Poster Post II

If I judge by this poster...

...then Gwen and her husband were failures as parents.

But is this a biblical standard?

This poster was intended to comfort empty-nesters, to make them feel better about the natural separation that occurs when their child seeks out his or her own destiny.  Empty nests are a cultural phenomena. In the old Semitic cultures of the Bible, a child was typically raised in the family business, especially male children. But this is a blog about a runaway bride, and it uses the biblical definition for hat role, which is most definitely female, so we will limit our discussion to raising girls.

Matthew 10:35, Luke 12:53, and Micah 7:6 all refer to a time when a daughter rises up against her mother, and a person's enemies are the members of her own household. The big picture teaching here is a believer against a non-believer. A believer cannot stop believing without offending God, and non-believers usually will not concede their points, therefore a conflict erupts.
In the microcosm of KatieLyn, the runaway bride, and her mom, Gwen, it wasn't a case where one was Christian and the other wasn't, but that they heard, (or did not hear,) at different levels of clarity.

Under the biblical structure of authority in the home, it was Gwen's role, as the mother, to prevent, stop, or ameliorate the fighting. It is my understanding, however, that she was the provocateur and KatieLyn ended their fighting by calling off the wedding. Neither of those reactions are biblical responses. Trying to hang on and control an engaged daughter is not a godly parenting activity. Instead of spending the engagement period releasing her daughter into God's hands, Gwen spent it nursing her own hurts.

The father, apparently, stood down and let them fight it out. There is a prophecy in Obadiah 1:11 about a father rejecting his role. The children, the Edomites of successive generations, suffered for  father Esau's rejection of his fatherly duty.  Again, we see both societal- and individual-picture consequences.
 "On the day you stood aloof ... you were like one of them," Obadiah 1:11.  According to this verse, God will judge standing back and allowing your wife to fight with your daughter to be counted as if you took part in the fighting yourself. That's a fact.

Titus 2:4 commands that the older women "train the young women to love their husbands and children."  Gwen trained her daughter to fear and to doubt the man that she was engaged to. That's a fact.  Gwen trained her daughter to fear and to doubt the man that God had chosen for her daughter. That's a fact that she is in denial about, because the alternative is too unthinkable. 

The Big Irony 
The way to release a child is to start listening to her. Really listening. Listen with grace and not judgment. One of the nastiest things Gwen did during the engagement was to read all my emails with KatieLyn. No, it is not a sin to be curious, but since KatieLyn lived four hours away, those email were my way of listening to her. But since she knew her mother would be critiquing everything she'd ever tell me, I realize now that she was having to write to two different audiences!  That kind of meddling is unconscionable: I wanted to hear KatieLyn but she was writing for her mom! 

The way to release a child is to start listening to her. In hindsight I see that Gwen could not imagine KatieLyn's needs because she was too busy directing them rather than listening for them.


The Lesson
KatieLyn's parents were good at the take-your-child-to-church Christianity. They were good at the develop-your-child's-gifting Christianity. They were good at the teach-your-child-what-is-good Christianity. But they stank at the not-mine-to-keep Christianity, and both KatieLyn the runaway bride and Joe the run-from groom paid dearly for it. KatieLyn still is. 

Releasing a child by listening to them means that you stay connected, but give up the directed part of the relationship. Gwen was giving KatieLyn advice based on the little girl Katie. It wasn't bad advice to give a teen, but it stank for a going-on-29 woman.

Poster Post I

     I found this poster this morning. With a half-decent graphics program, I think I could have made one myself with better aligned typesetting, and I'd have chosen a color scheme that is a little more compatible with my blog's background.
     But the point is not about quality design; the point is that I did not make this up. Other people know and recognize this same truth. The devil can, will, and does send people that you least expect to knock you off God's plan for your life. 
     It happened to KatieLyn. And the person she least expected was her own mom. It really was the perfect set-up: a co-dependent daughter, a controlling passive/aggressive mother, and a milquetoast father.  KatieLyn could not find the faith and courage to say "yes" to God.

The Lesson
  "So pay attention to how you hear. To those who listen [to the Word], more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them." Luke 8:18
This is exactly what happened to KatieLyn. She began entertaining her mom's thoughts instead of Jesus' thoughts.

Seeking Someone to Devour

Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
 1 Peter 5:8

Your adversary is seeking someone to devour.  He is on the prowl.  
The devil prowled around KatieLyn* and devoured her god-given dream, and then he got Joe's dream for dessert!    

