose in life, KatieLyn returned to her childhood purpose of providing meaning for her mom's life, the root of their codependency. This marriage would have been good for Gwen too; if only she could have gotten over her own fear and jealousy she could have seen that. She chose to doubt God instead.

KatieLyn had spent nearly half her life praying for a man who had a love for Christ in his heart, who wanted to honor that, who would make marriage a priority, who had made a commitment to purity, who loved her as best he knew. And God honored and answered KatieLyn's prayers. When God brought Joe into their lives, KatieLyn rejoiced, but the other half of her codependency tumbled into satanic confusion. KatieLyn and her mom were a house divided. None of this was good enough to convince Gwen. Gwen, who was so used to being in charge of running her family, wasn't ready to relinquish those reins and encourage KatieLyn to pursue her prayed-for destiny. (Despite this, Gwen is doing okay when it comes to Ephesians 5:22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord, because she doesn't fully listen to the Lord either.)

KatieLyn has said that there is nothing wrong with her family. I can understand being defensive about a co-dependency, but she missed seeing the bigger picture. The Lord would have used this marriage firstly, to help KatieLyn be loosed from her mom's apron strings and begin to flourish on her own. And also, this marriage would have helped to realign Gwen to her proper place in her own home; Satan has attacked Gwen's identity too, and she places far too much emphasis on clinging to her sphere of authority. She is raising children who do not want to leave home as adults, and that is unhealthy.

The Lesson
Satan is a deceiver. He deceives best when he can go unrecognized. As of now, he is attacking Gwen's harvest. I will use that harvest as a metaphor. She did an excellent job raising her little fruits, but now that they are ripening, she is greedy for them and does not want to let them go to market. Yet it is out at the market where they gain a value, where they can find purpose and bring joy to others. But Gwen keeps coaxing KatieLyn toward the mason glass, to be preserved in a specimen jar and stuck on her own pantry shelf. She has just about got KatieLyn convinced that she'll be happy there for a long time. And now, for a change, I am the one with doubts and misgivings about that! 

Anatomy of a Satanic Strategy of Betrayal

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
Ephesians 6:11

This is what we are told to do:  Put on the whole armor of God.
This is the reason for it:  That we may be able to stand against the devil's schemes.

The King James uses the word wiles instead of schemes.  Holman uses tactics. Douay-Rheims translates as deceits. Darby calls it the artifices. Weymouth says stratagems. All involve trickery and cunning. 

The devil is scheming. It is who he is.  His tactic is to discourage, dissuade, and disarm. And if my detractors are jumping up to say, "Oh, you find a devil behind every rock!" I respond, "No, only one rock." If Lessons from a Runaway Bride is going to have any integrity at all as a blog that compares real life with scripture, then we have to acknowledge that there is a real adversary who has real schemes to really steal, kill, and destroy God's plan.

I found this Nine-Point Plan in some women's ministry notes that I have. (I'm not sure which lecture or sermon series they came from originally; they were with Manna-fest notes, but that is not a women's ministry.) The outline used the future tense, the devil will, and bullet points. I stayed with that format, even though these events happened in past tense 2015. I was amazed to see how closely they applied to the runaway bride.

