John 11:40

Jesus replied, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God."

Jesus is speaking to Martha here, and in context, the glory that she is about to witness is the resurrection of her dead brother, Lazarus. It is worth repeating: 

if you believed, you would see the glory

The morning after KatieLyn ran off, we prayed in agreement that this would end in God's glory. That has not happened yet, so that is how we know that this is not over! But back to the story...

What made Jesus say to Martha, "Didn't I tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?"
Four things! (a) she ran out to complain (b) she gave a pat religious answer (c) she injected thoughts contrary to God's thought into the conversation, (d) she was seeing with the natural eyes of the flesh.

(a)
Complaining destroys faith. And in this case, Martha wasn't just grumbling under her breath either. When she heard that Jesus was coming, rather than wait, she went out to meet Him. The first words to spill out of her mouth were, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." John 11:21 She somewhat backtracked in the next sentence—It's not nice to insult the one guy with the best chance of raising the dead—so she concedes, "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You." We get the idea that Martha is very structured in her thinking, which is a great trait to have if you are an organizer of things, but it's not so great when organizing other people's lives. She would have liked to control Jesus' schedule so that He was in town when Lazarus died.

(b)
If there is one thing that can easily be seen from the most cursory reading of the New Testament, it is that Jesus does not think much of pat religious answers. He had on-going run-ins with the scribes and Pharisees who cared more about looking godly in front of people than they cared about their relationship with God. Even Martha, who seems to be a bit OCD about dong the "right thing," was giving canned, religious answers that day when she told Jesus, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." It is pretty easy to claim to have faith in a far-off resurrection day, but like the song says:

Faith is now. Hope will be here tomorrow, but faith is now.

It takes Here & Now faith to please God. 

The chapter continues as Jesus asks Martha if she believes that whoever believes in Him will not die. Then, after hearing Jesus speak, she replies, "I believe You are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world. Martha is finally speaking like a woman of faith and then...

(c)
Martha went back and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you." At which point Mary got up and went to Jesus. Look what Mary says! "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died."  John 11:32.  That sounds exactly like what Martha had said in verse 21! You can be pretty sure that the sisters had discussed this before; and although Jesus had "renewed" Martha's mind by "washing it with His word," cf Ephesians 5:26, Mary was still bringing up thoughts that were contrary to to what Jesus had said.  And not only Marry. In John 11:37 we see that some of the Jews were also saying, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?"

Notice too, that Martha had said it from a place of badly wavering faith, but when Mary said it, she was overcome with sorrow and weeping.  If the joy of the Lord is your strength, cf Nehemiah 8:10, Mary was feeling the ultimate weakness. That is when Jesus was moved with compassion and stepped in to do for her what she could not do herself. 

(d)
Toward the middle of John 11, when Jesus is about to call Lazarus forth from the dead and asks that  the stone sealing the tomb be rolled open, Martha,  who you will remember had seen the truth with spiritual eyes and had testified that Jesus was the Messiah shortly before, fell back into carnal thinking and blurted out, "Lord, by this time there will be a stench!" And that is when Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

In most of the healings and miracles that Jesus performed, He said the person's own faith was key. We read phrases like "Your faith has made you whole," and "according to your faith let it be done to you."  In each reference in the table below, Jesus clearly states that their faith was involved in receiving from God. 

Mark 5:34	Luke 8:48	Matthew 8:13
Luke 7:50	Mark 10:52	Luke 17:19
Matthew 9:22	Luke 18:42	Matthew 15:28

In Matthew 9:29, Jesus states even more plainly that the outcome is up to the person: "According to your faith be it unto you."


The notion that God does whatever He wants, whenever He wants, to whomever He wants, and the parallel ideology that nothing can be achieved unless Allah wills it, are doctrines in Islam. It is not in the Jewish Torah nor the Christian Holy Bible. 

God gave man a free will, and God will not override that free will. Going to hell is not God's will. God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, cf 1 Timothy 2:4 and Ezekiel 18:23. Scripture is stuffed full of examples where God let men do what they wanted. One of the better known and more obvious cases is when Israel wanted a king so that they could be like other nations. Another example occurs when God discusses the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with Abraham and they come to an agreement before God takes action—a concept which is underscored again in Amos 3:7, "Indeed, the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing His counsel to His servants the prophets." 

The Lesson
To say that Joe and KatieLyn's wedding did not happen because "God did not want it" is heresy! To say that the wedding was  called off because God "caused it" is also heresy! The wedding was called off because KatieLyn lost her faith to make it happen.  If God had wanted the wedding called off, He would have told Joe because Joe had been seeking and listening; If it had been God's will, the breakup would have been mutual because Joe would have heard God. The wedding was called off, not because it was God's will, but because KatieLyn no longer believed the Lord and He let her do what she wanted. 

 If you believed, you would see the glory. If you did not believe, you probably won't see it. 

Memorial Day

Current Events this Memorial Day include:

• Obama, the guy who is claiming executive privilege to keep details of his Pathway to a Nuclear Iran deal negotiations secret, is in Japan giving an implicit-apology for bombing Hiroshima. (Despite WH denials that Obama apologized, that is simply speech-parsing buy lawyers.*)
• V.A. Secretary Robert A. McDonald compared the time veterans wait to receive care at the VA to the amount of time people wait in line at Disneyland.
• Pope Francis invites Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, highest authority in Sunni Islam, to the Vatican and the press reports that " Divine religions were revealed to make people happy."
• Obama's Fast and Furious guns have now been shown to be linked to over 250 deaths.
• Twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 report are still being repressed.
• A documentary film investigating causes of autism is suppressed.
• The New York City Human Rights Commission released a list of 31 different terms of gender expression employers must use or face $250,000 fines; all but two of them name various forms of deviancy.

Headline after headline underscores 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11, "Because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them, God will send them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie."  

God sends them a strong delusion because they do not love the truth.

If we stop and wonder why the world seems to be so crazy, we come to the conclusion that at its root, the the love for the truth is on the decline.
When people lie to you, the situation can go one of two ways—they either double down and the lie becomes bigger, or you call them out on it and deal with it from there.
The minute they admit the lie, everything crumbles.

No one wants to consider, much less admit, that they might be under strong delusion. And yet, signs of delusion abound; moreover, they are often easily spotted when scripture is used as the baseline for truth.

The Lesson
For someone who loves the truth, it is not hard to see how strong delusion in has affected politics. Hillary Clinton has been caught in innumerable lies, and yet to hear her speak, one gets the impression that she still believes what she is saying. Obama refuses to label the terrorists as Islamic, even though to a lover of truth, it is obvious that their religion is driving them to rape and kill. And then, this Memorial Day weekend he again exposes his delusional ideas about American history* in his speech in Hiroshima, Japan.

It is harder to admit that persons for whom you had such great expectations stopped loving the truth. And tragically, that is the case with the runaway bride.