It amazes me how may people consider themselves to be Christian and yet are in denial about the reality of the devil and his methods. Many will prefer to bad-mouth God rather than admit the devil stole from them!  Somehow it becomes "easier" for them to believe that God does not want them to be blessed than it is to accept the idea that the devil got the better of them. They will make God out to be a niggardly closefisted step-father rather than call the devil a thief.  

Sometimes they will even blame themselves for the loss! Or maybe they will try to convince themselves that they didn't really want it after all. Or worse, they will fall into the deception that they are better off with out God's intended blessing—that it wasn't a blessing after all.  

But the Bible says Satan is looking for those he can destroy. One cannot destroy something that is already ruined. The devil looks for good things to destroy, like a godly marriage. This Answer to fifteen years of KatieLyn's prayers made a prime target for the devil. He lusted for its destruction and pulled out the stops to despoil it.

Those who want a soft, happy, and comfortable religion will stick their heads in the sand before they will face the truth. This is a set-up for repeating mistakes from lessons that were not learned the first time, nor the second. Christianity, lived right, requires grit.

That Satan makes destructive attacks on the godly is an ancient truth. In Job 1:7, God asks Satan what he has been up to. And:
"Satan answered the LORD, 'I have been roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.'"

Compare that with the earlier verse from 1 Peter 5:8:
"Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

It is the same.

The same Bible that warns believers of Satan's schemes also gives instructions for the proper response. "Do not give the devil a foothold," Ephesians 4:27.  The King James says, "Neither give place to the devil." Don't get angry, neither give him a place. Yet that is precisely what happened in the case of the runaway bride. Her mother provoked her to anger by intentionally picking fights and then KatieLyn gave place to the devil by putting more trust in the words that her mom was using to rile her up than she did trust the Lord's answer to her prayers.

The Lesson
Satan is not on your side. Anyone who intentionally picks fights with you is not on your side, no matter how much they claim to be doing it "for your own good."   Provoking a person to anger weakens them.  Whether she meant to or not, KatieLyn's mom weakened KatieLyn's faith.

It is plain that Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, never fully trusted her daughter; and she trusted God even less. We see this in her behavior. Gwen felt compelled to insert herself into the engagement. She could not simply state her position once and let God handle it; she had to keep coming back over and over until KatieLyn described the fighting as "constant."

Gwen was always there to give the devil a foothold. Night after night she was building a larger platform for the devil to stand on, as time after time she would gin up KatieLyn's faith-destroying anger. The devil had found someone he could devour, and because of the codependent relationship between KatieLyn and her mom, it would be a two-fer.  Not only could Satan destroy the liberating marriage that God had planned for KatieLyn, he could also drive her and her mom into an even deeper codependency.




* Pseudonyms are used throughout this blog. KatieLyn is the Runaway Bride, Joe is the Run-From Groom, and Gwen is Mother of the Runaway Bride.

The Devil's Job Description— and How to say "You're fired!"

Satan's job description is given in John 10:10 where he is identified as a thief. Jesus is doing the speaking, and the KJV translates it this way:
    The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

There are many other verses that tell what Satan is: adversary, accuser, deceiver, destroyer, evil one, father of lies, god of this world, murderer, etc. If you want to see more with scripture references, there is a link in the footnotes. John 10:10 adds "thief"to that list, but this verse also includes three purposes for his coming, (a) to steal, (b) to kill, and (c) to destroy.

So while it may be true that "everything happens for a reason," too often the reason is that Satan is at work stealing, killing and destroying. This is particularly true in the life of a Christian who is trying to live a good life, for these are the targets that are most valuable in Satan's long war against God.  

That KatieLyn's mother would not consider that her daughter was under a spiritual attack appalls me to this day! And I chose the verb carefully there. I said she would not consider, not that she did not consider. It was an act of Gwen's will; a choice was made that decided her daughter Katie was not listening to Satan's subtle doubt-provoking lies.

I am appalled that Gwen would not consider it because scripture says that it can, does, and will happen. Practically everyone who has tried to walk a faith walk for more than a few consecutive minutes has experienced satanic attack and knows that it happens. The notion that "if it happens, then it must be God's will" is false.  This ideology, that nothing can be achieved unless Allah wills it, is Islam. It is not the Jewish Torah  nor the Christian Holy Bible. It is a doctrine of demons.

If KatieLyn was given counsel that "if it was God's will, then things would have worked out," her counselor was lying to her. Many, many things are God's will but man stubbornly opposes it and thwarts God's will. 