The devil will—
• Get her to question her passion.
     I think this was the lethal attack. It is the one that ultimately caused KatieLyn to make the wrong decision. The devil schemed to make her doubt her own motivation by bringing betrayal into her life. And the louder that she protested and screamed that she 'made the right decision' by breaking the engagement, the more apparent it became that she made a bad decision because she was in denial of the woman that God created her to be. Her reaction to betrayal was, quite naturally, to question her God-given passion. She has tried to convince herself that she should embrace being a spinster single. 
• Manipulate her focus.
     KatieLyn was focusing on a lot of false guilt. She was deceived into feeling bad about things that she ought to have been rejoicing in. Much of this relates back to the co-dependency discussed earlier, so I will not belabor the point here. The devil was not allowing her to enjoy the thrill of anticipation that is normal when getting married.
• Play on her insecurities.
     This presented during the break-up scene when KatieLyn kept repeating "You will grow to hate me," to Joe.  He has no clue why she would think that, and it puzzles all who know Joe as well.
• Divide the home.
     As my notes explain, the devil will attack you at home; if the primary attack is out someplace else such as school or work, he will set up a mirror attack at home to deprive you of a safe place. IN the case of the runaway bride—Wow, just wow! Not only did the devil divide a home before it could be formed, he sent the bride running back into bondage at a time when God was calling for a separation.  (This point on the list is about having a safe place or space. Relational conflicts in the family are covered in the final point.)
• Undermine her confidence (in God).
     Since it had been awhile and my note-taking wasn't perfectly complete to begin with, I wasn't sure how 'playing on securities' differed from 'undermining confidence' at first; one sort of leads to the other.  The answer clicked in after a spot of ruminating: Undermining her confidence is sabotaging her faith. KatieLyn got to a place where she could not trust what she had previously heard from God clearly.
•  Increase anxiety against her calling.
      In KatieLyn's case, she was filled with anxiety the life purpose she had dreamed of since childhood, and which she had claimed had been her passion since she was fifteen. Instead of finding reassurance from a supportive family, she was told that it was smart to pay attention to her fears.
• Wedge distance between her and God.
     This was another claim that KatieLyn made—several weeks later. The first we heard of it was when she attempted to explain her actions to friends. And while, obviously, the devil did put a wedge distance between her and God, that distance was created by her rejection of God's plan for her life. In her delusion, she said Joe drew her away from God. Hogwash!
• Overload her with pressure.
     This is a big win for the devil, and the pressure was not even from the wedding planning. The overload was the fights that her mom picked with her. (You can read about them in other posts.) And how do I know the fighting was demon-inspired and not love-inspired motherly concern? Because her mother was not behaving like Jesus. Jesus did not indulge in hand-wringing worry, and He when he did pick fights, it was with the leadership who were keeping souls in bondage, not with young women who were trying to follow their God-given destiny.
• Create disunity with those closest to her.
     This one is telling. And the "closest to her" was not Joe. She remained closest to her mother.  It was God's timing for KatieLyn to leave her parents' home and begin one of her own. And the devil used that by deceiving Gwen, mother of the runaway.  Gwen pridefully told me that KatieLyn had not been thinking clearly the entire time she knew Joe and that "everyone who knew her" realized "she was not herself." Basically, she painted her own daughter as being crazy. (sigh) To which I say that, of course, KatieLyn was different because the Lord was preparing her to be a wife instead of a daughter. On our side of things, we were encouraged by the changes in her taking more responsibility for her own life. Joe believed KatieLyn was strong enough to break away from the codependency.

The Lesson
     I have shown nine ways the devil schemed. There were more, but the sermon outline I used covered only these nine common schemes that the devil executes toward women (and men). The one that continues to stand out for me is Satan's use of confusion. I know Joe clearly heard from the Lord. He was focused. I was Gwen who, if led at all, was led by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "For we walk by faith, not by sight."  Gwen never had any faith— not in hearing God's plan, not in her daughter, and certainly not in Joe. The devil (with apologies to yo mamma) used her as a wrecking ball.
      We should have had our armor on. Should KatieLyn have expected such betrayal to come from her own mother? In hindsight, yes. But that is the sneakiness of codependency, you always have good reasons for doing the things that ultimately harm you. The devil ginned up the strife for KatieLyn so that it came from the person that she chose to remain closest to—"For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." James 3:16. That is betrayal any way you slice it.  

Shopping Trip

Have you ever been in a situation that didn't bother you at the time; you just went with the flow and let each moment approach without preconceived expectations and then let it go by without much judgment?  I think that is how a lot of our pets, at least the pets that are not accustomed to strict schedules, must experience time.  That is how I felt the day that KatieLyn's parents came to visit our house.
My son Joe is a grown man, living on his own. He was in love. He was focused. He makes good decisions. I didn't feel any pressure to "sell myself" when I met his bride's family.