God's will is real and knowable. KatieLyn knew His will. And Satan came and sowed tares  of ungodly thoughts in the field of her mind. These words did not come from God, but when a person considers and dwells on wrong thoughts, those thoughts conform them to an ungodly world. KatieLyn was willing and susceptible to thinking wrong thoughts because they came fro the person she trusted the most—her mother. But thinking wrong thoughts taints the atmosphere, and they fought until their fights became bigger than the truth.

A thought has spiritual substance. It will shape and mold a person. The person becomes conformed into the image of the thought. It is true that KatieLyn changed her mind, but I doubt that she knows how or why: She changed her mind by thinking her mother's thoughts. Her mom had told her that it was "wise" to consider these things, but that was the delusion that came when she stopped loving the truth that the Lord had revealed to her.

 * Obama did not technically say "I'm sorry, I apologize," but he did say that America was wrong.
"Truman understood that not using the atom bombs would have condemned millions of service members to death or debilitating injury. Japanese resistance grew significantly as US forces neared Japan, and, expecting fanatical Japanese resistance, American military planners repeatedly increased projected US casualties. The calculus could not have been clearer.[...] Truman wanted to end World War II and save American lives, and also lay the basis for sustained international peace. ...Obama casually trashes Truman’s courageous decision."
Quoted from the New York Post 2016/05/26/ Obama's shameful apology tour lands in Hiroshima

Fractured Fairy Tales

No scripture lesson today folks. I'm working on one from the Gospel of John, but it needs some more polishing. So in the meantime, we'll take a more lighthearted look at the runaway bride and her mum.

One of the more evident ways that Gwen stunted KatieLyn's maturing in self-confidence was through criticism disguised as help. And once KatieLyn ran back home in the middle of the night, Gwen gave her so much "help" that ... if the Brothers Grimm told the story, it would go something like this:

   Once upon a time there was a woman who had long wished for a child to be her alter-ego. Finally the woman came to believe that the good Lord would fulfill her wish. As KatieLyn grew, she became 'the perfect child.' She got good grades, helped around the house, and caused her mother to receive many compliments.
   As KatieLyn would not stop growing and changed from a child into a young woman, her mother built an invisible wall around her. The mother sat in the gate, controlling who may go in and who may come out. They lived, if not in joy, at least in relative peace, like this for many years.
     One day a handsome prince came to the place where the wall stood. He realized that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) had no difficulty spanning the wall and that KatieLyn had signed up for online dating. He saw the beautiful KatieLyn's profile, read about her goals and dreams, and fell in love with her.  Even her mom said that it was a God-thing, at first; but little did he realize that such pretending was all part of the way that the woman used to manage her daughter.
   KatieLyn and the prince fell in love and planned to be married. The plans were all made for a grand picnic feast.  But the mother, jealous that the prince was "going to take her KatieLyn away," had spent months "helping" her daughter realize what could go wrong, often by picking fights with her to heighten her stress levels. Four days before the wedding, the mother achieved success. KatieLyn threw away God's plan for her life and ran back to her invisibly walled prison. 

The Lesson
Rapunzel was kept in a tower. Cinderella was kept in a kitchen. Sleeping Beauty was trapped in a deep sleep. Snow White multi-tasked with all the curses was confined to a huntsman's cottage, had to cook and clean for dwarves, and was eventually tricked into a drugged sleep anyway. And Beauty, of  "La Belle et la Bête," was trapped by lack of knowledge, and came close to losing her destined prince altogether because of the envious mind-games of her sisters.

The thing that all the fairy tales share is a young maiden and the evil forces that come against her to prevent her from coming of age and fulfilling her destiny.


🐦    🐉   🐦   🐉  🐦    🐉   🐦   🐉  🐦    🐉   🐦   🐉  🐦    🐉   🐦   🐉   🐦    🐉   🐦   🐉  🐦    🐉   🐦  

Financial disclosures

This post was originally written as the middle section of the "it's been a rough week" post of May 23rd. I edited it out because it detracted from the central point, which, bluntly put, was that the devil has been trying to use KatieLyn's infidelity to her pledge (to marry Joe) as a tool of torment this "anniversary week." I am happy to announce that Satan's tactic not only failed, but resulted in Joe further strengthening his relationship with the Lord. 

I had written the section below because it provided context and better explained what Gwen was so peeved about: Basically she wanted things her way, but was not willing to spend her own money to make that happen. I've repeated one paragraph to show where this would have gone:

♦    ♦    ♦    ♦    ♦

The next few weeks, Joe was happier, more focused, and had a greater sense of purpose than he'd ever had in his life.  Little did we realize that Satan was hard at work 250 miles away. We passed off the faintly flapping warning flags as idiosyncrasies one would expect to encounter when blending with another family.

The first peculiarity I saw was that Gwen wanted to come down to meet us and inspect Miles' house without KatieLyn.  I should have paid more attention, because it would have revealed the depth of the dysfunctional codependency much sooner. I dismissed it as her being a mom who was having empty-nest pangs. I certainly did not realize how much internal anger Gwen would stew over during the next two months by not getting her own way.  Joe's friends, however, thought that it was bizarre that KatieLyn's mom wanted to come visit here and leave her daughter at home.

My understanding of the way they handled it is that, between Joe talking with KatieLyn and some of the social networking that she was doing with the wives of Joe's friends, KatieLyn, who had wanted to come meet us at the same time as her parents did, decided to tell her mom that it would look weird to  go meet Joe without her (KatieLyn) being there. Gwen agreed that Katie could come along, but it now seems that she harbored considerable resentment in her heart over it. It also turned out that Gwen didn't want Joe's sister to come meet KatieLyn then—she had wanted a "private" meeting. Gwen's "parents only" rule was a fact that I was not aware of until after his sister had already been invited to lunch and reorganized her schedule to meet KatieLyn; (we did not un-invite her after she had driven a hundred miles to meet her presumptive sister-in-law.)

Gwen also internalized a lot of anger that arose when the couple had decided to have the wedding in Joe's hometown.  I don't know if she secretly blamed me for that or not, but I had nothing to do with that decision.

♦    ♦    ♦    ♦    ♦

I'll pick up here and finish that thought:

Joe and KatieLyn made a very pragmatic decision that would allow them to have the largest, nicest wedding possible without bankrupting either themselves or their guests. Gwen and her husband had told KatieLyn that they would put a total of $1000 (one-thousand) toward the wedding, and that included the lunch for seven at Chili's that they paid for the day they met our family. (Gestimating that left just a bit over $900 for KatieLyn to use.)  By having the wedding in Joe's hometown at the church where he was a member, there was no hall rental, only a cleaning deposit. He had a professional photographer friend who would donate her work as a wedding gift; he'd get photos stored digitally and would pay only for prints they wanted.  He had another friend who similarly offered his cooking and catering skill labor as a gift; Joe and KatieLyn would pay only for the food, and even most of that would be the wholesale price. Since use of the church's kitchen was included under the cleaning deposit, and because they chose a modest picnic barbecue theme, the price per guest was 'way down there.' An aisle runner, pew bows, candles, and other decorations were donated so that KatieLyn's floral expenditures were $99 for mostly baby's breath. None of these savings would have been possible if they'd chosen to get married in the town where KatieLyn's parents had lived for the past two years.