The classic prayer that nearly all public school students fifty years ago would memorize says in part, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  Jesus would not have needed to instruct His disciples to pray this kind of prayer if God's will had been a done deal.

As I explained in my last post, Satan operates by putting ideas in a person's mind and allowing them to react to it. And when we add that to his job description that we read today, we ca determine that it was Satan's job to break up a godly relationship. It was his job to rob KatieLyn of her faith that God had provided her a husband. It was the devil's job to kill off KatieLyn's hope, the anchor of her soul. It was the enemy's job to destroy this marriage before it could start, and he did his job. He fully succeeded.  KatieLyn caved in and ran away in the middle of the night.

The irony is that she believed that she was being strong to do the right thing! That is how Satan deceives though. If it was God's will that KatieLyn and Joe get married, and we had multiple confirmations that it was His will both before and even after KatieLyn ran off, then she had listened to the messages of devils and was being strong in opposing God.

As promised, we are going to inspect 2 Corinthians 10:5 more closely because it outlines the proper response for the times that Satan slithers up to trick you into opposing God.  Remember it said:
   We demolish arguments and every lofty thing that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.  2 Corinthians 10:5

How to Fire the Devil

Using Offense Maneuvers
The verb demolish is rendered in other translations as destroy, tear down, overthrow, cast down, and bringing down.  This is the role of we, the subject. God does not do this for us. We decide what to do with thoughts. 

The noun arguments is rendered in other translation as speculations, imaginations, and reasonings. These are things that have the appearance of being wise and true, but are not. 

The noun phrase every lofty thing that sets itself up is rendered in other translations as pretension, proud obstacle, lofty opinion, presumption, high thing lifting itself up, high thing that exalteth itself, arrogant obstacle that is raised up, intellectual arrogance, and stronghold that towers high in defiance.  These are things that are prideful. 

Using Defense Maneuvers
The verb take captive is consistently rendered with the word captive or captivity across multiple translations.  The original Greek carries the idea of "leading away captive," as opposed to holding in it a prison cell. Again, this is the role of we, the subject. God does not do this for us.

The noun thought is used in most translations. Douay-Rheims uses understanding, and the Aramaic Bible in Plain English renders it as mind.  It is the mental perception which must be addressed, or as Weymouth puts it, "we carry off every thought as if into slavery—into subjection to Christ."

The Lesson
They say hindsight is 20/20.  In hindsight, this is what KatieLyn ought to have done: demolished the arguments that rose to set themselves against the knowledge of God. Bur she was in an untenable place because Satan had confounded her mom into being a passive/aggressive enemy; one day she was picking a fight with KatieLyn and the next she was being ever-so supportive. That way Gwen could claim that she was supporting "whatever Katie chose," all the while keeping the tension on her apron string just loose enough that KatieLyn that KatieLyn would think she was freely making her own choice while keeping enough tension on it that Katie could not break free of their dysfunctional codependency. Never mind that "whatever Katie chose" was not lining up with the knowledge of God. 

In the end, KatieLyn decided that not losing her mother was more important than risking the unknowns of getting a husband. In the end, she did exactly what the devil had schemed for her. She got a measure of known safety and peace, but she threw away her victory in life to keep it. 


 Footnotes:
Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of Satan in the Bible charted list by agapegeek

Blinded by Willful Blindness

Willful Blindness...

That was the answer to a question that I posed to God. Willful blindness.
It was one of those times that a concept is simultaneously shockingly bizarre and yet makes total sense—a mind-expanding closure.

It was shockingly bizarre to me because God created eyeballs, and an emotionally healthy person would use that gift. I know Paul wrote that presently we "see through a glass darkly," but in context, he was encouraging the church at Corinth to grow up, to press on, to know more; he was not offering an excuse to quit.
I realize that some problems are too big for us to comprehend. In my case, an example would be  almost any astrophysics formulae, but that does not mean that I don't want to understand it! And is certainly did not mean that I should not have pressed on from long division to quadratic equations to imaginary numbers. One of the first things on my bucket list for heaven is to take a calculus class.

I understand that some things are complex beyond our ability and that we need to put them on the shelf for a while until the rest of our skills catch up. But that is very different than choosing to stick one's head in the sand and refusing to grow. The answer I received during months of prayer and searching was that prideful obstinance of the heart had led to willful blindness of God's plan.

The willful blindness is integrated into the codependent relationship between KatieLyn, the runaway bride,  and her mom. If either of them ever wishes to be healed of that dysfunction, the Lord is waiting on them to request it. If only one desires it, there will be some tumultuous times, but if both wanted it they would end with a healthier relationship that is even stronger because it can love and trust in each other's independence. From Joe's* and my perspective, it does not greatly matter who was more responsible for this willful blindness; the end result was the same.