But looking back with hindsight, Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, was on a shopping trip that day. She still wasn't trusting her daughter and she still hadn't decided if she would accept this marriage. Looking back, I now find that a bit creepy. Notice how I italicized the personal pronoun just then? "She" was shopping. "She" was making decisions about buying into the marriage. One thing "she" didn't do was keep an open heart.  Under the surface smiles, Gwen was pretty ticked that she had not gotten to control our meeting.  She had wanted to meet us (Joe's Dad and me) before we ever met her daughter! Everyone I know thought that was at least a little peculiar, and many thought it was downright bizarre.

Long story short, it turned out that KatieLyn needed "permission" from her parents to get married. And although Gwen had given permission, she regretted it. Deeply. But instead of doing either of the two more honorable things— stating her position plainly and publicly, or shutting up until she got direction from God—she did her manipulative co-dependent thing where she picked KatieLyn's happiness apart in tiny little pieces and replaced it with her own fear and doubt.

When a bride runs off in the middle of the night, the mother of the groom (that's me) has some questions.  They went like this: Did I make a mistake by treating KatieLyn like a responsible adult? Her mother treated her like she was about fourteen years old, so maybe my approach scared her?? But I decided no, treating KatieLyn as an adult with adult responsibilities was proper, and it would have been mollycoddling to do otherwise. I'm not going to enable codependency in a daughter-in-law!
So I got called "mean" by KatieLyn (shrug). And Gwen wrote to me, "Let me say this as well, if Katie had been unsure about her decision to leave, your behavior cemented it in her mind. You might want to remember that for the next time."

Next time? freakin' hysteria much? Why would there ever be a next time?*  — that was my impulsive reaction. But as I processed it over time, Gwen sounded more and more like the the upset woman in the returns line at the customer service desk. She had shopped for a family for "her Katie," suffered buyer's remorse over having given KatieLyn permission to get engaged, and now that the "return" was done and she had her daughter back, she just couldn't leave the store without commenting on how poor the service was.

What made Gwen unhappy with her shopping experience? The one thing that stands out the most is that she did not like the way Joe and his family set boundaries. Gwen has been a pushy mom for three decades, and she has gotten her own way a lot. In the short time that I knew her, I found multiple examples of her problem with boundaries.
• Once, she summoned Joe to her house, asking him to arrive several hours before KatieLyn would be home from work so that she could talk to him "in private." We never found out exactly what that was about because Joe had the good sense to say no. It would have required him using one of his vacation days and, consequently, shortened the honeymoon, which he rightly thought was expecting too much.
• Another example of her problem with boundaries is that after KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night, Gwen gloatingly informed me that she had read all of my emails to Katie. Although I knew KatieLyn shared a lot with her mom and there was nothing in my email to be ashamed of, the gall of Gwen openly flaunting that she had noisily read every word of my attempt to establish a relationship with a woman I had hoped would be my daughter-in-law was just—crass. 


The Lesson
This is a Bible-based blog comparing real life with scripture, but there hasn't ben any scripture yet today. Let's fix that:
And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Luke 12:15
Covetousness is the desire for the possession of worldly things.  But Jesus taught that a person's life does not consist of his/her possessions. The idea of 'shopping' for a husband is horribly worldly.  The Captain and Tennille may have had a hit song in Shop Around but it was wretched advice:

My mama told me
You better shop around
You better shop around

Try to get yourself a bargain, girl
Don't you be sold on the very first one
Good looking guys come a dime a dozen
Try to find you one who's gonna give you true lovin'

That is how you end up with Muskrat Love, which happens to be another hit song by the same   Captain and Tennille. That song promotes worldly pleasures as the basis for relationship: they twirl and they tango, jinging a jango; Nibbling on bacon, chewing on cheese... anything goes...

For people like Gwen, the shopping around and the pushing of boundaries are very closely linked because they stem from the same motivation. Both involve the desire to obtain and possess things in your own way by your own doing. Such people are so caught up in their own shopping, their own choices, that they lose regard for the gifts that God would give them.