Notice that her family had lived in that state only two years. It's not like they had tons of life-long friends and relatives nearby. In fact, outside of KatieLyn's immediate family, there were only a couple of her coworkers on her guest list from that city. But Joe has lots, dozens and dozens, of friends and business contacts for whom traveling 250 miles to an out-of-town wedding would have been a hardship.  KatieLyn did not even get a bridal shower thrown for her in her parents' town, but she was given a cute country garden shower here with 20 guests who came; none of the twenty, however, were her mother or sisters, and not because they hadn't been invited, but because they said it was too far.

Knowing all this and the solid financial reasons for the couple's decisions, Gwen was still deeply hurt that the wedding was not at "her" church. (Which has a large warehouse-size auditorium with no center aisle; you can put 150 guests in there and it still looks 4/5 empty. I may as well add that the church building where Joe is a member has arching wood beams and a cute country charm. It is not unusual for non-members whose own fellowships meet in super centers, storefronts, or house churches to rent the facility for a mid-size traditional-look wedding venue. )

All about the money...

After KatieLyn ran away in the middle of the night, Gwen's frugal façade fell away. The "thrifty" excuse no longer existed; she was exposed as just plain grubby-selfish tight.  On Saturday, the should-have-been wedding day, with out-of-town aunts, uncle, cousins, and siblings still meeting at our house for a bonfire & bratwurst picnic in lieu of a wedding reception, Gwen expected a devastated Joe to stand in line at the local Sam's Club to return "her" baby's breath and get "her" refund.  I felt that he should tell her to stuff it and return it on Monday when it would be more convenient for us, but he needed to do what he thought was right.

I soon found that Joe's noble gesture of quality character was not about to be reciprocated! When I asked KatieLyn to take responsibility for returning the wedding gifts that were stored at my house, I received a part-smug and part-scathing retort from her mother. Gwen told me to do it because it was more convenient for me to do it since the gifts were already at my house and that it would cost too much for them to do it*... she said I was being mean because I asked KatieLyn to take responsibility for her own forsaken wedding gifts. Gwen said that my behavior "cemented" KatieLyn's decision.  And then Gwen finished with a particularly dramatic flourish— "You might want to remember that for the next time."

Next time?  The next time?  My behavior of asking KatieLyn to take responsibility for returning some muffin tins, pot holders, and an ice cream maker was so traumatic that it cemented her belief that running back to the slavery of her codependency was the right thing to do?

Apparently so! I was not the one who was unhinged at that point. 
Gwen was mad and went on to say that she should "never have given Joe permission" to propose.

The Lesson
Finances tend to expose a person's real motives more clearly than their game-face rhetoric can. Apparently KatieLyn has a deep need for maternal approval, deeper than her need for the Lord's approval at any rate. 

When KatieLyn was first getting to know Joe, she told him that she did not like the kind of men that her mother likes. She said that she did not want to marry someone like her father who could be trapped into marrying her by manipulations the way her mother did it. She said she wanted to love someone who loved her for who she is, not because her mother was pushing them together.

She had all that and ran away from it.  As long as KatieLyn cannot face the past that she created, as long as she cannot talk to Joe, then she has not fully moved on; she is stuck. 


* I don't know what the cost would have been. I did not expect KatieLyn to personally drive down to get the gifts. I wanted her to phone a courier service to have them picked up and taken wherever...  It is the only thing, other than one song added to the wedding music playlist, that I ever asked of her. And for that, her mother accused me of "Cementing" the break-up. Sometimes rolling one's eyes is the most polite response possible.   

it's been a rough week

If KatieLyn had walked down the aisle instead of running off into the middle of the night, she'd have had a full moon the eve of her wedding anniversary.  How is that for romantic? Their celebration ought to have been over the moon.

Instead, it has been a rough week for Joe. Everyday items and occurrences spark memories of what was lost— or stolen, depending upon one's perspective.

What irks him the most are the disingenuous platitudes that they used to "explain" their situation.  Notice how I'm using plural pronouns, they and their? I'm referring to KatieLyn, the runaway bride, and her mother, Gwen.  Maybe, in order to better portray their codependency, I should fuse the names like entertainment writers sometime do with celebrity couples. Which do you like better: Katen or Gwenielyn?  I'll go with the latter.

The bromide that bugged Joe, the run-from groom, the most was their breezy assertion, "There is nothing wrong with him or his family and friends, there is nothing wrong with me and my family."   Well, Gwenilyn, you are mistaken about that.  One does not take off in the middle of the night, stubbornly rejecting the request to stay for a counseling session scheduled the next morning, if "nothing" is wrong with you. For one, it was very selfish of you. Had you stayed for counseling, issues could have been identified much quicker. Joe may have found it easier to "move on" like you wanted.

It took months of seeking the Lord to get the answer as to why KatieLyn lost her faith in the marriage, but now I can see that it was hiding in plain sight all along. The very next sentence after declaring that there was "nothing" wrong, the co-dependent Gwenilyn wrote that she and Joe should have spent more time looking at each other's environments; in other words, Gwenielyn was declaring that she should have been more worldly minded.  Having her eyes open only to the things of this world and being in spiritual confusion are the very things that destroyed the relationship. What she had proposed as the solution—spending more time looking with human reasoning, was actually the destroyer of her walking by faith.

The Lord had told me in late August of 2014 that He was preparing a wife for Joe, and that when it happened, it would happen quickly.  They met online around Thanksgiving of that year and met in person when Joe went to spend a long 2015 New Year's weekend with her family. KatieLyn would tell me that she "knew" the Lord had put them together on New Year's Day.  Joe got his confirmation from God a bout three weeks later. He proposed on Valentine's Day, using his grandmother's ring, and KatieLyn joyously accepted. The ring was symbolic of how sure we were that God was putting a family together. I would not have given the ring to Joe if I had not had total confidence in hearing the Lord on this.

For the next few weeks, Joe was happier, more focused, and had a greater sense of purpose than he'd ever had in his life.  Little did we realize that Satan was hard at work 250 miles away, injecting thoughts in KatieLyn's life while she was apart that were contrary to what God was so clearly telling me.

<< The original middle section of this post has been moved to a place of its own. My reason for having it here in the first place was an attempt to explain some behind-the-scene motivations, but I moved it because it strayed off-topic You can read it as a separate post, Financial disclosures. >>

Although it was the "nothing wrong" attitude had troubled Joe the most, the thing that floored me was the incongruity of Gwen claiming that she had had "misgivings" about the engagement, and then turning to the accusation that maybe I only "thought" that I heard God, that maybe He didn't really say what I thought I heard.