* Edit to add:
Shortly after I wrote the post, I found 2 Thessalonians 2:10, which speaks of people who 'did not receive the love of the truth.'  In context, the surrounding verses are addressing salvation, but what struck me was that for some, love of the truth was not a value they received. It is not that it wasn't offered; they refused the love of the truth. I can honestly say that I never saw Gwen receive God's truth for this marriage. She "shopped" because that would make it look as though she was open to the possibility and make the claim that she was "trying" to be supportive. But she refused to believe the truth and at a deep level, she took pleasure in the control and empowerment that she derived from not accepting the truth. Her "next time" comment is an example of her loving that control.   
 



 

Proverbs 3:5 ~ A second step to Hearing God

It is a verse that would likely make the Top 25 memory verses in most children's church curricula.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

This verse is familiar enough that many adults who were raised in church know it by rote. 
   However, it is worth breaking it down and taking another look. 

It tells us:
  Trust is done in one's spirit with the heart.

Therefore:
Trust is not done in the mind with logic.
Trust is not done in the intellect with reasoning. 
Trust is not done in the soul with emotions. 
Trust is not done in the psyche with instinctual feelings. 

Trust in the Lord is done in the heart¹ so that we can be in communion with each other.*
 Do not lean on your own understanding; trust is not dependent on figuring it out.
That is why Jesus delighted in childlike faith. When He said, "Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it," Mark 10:15, He was speaking of a child's trusting spirit, not the body dimensions.

But wait, there's more...
Your logic, your reasoning, your emotions, and your feelings can determine your will. You can use all these elements of your soul to help you make a choice as to whether to trust God or not.
One could use logic: God does not lie.
One could use reasoning: God did send an answer to KatieLyn's prayers.
One could use emotions: Joe made her happy; you could see it in her eyes.
One could use visceral feelings: From childhood she'd always wanted to be a wife.

Any of those choices would have reinforced what God had told KatieLyn. All of them could have enhanced her trust in the Lord. That is what He had intended.
And then KatieLyn decided not to trust Him with all her heart.

Yes, that little word "all" is part of the verse. And that is the one that was twisted into deception. Five days before what would have been her wedding day, she was ensnared into deciding that since she could not trust God 100%, she should call off the wedding. She got a lot of support for believing that lie too.

The thing is... 
The thing is, her supporters forgot the part about "lean not to your own understanding."  Not relying on your own understanding is a co-equal command with "trust in the Lord." Reliance on one's own soulish understanding generally weakens one's ability to trust God, (as opposed to reliance on understanding received from the Holy Spirit). The more that a person is relying on his own discernment and judgment, the less he relies on the Lord.  

KatieLyn tried to trust in the Lord with her own understanding, (the $10 word is perspicacity,) and her supporters were right there supporting her new-found doubt in God's ability, His provision, and most of all, in His character. Trusting in your own judgment is not trusting in the Lord, especially when He is saying, "I chose Joe for your husband," and you are saying, "No, I'm going back home."

*...
Back to the asterisk above where I wrote about God and man being in communion with each other— now I can link this to God's character. God's character is consistent. He does not change character, and so in that regard, we can know that when He said, "Whoever is of God hears the words of God," John 8:47, He meant it. When it comes to hearing God, there are some rules that are dependent on His character and some that are determined by our character. If our character is one of distrust in God, as shown by our action of preferring to trust our own judgment, and when our distrust reaches a level that our belief is no longer 'of God,' then we will have problems hearing Him. It is a deafness that we brought on ourselves by disobedience in trusting with all our heart. 

It seems to be that in the case of the runaway bride, God had told KatieLyn His plan for her life, but then she kept going back and wanting reaffirmation after reaffirmation until she drove God to a point where He had to be a parent to his daughter. Parents do not let their kids keep questioning them indefinitely.  It is really annoying to have a kid keep pestering you about things you have already told them and knew they understood the first time. So eventually He says, "Fine, I'm not forcing you to accept my blessing."


Is the "100% trust" standard unattainable? 
Yes, in the spiritual realm of faith, we can trust the Lord with all our heart. Lots of folks are willing to trust Jesus 100% as their Savior, but choose not to trust Him as Lord of their everyday life. They still want control over where they live, what job they take, and whom they marry. They want to see what they are getting into, and so in the walk-by-sight realm, 100% confidence is unattainable. Like so many others, KatieLyn was making a nonsensical demand on God. If He wouldn't show her the proof-positive end at the beginning, then she would choose to refuse to trust Him 100%.



The Lesson
The first step to hearing God is to respond to the call to salvation. In the Shepherd and sheep analogy commonly used in the Bible, the saved sheep are in position to hear their Shepherd Savior. Whether or not they trust what they hear is another issue, and that is why the title of this post is 'A second step to Hearing God.' The sheep then has to trust its shepherd to lead it to the next pasture. Yes, God is merciful and we also have parabolic examples of His going out to recover the lost sheep; rescue and restoration comes with the salvation package. But do you really want to develop a reputation as a runaway sheep, or in this case, a runaway bride?

It isn't always running, however. Sometimes it is a slow drifting away. Hebrews 2:1 says, "we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it." Or as the Berean Literal Bible translates it, "it behooves us to give heed more abundantly to the things we have heard, lest ever we should drift away."  It behooves us to trust what we hear from God the first time that we hear it, and then keep our attention on that, because if we get our attention on other things we put ourselves at risk of ending up in the wrong place. 

♦     ♦     ♦ 

¹ Quick Review: You are a spirit (pneuma), this is the heart. You have a soul (psyche), which is your reasoning, emotions and your "chooser," that is your will.  You live in a body (sōma), the physical body, which is a corpse without the spirit.  
 "It is the spirit in man's body, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand;" cf Job 32:8, that inspires the heart.    

Mark 3:27

No man can enter into a strong man’s house and spoil
his goods, except he will first bind the strong man;
and then he will spoil his house. Mark 3:27

Let's edit that for KatieLyn:

No devil can enter into a strong woman’s house and spoil
her goods, except he will first bind the strong woman;
and then he will spoil her house.

The truth of Mark 3:27 is one of the reasons that I know KatieLyn did not "do the right thing." She allowed herself to be bound and did not resist it with all her might. That's a fact; no point in being offended by the truth. She was out-numbered though. There were three devilish forces trying to bind her, and there may have been others that were kept hidden from me. Furthermore, they worked together in unity, so it is difficult to see precisely where one stops and another takes over. The mental effect is that instead of seeing little imps that might have been aptly taken out with successive one-two punches, KatieLyn would see a monster of formidable size. She would be bound by at least three imps.

A. One imp was religious legalism. Legalism begins with a proper biblical precept, and then it goes amuck. It would be like, instead of using fresh paint and an airbrush on a smooth surface, one has thickened improperly stored paint she is trying to apply with brush that wasn't correctly cleaned the last time. The legalism began correctly with the command to honor one's mother and father. But KatieLyn was not 14; she was 28. The honor paid by a youngster is different than the honor paid by adult offspring. In a healthy, godly relationship, KatieLyn would not have experienced guilt for wanting to do adult things.

B. Another imp was immaturity, and this time it was not KatieLyn's, but her parents' immaturity that bound her. Her dad's immaturity had forced Gwen to take up some of the slack in parenting, and Gwen's immaturity had held on to KatieLyn and refused to release her into adulthood. If KatieLyn's parents had a healthy relationship with their daughter, they would have encouraged her to pursue God's call on her life and released her into the Lord's hands. Instead, they have instructed "their" Katie to play it safe. Gwen has a disincentive to let KatieLyn go because as long as KatieLyn is nearby, Gwen can substitute her Katie's emotional support for the support she either does not get or will not receive from her own husband.

C. You can see how the first two imps fit together like jigsaw pieces: It is to her parents' emotional advantage (albeit not their spiritual advantage) to keep KatieLyn at home, and KatieLyn is crippled with guilt if she does not please them. So the third imp is like icing on the cake: the Peace Deception! The Peace Treaty imp does its best work on poorly instructed or possibly immature Christians who still haven't learned that to follow Christ means to enter into warfare. This blends back into the legalism of Part A where verses like "live at peace with all men" are pulled out of context and used like a cudgel. All this imp had to do was create chaos, which is its natural element. If it could convince KatieLyn that "Peace" is a sign from God, and then rile Gwen with "misgivings," it would be able to sit back and laugh at the destruction of a godly marriage. Which is exactly what it did.