There is really no way to answer that. If Gwen does not accept that I can and did accurately hear God's voice, then she would not be able to receive my answer. Her misgivings were the result of her not paying attention to the leading of  the Holy Spirit, and apparently she is too *something* to accept the idea that other people did. I'm not sure what the *something* is in this case.  Which leads me to today's lesson—

The Lesson 🐦  
 What I learned from the runaway bride were some new Reasons People Don't Get Answers to Prayer.
When I was in youth group, I was told that God always answers prayer: sometimes 'yes,' sometimes 'no,' and sometimes 'wait.'  I think that answer was made up by someone who got a lot of "nos" and "waits." Anyway, I cannot find and solid biblical basis for that statememt.  And I know there are more than those three cliched reasons for unanswered prayer. Many reasons are knowable, and a few can be simplified to some version of "this is a test of trust."

Sometimes, as in the case with this blog, God answers by asking, "How willing are you to really push in and find out?"  It is important to remember that the Lord's standard modus operandi is found in Isaiah 28:10, For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.

I have discovered that some prayers are not answered because we have a 'counting-on-my-fingers' understanding, or though diligence in studying perhaps we've attained a 'multiplication table' level of knowledge, but when we are in a quadratic equation place, or worse—a fractals-level situation, we won't have the wherewithal to get the kind of answer that God would give us if we did have a deeper relationship with Him. We get into stuff that cannot be figured out in the natural, and/or where we simply do not have a grasp of the proper vocabulary for asking the the right question. Our own lack of knowledge and intimacy prevents us from understanding a more complete answer, and this gap must be filled with faith.

Another one-of-many Reasons People Don't Get Answers to Prayer is their temperament. The religious word for this is submission, but that makes it sound like drudgery. Biblical submission, which is a proper combination of respect, willingness, and a teachable attitude (aka humble attitude), can lead to great fulfillment and joy, which is far removed from demeaning drudgery.  But answers to prayer may not be noticed if one's soul is not in submission to The Answerer. We cannot serve two masters; as long as were are listening loudly to our wants and looking for our terms to be met, we won't hear God's modulated voice when it comes from an unexpected direction.

It's been a rough week for Joe because last year "GwenieLyn" was unable to hear and retain her answer to prayer, and now Satan is pitching reminders of that sorry fact at him.

Picture Post

Sometimes a good visual wakes you up better than a bolt of cappuccino. 

Which voice was Gwen using with KatieLyn when they were fighting? 

God's voice brings intimate relationship with Him.
The devils' voice brings doubt and creates division in the mind.

The Lesson
I compiled scriptures* that support the God's Voice list:

1. Zephaniah 3:17 - Yahweh your God is among you... He will bring you quietness with His love. ESV
2. 2 Corinthians 2:14 - But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us  ESV
3. Romans 10:11 - Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” MSG
4. John 8:12 - I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. ESV
5. Acts 15:31 - When they read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. NASB
6.  2 Corinthians 1:3-4 - Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. BSB
7. John 14:27 - Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. NIV
8. 2 Timothy 3:16 - All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. ESV

Psalm 107 describes the nature of God:  He caused the storm to be still, So that the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they were quiet, So He guided them to their desired haven.  KatieLyn's desired haven from the fighting was to have been with Joe. God had designated "Haven Joseph." If she thinks that running home to the person who provoked the fights was God's plan for her, then she is deluded. If the pressure and fighting and confusion lifted once she was back home, it was because Satan shut up; not because God told her to go back there. 


* BSB Berean Study Bible
   ESV English Standard Version
   MSG The Message Bible 
   NASB New American Standard
   NIV New International Version

Trolling - Good News! Bad News?

Okay, so a few days ago I visited KatieLyn's Facebook page. Of course, I can see only what is public, but I was looking for some sign that she has been able to break away from the faith-sapping codependency that imploded her first engagement.

SHOCK! I think I did find something! 

I cannot be sure about the dates, but it appears that SHE DID NOT SPEND MOTHER'S DAY AT HOME! It looks like she wasn't even in the same state!

If true, that is quite a change from last year. I guess what I had expected to see was a picture of her, perhaps with her nieces or perhaps with her siblings, even a selfie, but either way with a celebration of Mother's Day. Last year, KatieLyn's mom had made a pretty big to-do about it being the "last one."  I am not completely certain, (more like I have no clue actually,) what she meant by that—did she plan on dying? I guess she meant that it would be the last Mother's Day that KatieLyn would ever spend with her, which is a pretty silly supposition.

For me, her being out of town on Mother's day is a good-news/bad-news thing.
• The good news is that if KatieLyn actually did spend Mother's Day someplace else, then maybe she is breaking the bonds of her codependency.
• The bad news is that if KatieLyn actually did spend Mother's Day someplace else without fighting over it first, then her mom is one of the most manipulative hypocrites ever.

The Lesson
For me, any sign that KatieLyn is moving away from the codependency has got to be a positive. I hope that this is what it means. It would be tragic (and no, that is not hyperbole,) if her mom had encouraged her to spend Mother's Day weekend away because that would mean that Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, still has her own agenda that she is subtly imposing on her daughter; in which case, KatieLyn is in deeper than ever.

KatieLyn needs to be in the center of God's will, not the center of her mom's will.

Romans 8

 The eighth chapter of Romans has a lot of Happy Christian verses in it, the kind we'd like our kids to memorize. For example:

🐦 ¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

🐦 ²The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

🐦 ¹⁶The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

🐦 ³⁷But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

🐦 ³⁹Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As you read through those, you start feeling pretty good! All of these are promises from a God who cannot lie for everyone who is "in Christ."
If you want to worship with a happy dance, go for it!

But...

There are also verses in this chapter that require some responsibility. To collect on all the promises, there are conditions that must be met. And as you read through these, you will start seeing and gain an understanding of just how the runaway bride messed up.

^{🐉 6}For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.

^{🐉 7}For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

^{🐉 8}Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

^{🐉 12}Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.

^{🐉 14}For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

We can know for a fact that KatieLyn did not have her mind set on things of the Spirit on the day that she ran home. Every indication is that she was actually under demonic attack. I am equally certain that she did not recognize that.

Demonic attacks can take different forms. Usually there is some form of pressure involved that will result in uncontrollable urges, depression, panic, or even unnatural giddiness. Acting on such urges can give a person who is under demonic attack a temporary feeling of empowerment.

KatieLyn's mom was angry at me for suggesting a possible demonic attack, but in her reaction she showed me her ignorance of the subject. She acted like only "bad" people can be attacked by demons. Actually the opposite is true. Demons often attack those who are carrying out God's instructions precisely because Satan desires to prevent God's will from being done. The "bad" people do not usually get as fiercely attacked by demons, but are encouraged and sometimes even protected by them in the short-run in order to lure them further down the path of destruction.  

Letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. When KatieLyn's mom was provoking fights with her on a regular basis, we can judge those actions according to scripture; the fights did not come from a mind set on things of the Holy Spirit. That leaves two alternatives that we cannot judge: either Gwen set her mind on herself, or she was thinking the thoughts that the devil had put there.

The mind that focuses on human nature is hostile toward God. This is not hard to understand one you realize that man cannot serve two masters.  Jesus said that Himself. "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." KatieLyn decided to love her mother and hate Joe. She ran home to her mother, and has cruelly ignored Joe.  Such behavior is a flashing neon sign of immaturity and spiritual ignorance! A marriageable adult understands that he/she is not making a choice between two masters, but I cannot be certain that KatieLyn knew that in her heart. She seems to have known it intellectually, but not emotionally. It most certainly was not helpful for her mom to "joke" that "Joe is taking you away from me!" Not only was it not helpful, it was diabolically manipulative.

As the Weymouth translation puts it, "those whose hearts are absorbed in earthly things cannot please God." And that was KatieLyn's downfall. At the beginning of the courtship, KatieLyn had heard God clearly; God had chosen to put her together with Joe. But once the engagement became official, the demonic attacks began to move her attention and let her heart become absorbed with earthly things. To compound the attack and stop this marriage, Satan attacked KatieLyn's mom too. He got Gwen to convince KatieLyn that looking at the carnal considerations was the wise thing to do. But since "they that are in the flesh cannot please God," we know that was a deceptive lie. We are not under any obligation to consider what our lower nature tells us. 

The Lesson
Nothing destroys faith faster or displeases God more than putting our worldly reasoning ahead of what He has already told us or shown us. We have an obligation, but that obligation is to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to lean not to our own understanding. The advice that KatieLyn got telling her to do otherwise stank. She did not lose her peace because the marriage was the wrong; she lost her peace because her mind was not stayed on God but rather on the cares of this world.

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

✰ ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY ✰

Today marks the one-year anniversary of KatieLyn throwing away God's call and running off into the middle of the night.  She literally ran into the night. But in the spiritual realm, she also metaphorically ran into the night when she ran away not only from Joe, but also from God's plan for her life.

How can I be so confident?
    Because I know the voice of the Lord.

On a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in church and by happenstance was in the same seat where KatieLyn sat when she had visited the day of her bridal shower. During the worship, the Lord dropped a phrase into my spirit. I wrote it down on the back side of the bulletin so that I would remember it correctly:
"KatieLyn* will have to speak to Joe* in heaven."

That jerked my attention away from the music that was being sung, and after a moment's consideration I thought, "That will be awkward." Then, with the eyes of my spirit, I saw Jesus give me a look. He was standing partially sideways, as if He was about to walk away from it all.

I have thought about that phrase a time and again since then. She will have to speak to Joe in heaven if she continues running from her decision here on earth. And she has continued to to run from it.

To be clear, I don't get the sense that either KatieLyn or Joe will be headed to heaven soon. That is always a possibility, I guess, but that was not the tenor of the statement. My interpretation of what I know I heard is that Jesus is preparing to give the KatieLyn/Gwen co-dependency exactly what it wants. They will get to make their own decision based on their own worldly reasoning, and then perhaps check for God's approval.

The Lesson  🐦
Too many Christians live their lives that way. It is sad. And in KatieLyn's case, because she has not wanted to cut the apron strings, it is doubly sad. It means (most probably) that she will decide to do what she wants and then check in with both her mother and God for approval. She will likely get married eventually, for that is God's unchanging call on her life, but Mr. Katie will have to be someone of whom Gwen won't say, "He is going to take you away from me." If the future Mr. Katie allows it, he will be married to a codependency where his wife and mother-in-law will team up against him whenever they disagree with his view. Furthermore, if KatieLyn continues to give greater weight to what her mom complained about than she does to what God revealed to her, then the future Mr. Katie will also have married an idolator (who puts others' opinions before His word).

KatieLyn will have to speak to Joe in heaven, but for now, if she wants her codependency, the Lord will let her keep her codependency. She will have some blooms in her life, but she will never blossom into her full self the in the way that the Lord had desired for her as long as mommy is alongside her.

On the Day of the Great Assize, when she stands to give an account of her life, her mother will not be next to her. KatieLyn will be shown what she really ran away from. The blessings that she lost the faith to claim will look vastly different from the bleak insecurities that she imagined a year ago. Seeing her decision through the Lord's eyes will be an awkward moment for her if she continues to refuse to address the outcome now while on earth. KatieLyn will have to speak to Joe in heaven. She cannot avoid it forever.




* The Holy Spirit used their real names, of course, but I'm keeping it consistent with the pseudonyms used throughout this blog.

.

Things God Cannot Do

Depending upon how you parse and classify, the list of things God cannot do varies. For some people, the list looks like this:

1. God cannot do anything against His nature.

And then they are done. If you are going to have a single-item list, I will concede that is a pretty good one. It does cover the items on my list if you stretch it a bit, so people who opt for the one-item-fits-all answer would consider the list below as one item with subheadings. I've given them all separate status, however, because (a) there are distinctions in responsibility, and (b) I believe that the three-item list below greatly expands our understanding; saying that God cannot do anything against His nature is a little like boiling down a logic argument to "A does not equal not A," which sounds rather profound, but does not explain very much.

So here is a 3-point list of things God cannot do.

1. God cannot do anything against His Word. 

In a sense, His Word and His nature are the same, but we've never seen God do anything in the scriptures without His Word in addition to not against His Word, so I think there is a distinction between 'His nature' and 'His word.'  The Word is living and active, cf Hebrews 4:12, it performs, creates, and penetrates. But sometimes it is God's nature to rest.

2. God cannot do anything without faith.

Comparing Matthew 13:58 with Mark 6:5, we have an account of Jesus not being able to do miracles because of the unbelief that he was encountering. I remember some debates from seminary days when one side would say that 'God has no faith' and argue that since for God, simply declaring it makes it true, that He doesn't need/use faith. At the time it seemed... something close to esoteric. I had a sense than that something was missing in their argument, and in the decades since,  I have come to believe that the 'God has no faith' premise is utterly false and only appears as if it could be true after also accepting the view that our 4-dimensional space, mass, time universe is all.   

3. God is (sometimes) limited by men.

We can use the same scripture for #3 as we did for #2, but draw a different aspect of truth from it.  The men's doubt and unbelief limited what God was able to do. In Ezekiel 22:30 we find that  God needed a faithful person to stand in the gap, so that He would not destroy the land.
John Wesley observed, "God does nothing but in answer to prayer." Wherever Satan is 'the god of this world,' see 2 Corinthians 4:4, the True God must be invited to act by a human representative who has an earth body that gives the human being authority on Earth. We "have not because (we) ask not," see James 4:3, (and yes, fights and wrong motives are often a cause, but also,) we must ask in faith and not doubt, see James 1:6.  A conundrum oftentimes arises here because God chose to give men freewill. That puts limits on God since He cannot violate His Word that gave mankind a free will in the first place.