As Jesus taught in Matthew 12:25, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” Three imps, and possibly more, joined to appear as one giant monster to divide KatieLyn from Joe. They brought KatieLyn to a point of desolation because they tricked her into believing that calling off the marriage was the right thing. And then they made sure that she would have a strong support system of people who did not know Joe to tell her how "courageous" she was being. At the same time, the devilish imps also kept KatieLyn from hearing any "peace-disturbing dissension" from people who actually DID know Joe and the other half of the situation. Totally fiendish, this control of communication was purportedly to protect her.  But if she was "so courageous," then why did she need protection?  The fact is, courage to do the right thing does not need protection. It was the maintenance of the deception that needed to be protected.


The Lesson

The only power the devil has against us is through deception—illusion. He lies to us and then waits for us to fall for those lies, because he can’t do a single thing about plundering our house until he has us bound. But, make no mistake about it. Once he has us bound, he will spoil our goods until we do something about it. (G. Copeland)

KatieLyn's decision to divide her house was not courageous. It was wimpy and motivated by fear that had been injected through deception. It shoved her right back into a place that she had begun the process of being delivered from. It is one of those vicious circle things: More deception leads to more division leads to more deception leads to more division leads to more deception. Courage and truth never make the list.

"The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed." ~ Jesus

You can find that statement in context in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. It is the second half of verse 20, concerning the timing of the coming of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is responding to a question.

If you read from a modern translation, it sounds like Jesus was giving the answer to a legitimate question being posed by the Pharisees. The translators used words like:
     Being asked by the Pharisees...
     Now having been questioned by the Pharisees...
     And when he was asked by the Pharisees...
The King James translation, however, used the verb demand:  And when he was demanded of the Pharisees...

By researching the original with Strongs Lexicon, we find: G1905 -  to accost one with an enquiry, put a question to, enquiry of, ask, interrogate; to address one with a request or demand.

It can be translated as a simple inquiry, but retains the connotation that the question is being asked on purpose, not as a pleasantry of casual conversation. I get the impression that a few Pharisees were genuinely curious, some wanted to approach this discussion like the sport of good debate, and some were struggling to maintain a professional decorum because their insides were scoffing. After all, a kingdom that can't be detected by visible signs is not a corporeal kingdom.  Jesus expands on this a bit: He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst." (verse 20b, 21)

And then immediately Jesus turns to his disciples and adds another layer of information: 

22 And He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 "They will say to you, 'Look there! Look here!' Do not go away, and do not run after them.…

This is an intriguing passage. Jesus is speaking to two different audiences about two different dimensions in two different time frames.
• There are the Pharisees, well-trained scholars in the carnal world, and the disciples who had standard training in business and the trades and additional spiritual training from Jesus.
• There is a physical, visible kingdom and a spiritual dimension kingdom "of God" which cannot be observed with physical signs.
• There is the time now "in your midst," and, as distinguished for the disciples,  a coming time of "the days of the Son of Man."

It is not the purpose of this blog to dig deeply into what all that means. For now, it is enough to see that there is a lot of stuff both now and in one's future that cannot be observed or reasoned out in the natural. Jesus made a special point of telling his disciples that though they will wish they could see his visible presence, God's plan does not work like that. Some things will not be seen and they should not go looking.  On one level, Jesus was speaking prophetically to his disciples about the time when they would be without his physical presences and leadership, but on a general level, and a level that applies to KatieLyn today, Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God did not come with signs that are observed and reasoned out in the natural mind.  

 "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed." ~ Jesus 

God is looking for people who love Him and whom He can trust. God is looking for people who will do what he says, when He says, they way He says, with whom He says, when they can't see it and may not have a clue why He said it. He is looking for blind trust that is demonstrated by obedience.    In other words, He is looking for faith.

The Lesson
When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus skipped the "when" part at first, later saying that the Kingdom of Godwas already in their midst. He had to first instruct them that it is a spiritual kingdom; it is within a person. The day before the runaway bride ran off into the the middle of the night, she spent the day looking at worldly things and she called home for support from a conflicted parent who didn't really want to hear from God because she was afraid of losing her daughter. They both failed the test of faith.  

Spitirual Authority

Back on the New Year's post,  I said that God could not override delegated authority. This may seem silly to those who have been taught that "God can do anything," but there are many things that God cannot do.

One example is God cannot lie. cf Numbers 23:19, Hebrews 6:18.  Many of the "God cannot   x  ." things are due to His character. He is the Truth, which explains why He cannot lie. He is Light, therefore there can be no darkness in Him.  cf  Job 34:22, 1 John 1:5.  Likewise, an omniscient being cannot learn.

Other things that God cannot do are the result of delegating a portion of His authority. He gave mankind a free will to make choices, and therefore He cannot make choices for men without their permission. An easy-to-understand example is that successful exorcism cannot be performed on someone who wants to be possessed.

The earliest chapters of the Bible introduce this concept of delegated authority. God had assigned the stewardship of the Garden of Eden to Adam. God could not interfere with Adam's choice to eat the fruit, even though God had told him not to eat it. The delegated authority made Adam responsible for his own choice.

In similar fashion, there is a delegation of parental authority. Good children respect this authority in a style similar to the way a good man will respect God. God patterned that design.

Why might God do that? Why would God let Adam mess up? 

(There may be other reasons, but) one purpose is often to allow the heart to be revealed. If God stepped in and orchestrated everything, then there would be no room for our choice of expression. God had instructed Adam about eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but Adam revealed his heart in his choice: Adam chose the fruit based on what looked good at the time, not because he trusted God. And on top of that, Eve had been truly deceived.

It is exactly the same way that KatieLyn messed up. The safety of her parents' home looked better than the risk involved in building a home of her own. The acceptance she'd found in her old job by being named employee of the month was preferable to having to look for a new job. And on top of that, KatieLyn had been deceived into feeling guilty about things that were not true.

I am not grasping at straws on the guilt-trip charge either, although the Lord showed me this in an unusual way. I will tell part of it here: A rape victim was telling her story twenty years later. The interviewer asked, why didn't you say something sooner, before the 7-year statute of limitations ran out? She replied, "I thought it was my fault; I thought I deserved the punishment."  As I was reading the interview, it dropped into my spirit that KatieLyn had been similarly deceived to believe that "it was her fault;" she was deceived into believing that she had loved the idea of marriage too much, and that a break-up was her punishment. But this was not the only thing that she had been made to feel false guilt over; remember from some of the earlier blog posts that her mother had also told KatieLyn that 'Joe is taking you away from me.'  KatieLyn felt tremendous guilt over causing her mother that pain as well.

God had an answer to all of KatieLyn's past fifteen years of prayer for a husband and relief from her feelings of guilt, but God needed her consent to bring it to pass, but she was trapped in a co-dependent bondage that she liked and was very comfortable in. God had an answer to her co-dependency already in the works for her. But God needed her to enter into a marriage covenant so that he could "instruct the harvesters" to bring in her blessing.  He needed for her to choose to be a wife more than she was a daughter in order to bring the better solution. God needed KatieLyn's cooperation and agreement before He could legally step in and do anything about it. God could not override delegated authority; He could not 'fix' her lack of faith if she did not want it to be fixed.

The Lesson
Everyone has been given delegated authority over his/her own life to either choose to follow God or to choose otherwise. Although KatieLyn was strongly persuaded by her mother to doubt God, (her mother going so far as to say that having doubts was wisdom, and that during the months that KatieLyn had trusted the Lord she "wasn't thinking clearly,") in the end, KatieLyn made her own choice.  She used her spiritual authority to reject God's plan, she revealed what was really in her heart, and that is the only thing that made her unfit as a wife. 

Credit: oil painting, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, circa 1800, Wenzel Peter, Vatican archive.