Each of those three areas need to be understood in depth, but I am impelled to keep the focus on this blog's purpose of comparing real life with scripture. 

I have a print of M C Esher's Waterfall in my dining area. It shows a cascading aqueduct where the water appears to be "falling uphill" until it eventually spills over a waterwheel.  Escher used geometry and optical illusions to make a fantastical perpetual motion machine.

Although I am fairly certain that the artist did not have this in mind when he created his original lithograph, it effectively illustrates that God's "impossibilities" flow together.  God's word produces faith as it is heard and allowed to take root in a person's heart. But the person's heart must also be in agreement with God's word.  Any interruption will break the flow of the life-giving stream.

Remember Romans 10:17? So then the faith is by a report, and the report through a word of God.  We are used to the King James translation that uses hearing in place of report. The idea that Paul was expressing is not only about the 'hearer's ears' but includes what is being heard. It is a full concept that encompasses both the act of hearing and the thing heard— the preaching, the report.
 
The Lesson
 Contrary to Gwen's belief (she is the mother of the runaway bride, for those of you who have not been reading the earlier posts) that the engagement fell apart because the marriage was "not meant to be," the reason that the engagement fell apart was because KatieLyn chose to run away. The marriage was meant to be, but she did not want to trust God for it. KatieLyn placed herself in a position where God could not go against her own belligerent will.  Marriage was something God could not perform without KatieLyn's agreement.

Gwen needs to stop telling herself that the disaster that her daughter created was God's will. Gwen ought to quit accusing Joe and me of not hearing God.  I'm not holding my breath though because stubborn, controlling people often cling to their self-deception more strongly than they pursue the thoughts of God.    




  

In the World You Will Have Tribulation.

I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.
John 16:33 

Can it get any clearer than this?  
  ✝  In Me you may have peace.
  ✝  In the world you will have tribulation.

KatieLyn was having tribulation. Her mom said that she was hysterical. Obviously, she was "in the world," meaning that her mind was not set on God.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Isaiah 26:3, KJV

Or in modern English:
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
NLT

Or my preference:
"The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in You."
NASB 

How could she miss this? How can one grow up, living in a Christian family, going to church weekly, reading the Bible regularly, and yet miss this? 

God is not the author of confusion. Satan is. The night that KatieLyn ran home, she was under satanic attack. Gwen can be as dismissive as she wishes. Or she can spout off more nasty accusations. KatieLyn can dig in as stubborn as a mule. Or she can pretend to ignore it. Their codependent denial of the facts and their strenuous assertions that KatieLyn's flight middle of the night was the first time in six months that she was thinking straight does not make any of it true. All the cliches they spewed forth fly in the face of these scriptures. When your mind is thinking the thoughts that Satan told you, you are not doing the right thing.

A cross reference for this verse, Philippians 4:7, says,
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Look again at the part that I highlighted: which surpasses all understanding
The tendency on a first-read is to assume that the relative clause modifies the subject, peace. It does do that, but the assumption is that the peace of God is mind-blowing big—too big to understand. But if you focus on "surpasses understanding," then you have skipped over the "all." 

The "all" becomes important because it clues you in that this is a peace that cannot be understood with human reasoning—ALL human reasoning is surpassed. The thing that can be understood with human reasoning is the stuff that you should be trying to guard against. She should have set her mind on Christ and allowed His peace to guard her heart and mind. This, she did not do.

The Lesson
This is another one of those "why it wasn't the right thing to do" posts that I did not feel free to write about last August 28th. The real "KatieLyn" would have jumped to the mistaken conclusion that I was just being "mean" and trying to hurt her.  She really could not know my true motivation; she chose to not know when she chose to not talk. 

But the lesson here is that KatieLyn's heartache and distress were her own doing, prodded along by a mother who had very mixed "feelings" about the marriage (because, although a part of her wanted to be happy for her daughter, a greater part was jealous of losing her.) Still living at home, in the center of this toxic mix,  KatieLyn looked to the world for understanding and found tribulation instead. Because she did not keep her thoughts stayed on what the Lord had told her, she lost her peace. It was easy then for Satan to deceive her. He told her that she lost her peace because marrying Joe was the wrong thing to do. She believed Satan more than she believed the Lord.  


 

Abraham Receives the Promise

20Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised. 22That is why "it was credited to him as righteousness."  Romans 4:20-22

The "he" in verse 20 is Abraham. The promised blessings are secured by faith.

If KatieLyn had been living as a spiritual Daughter of Abraham instead of as a flesh-believing daughter of her parents, she'd be happily looking forward to her first anniversary this month.

These verses explain why KatieLyn turned from a spiritual Daughter of Abraham to a carnal-thinking Runaway Bride.  I will substitute some names and flip some antonyms so that you can see how this works.

Yet KatieLyn wavered in her disbelief in the promise of God, and was weakened in her faith and gave a judgmental assessment to God, not being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised. That is why it was credited to her as perfidy.

I hope that reading a personalized flip side of what the scriptures teach will illuminate just how far away from God KatieLyn actually strayed. I am pretty sure that she did not know herself, for that is the nature of the enemy's deception.

Abraham did not waver through disbelief. KatieLyn wavered. Her mom was stirring a tempest of doubt and sent it swirling around her on a regular basis. Her dad apparently sat by like that trio of monkeys, not wanting to see, hear, or speak out about the evil.

Be assured, the codependency between KatieLyn and her mom is evil. It is evil because it caused KatieLyn to question God, and doubting God destroys faith. Faith is necessary to please God. A codependency that makes it impossible to please God is evil. KatieLyn is a perpetual child who needs her mother's approval before she can be happy. As long as she plays her mother's mini-me, the stress is minimal. And because KatieLyn hates stressful situations, she "goes along to get along" like a nice, compliant child. The more that she becomes like her mother, the calmer her home-life is. But the cost of not fighting with her mother was a broken engagement and a disastrous trail of wreckage that her Pollyanna side has chosen to ignore.

Theirs is not the happy Christian family that they wish to project to the public on Sunday mornings. Theirs is a deeply dysfunctional relationship that God was leading KatieLyn out of until she wavered in unbelief and doubted the promise of God. To doubt God is to dishonor Him. To continue to question God after you have already heard Him weakens your faith.

Abraham's faith was strengthened because he honored God's promise. God's Word® translation captures this idea better than the King James does:
He didn't doubt God's promise out of a lack of faith. Instead, giving honor to God [for the promise], he became strong because of faith ~ verse 20 
God's Word® uses a translation principle that they termed "closest natural equivalent," which attempts to be as close to the original as possible and still sound like natural speech.  You can see that Abraham was not "trying really, really hard" to believe God. He simply made a choice to give respect/honor/glory to God for the promise. It was the giving of honor, Abraham's respectful response, that strengthened his faith. Doubting God's promise is not respectful at all.

Verse 21 says that Abraham was "fully persuaded," or as God's Word® puts it, "was absolutely confident that God would do what he promised." Abraham did not have to be convinced: he knew who God was/is/will be; he knew God well enough to have complete confidence in what God said.

The Lesson
Abraham received the promise because he trusted God. KatieLyn did not receive her promise because she did not trust God. 

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is "supposed" to be a happy day for honoring mothers.

It is really sad when a mother cannot see who her child really is and is blind to the potential for who her child may become. KatieLyn has a mom who was excellent in providing 'mom' skills during early childhood. She does a good job controlling her children's environment as guarding their safety.  But when it comes to adequately nurturing the emerging adult and to let go just enough at the right times, she stinks.

The day that I met Gwen, she was treating her then-28 year-old daughter as though she was 14, half her biological age.  Gwen's speech was filled with criticism disguised as 'helping' KatieLyn in her own best interest.  I believe that many of KatieLyn's insecurities result from the relationship that she shares with her mother. As long as KatieLyn is insecure, she feels a need for her mother. As long as KatieLyn feels that she needs her mother's approval, Gwen can derive her own sense of self worth from it.

This, in a nutshell, describes their codependency: Gwen gets her own sense of self-worth by keeping her daughter from realizing her own sense of self-worth. KatieLyn makes an idol of her mother because she has never been allowed to develop enough as an individual to be able to trust in a man's love for her.

Kids should not have to ask for permission to grow up!

Rather than doing the Proverbs 22:6 thing and training up a child in the way he or she should go, Gwen trained up KatieLyn to be her go-to support person. They share, not so much a healthy mother/daughter relationship, but a need-meeting codependency.
  
The Lesson
The ability to become a good mother is dependent upon many things, but first and foremost, the #1 criteria for judging success is the answer to the question: Have I raised a successful, independent adult who knows and honors the Lord? 
The ability to do this is proportional to how well we know our God and how much time we spend in His Word ourselves; and then upon how much we follow through with what God reveals to us.

In KatieLyn's case there were two big red flags.
◙ One is that KatieLyn is not an independent adult. She is trapped more deeply than ever in a codependency.
◙ The second, and the one that fits the Mother's Day post, is the more disturbing of the two.  We could see the pathway in God's design to allow KatieLyn to blossom into her own person. What became alarming after KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night was just how little Gwen respected Joe's ability to hear from the Lord. This is the chief fact that led me to conclude that Gwen rarely, if ever, hears from the Lord, and that she is not in the habit of listening.  She certainly blathered on about her "misgivings" enough to convince me that she never really heard what God had to say about the marriage. KatieLyn was running back home to a Mother who was clueless and who would go on to give her the worst advice of her life.  

Romans 8:6 - Part Two: Finding Life and Peace

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ~ Romans 8:6


When we began looking more deeply into this verse, we understood that KatieLyn, the runaway bride, lost her peace about the marriage when she stopped being spiritually minded and began to set her mind on things of the natural world. The more that she considered her mother's arguments, the more carnally minded she became.  Eventually, the fleshly seed of discomfit grew until she could no longer trust what God had told her. Pressured into believing that if she had even the slightest doubt then it would be wrong to get married, she suicided her engagement—she brought death to it. 

It was a self-destructive act. She was not 'just in love with the idea of being married' as her mother told me, (but if that were true, then it would compound the problem because marriage for the sake of marriage is also superficial carnal-minded thinking). For God had placed the desire for marriage in her heart long ago, (which is another reason that I doubt her mom's explanation).  God had told KatieLyn that Joe was the man she was to marry, and she chose to think thoughts that were hostile to God. She chose to doubt God. As a consequence, she lost her joy and her peace.  It is that simple.  It is that complex.

Romans 8:7 teaches us that the mind that focuses on human nature is hostile toward God. It refuses to place itself under the authority of God; in fact, it cannot because it is in "a state of enmity to God" (Weymouth New Testament). The devil tricked KatieLyn into thinking that she had lost her peace about the marriage because the marriage was wrong; But KatieLyn lost her peace about the marriage because she stopped believing the Lord as a spiritually-minded daughter of Abraham and began believing her mom as a carnally-minded daughter of Gwen.  That is why I can say it is both simple and complex: She was half-right in that she knew she wasn't as closely connecting with God as she once did; that's the simple part. But she was also half-deceived about the reason for it; that is the complex part which the Lord has revealed to me in small steps and pieces as I sought for answers.

The reason that KatieLyn's explanation made no sense to Joe the night that she ran back home is because she did not know, specifically, why she was calling off the marriage. She only knew that she was uneasy. But she could not say why she was uneasy and she did not know where her doubts came from, so she couldn't give a reason that made sense.

Her doubts came from the pit of hell, and the devil had used her mother, the person whom she trusted most, to sow those seeds of doubt. And that's a fact.  She grew her own doubts and when they produced fruit, she ran away from God's plan in wild rebellion and fear. 

For to be carnally minded is death. 
She chose to set her mind on the natural realm of the flesh and to dwell on thoughts that were hostile to God.  To be spiritually minded is life and peace; it increases hope and gladness. If she had been able to maintain what the Lord had dropped into her heart on New Year's Day, 2015, her peace, her hope, and her joy would have continued to increase. To be carnally minded is death; it causes one to lose hope and grow weaker and weaker, eventually resulting in either fear, or depression, or a twisted mix of both.

God often makes requests that are counter-intuitive, which also means that normal reasoning does not apply. Dipping in the muddy Jordan River seven times is not a rational cure for leprosy, but that is what it took for Naaman.  

 • Isaiah walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia. Isaiah 20:1-4
• Jeremiah was told not to wash his underwear but to go and bury it 300 miles away, further if he traveled the normal trade routes. then he had to go back and dig it up after it had rotted as a sign to evil people who refused to hear God's words and walked in the imagination of their own heart, Jeremiah 13:1-11
• Ezekiel was told to lie down on the left side for the sins of the house of Israel three hundred and ninety days. He had to lie down again on the right side, this time for forty days, for the iniquity of the house of Judah. But wait! There's more: He had to bake his own bread to eat during this time using wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt (a heavy-hulled variety of wheat); and he had to bake it using human poop. Ezekiel 4:9-17
But then there was more: Ezekiel was also told to cut his hair, burn some, dice some, scatter some to the wind, and save a few strands to sew into his shirt for burning later. Ezekiel 5:1-5

KatieLyn may not have been sent as a prophet to the nations, but the point is that if God’s  people don't have faith in His words, then they will never obey His voice. These prophets were given tasks that absurdly defied human reasoning—and were very public! KatieLyn's task of faith was not spectacular: "Trust Me, even though your mom doesn't think it's the logical thing to do."

If you've read the posts from last fall that described the codependency between KatieLyn and Gwen, then you will easily see God's wisdom in giving KatieLyn this sort of test of faith. She was given a very hard choice: Trust God's provision, or trust her mother's doubts. The Lord had provided a man who loved her deeply, but she opted to obey her mother's misgivings. 
 
The marriage would not have been wrong. It was her inability to have faith in God's words that was wrong. As these prophets proved, it was obedience to the divine call that was important. Their obedience made them successful. If KatieLyn had obeyed God, she would have had a successful marriage.

but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
The prophets were great because they had learned to obey what they heard from God. They would go on to write about the coming of the Messiah, his sacrifice, his millennial reign, and the river of life flowing from the temple in Jerusalem. KatieLyn chose to run back home.

Peace, true peace, results from being in accord with the Lord. Much of what KatieLyn was claiming to be "peace" in the days after she ran back home was not real peace. It was just a mix of the absence of fights with her mother and the appeasement of friends who tried to console her. She succeeded in reducing her stress level, but stress reduction is not life and peace that comes from being spiritually minded; it is a this-world fleshly imitation. 
 

The Lesson
KatieLyn lost the life that the Lord had planned for her when she decided to doubt Him. She lost a marriage and her rightful future.  And yes, we know that God is an expert in picking up pieces and making new chances from blown opportunities, BUT...
She threw away her first love. Her next one will not get that same virginal intoxication. It can be good, but it will be different, and not without baggage. KatieLyn has baggage now. 

One thing that disturbed me—a lot—was how carelessly her mother treated this. Gwen was cavalier, almost dismissive, with a "God can send Joe someone more suited" attitude. This indicated to me that Gwen does not really understand men at all. And that fact showed in the specious advice that she gave her daughter, advice that held the appearance of truth, but was actually horribly wrong.

Romans 8:6 - Part One: How Jesus did it

I promised in my last post that we'd be looking further into Romans 8. Let's get to it—

5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8  Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

I have posited all along that the reason KatieLyn ran back home in the middle of the night was because she stopped living by faith in the Spirit and set her mind on things of the flesh.  The  mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God and His plan.   

It would behoove us to look at how Jesus handled the conflict between the mind set on the flesh and the mind set on the spirit. Chapters 4 in the gospels of both Matthew and Luke provide the account.

After Jesus was baptized, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Upon completion of a forty day fast, he was hungry.  In this state, the devil came to challenge Him and said, "If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God."
 [ Providentially, Mary wasn't out there in the wilderness to give advice, although her "suggestions" and "misgivings" did come up later, at which point Jesus had to nearly disown her, cf Mark 3:33. ]

This is typical behavior for the devil:
   Jesus was tempted to do something other than what his Father had said to him.
   The devil attempts to get Jesus to set his mind on things in the natural world.

 Jesus does not answer the flesh but turns his answer to the spiritual by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3,
 "Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." This explains why Paul could tell the Romans that the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

Lesson Connections
   Regular readers will know that I usually conclude each post with The Lesson. But today I am taking the liberty to deviate from the formula because it is important to see how some lessons we've already covered fit together.  We have learned previously that a person is a spirit, has a soul, and lives in a physical body. We learned that the soul is the place of intellect, reasoning, and emotions; it is the mind of the soul that chooses between the spiritual spirit and the physical flesh. We can now make this connection with Jesus' temptations; we see him using his human soul to choose the divine of the spirit.  And we can make the connection as to why Paul wrote that setting the mind on the flesh is hostile to God. 

To be continued in Part Two...


 

Paul's Problem with the Corinthians

Paul had a problem with the Corinthian church. He did not pussyfoot around about it either. He told them pointblank:
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
The problem was that they were "people of the flesh." 1 Corinthians 3:1

As we continue reading past verse 1, we discover the reason that they are still fleshly, even though they had been fed good "milk." The same milk metaphor is used in Hebrews: every one who is partaking of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness — for he is an infant.  Hebrews 5:13
Milk is wholesome and easily digestible. Paul was not finding fault with them for a drinking nutritious beverage. He was disgruntled that they remained happy doing so. They did not want to move on and step up to meat.

The Taste Test
How can you know if someone is not ready for solid foods? What foolproof sign can you use to make a determination? People can become very good at saying all the right things to make you think well of them. A lot of people know how to look like Christians when they are in a church. The preaching goes out to the entire congregation, but how can one gauge if someone is eating the meat or is content with their liquid diet?

There's an answer for that! We can use 1 Corinthians 3:3 to know when people are immature and unskilled in righteousness: Believers who display envying, and strife, and divisions are acting in the flesh, not with their recreated spirit. They are acting and making decisions as if they were not saved, as if they had never heard God. Here's the verse in the International Standard Version:
That's because you are still worldly. As long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, you are worldly and living by human standards, aren't you? 1 Corinthians 3:3

And that answer really surprised me because it pointed straight at the chief reason KatieLyn gave in her blog for calling off the wedding!!!!!!!  She said, and I quote: 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.

It is important to point out that she was not arguing with Joe, but with her mother. At the end, she said that she was constantly fighting, even though she had told Joe that it was periodic fighting. (I suspect she was trying to protect her family's reputation by not admitting to Joe how bad it really was.)

Apparently KatieLyn took a good long hard look at what was causing the arguments and came to an unscriptural conclusion. Apparently, she thought that her mom might have been right, even though God had previously told her that Joe was to be her husband.

The Lesson
That KatieLyn failed to discern the real cause that she lost faith is not the main point of this post, however. The BIGGIE is that the real reason for their fighting is revealed in 1 Corinthians 3:3,  You are still fleshly. For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and living like unbelievers?

I have explained in previous posts that Gwen was envious of her daughter's joy in answered prayer. I don't know that Gwen ever had a dating relationship that wasn't based on sexual manipulation in one form or another. God answered KatieLyn and gave her the real thing that Gwen had missed. But rather than being happy for her daughter, Gwen was disbelieving and envious. This quite naturally led to strife between them. As her mother succeeded in sowing doubt into KatieLyn's beliefs that God had really answered her fifteen years of prayers, KatieLyn lost her her sense of closeness to the Lord. They were both acting in the flesh and living like unbelievers. KatieLyn had lost her confidence in hearing God, and Gwen had never been convinced that God had answered in the first place.

KatieLyn knew that she had lost her faith that the marriage was God's design for her and she felt distanced from God, but she never suspected that the chief reason for that emptiness was Satan had used her mom's immaturity to steal the promise from her.  This is why she could not give Joe a reason for calling it off that made sense—she did not know or even suspect the real reason. 

My next post will develop this concept further based on Romans 8:6
  For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
You will see that it was being carnally minded that brought death to God's plan for this marriage.