Spiritual Sight and Perception

The willful blindness is a spiritual blindness. To anyone who likes to think of him or herself as a good Christian, being called "spiritually blind" is the ultimate insult!  The knee-jerk reaction of many is to  immediately become so offended that they become willfully deaf too and won't listen to what the Spirit says. This is characteristic of the enemy's strategy, to decommission one's spiritual senses. He will go after the others too:  You won't know if it smells fishy, you may find it distasteful, and you won't be able to put your finger on that bad feeling. It makes for a cascading effect where all your spiritual sensors have been so disabled that you become confused. Once the confusion sets in, the enemy will ramp up the fear factor and you are out of the faith it takes to please God. It is Hebrews 11:6 all over again. That is what the enemy was after all along: Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.

Once you are in a spot where you cannot trust (I think this was KatieLyn) or don't know (I think this was her mom) what God is saying, the devil is going to show up to try and take you the rest of the way out.  His goal is to stop God's will from being completed, so messing with your ability to know the will of God is a major strategy of his. 

A Danger Zone

When your spiritual senses have been attenuated, and especially if you have not submitted your will to the Lord's will and resisted the devil's silky suggestions, you have entered a danger zone. Joe was not aware that KatieLyn had entered the danger zone because when she talked to him, she still sounded like she did before her mom started picking faith-destroying fights with her.  At the end, she admitted she had been false that way; if she had told the truth they could have resisted the devil together and quite possibly received a different outcome. 

Why would she deceive Joe in that way?  I don't know for certain, but in the overwhelming number of real-life experiences at-large and from available circumstantial evidence in this case, the answer is probably "pride."  And not totally self-centered pride either; we saw indications that she was protective of her mom's pride too in that KatieLyn downplayed how severe the fighting had been and held back on the reasons her mom did not want her to get married. She was still trying to make her mom look good, or at least, not look bad.

I feel for her, because her mom really had manipulated her into being between a rock and a hard place, but a mature person would not have been so susceptible to such codependent-manipulation in the first place. And if there was one thing that really stood out, even from the first hour that I'd met her mom, it was that her mother was waaayy over interventionist-protective and had slowed down KatieLyn's maturing into womanhood. She'd treated Katie like she was about 14 years old.

The Pride that Blinds

It would be speculation to say that this section of today's post applies to KatieLyn's mom. I never knew Gwen well enough to say definitively whether she does or does not believe in the devil. I do know that her reactions fit the behaviors of a person who either does not believe in the reality of the devil and that the demons that Jesus cast out were what we, in the 21st century, now identify as mental illness; or perhaps she acknowledges their reality but rationalizes that Christians cannot be influenced by them. At any rate, her belief system does not determine reality. And the reality is that the devil had a major, although not exclusive, role in breaking apart this marriage before it could begin.

Satan hates marriage. There is evidence of his work in our political system where the very definition of marriage has been rewritten and devalued by homosexual activists and godless judges.  Satan particularly despises Christian marriages where children are raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He set out to prevent the marriage of KatieLyn and Joe by attacking the weakest link, and the weakest link was the codependency between KatieLyn and her mom. It was easy for him to exploit that. Satan is a master of deception; he could put thought in Gwen's mind that seemed to be wise, and all the while they were against God.

Satan operates by putting ideas in a person's mind and allowing them to react to it. We can accept it, reject it, or save it and mull it over later. But the Bible has a clear statement for what the response ought to be. This brings us to the place in each post where we compare real life with scripture.

We demolish arguments and every lofty thing that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.  2 Corinthians 10:5

If we fail to identify Satan as the source of these thoughts, then we will think they are our own. He will craft them so subtly that if not properly analyzed, they will appear to be wise. That is when the pride that blinds kicks in—these ideas of ours seem so wise. The things of God become foolishness. 


The Lesson
In my next post, I will dissect that verse more closely, but for today's lesson we want to look at the big picture in the context of willful blindness.  Clearly there are 'arguments' and logical reasonings that go against the knowledge of God. The Greek word in the original is logismos and it is not hard to see where our English word logic is rooted. The Theory of Evolution is a prime example of an intellectual argument that is against God. 
There are also 'lofty things' that are set up against the knowledge of God. The Greek here is hypsōma, which can be either a literal or an esoteric height. One could say it is the kind of thought that figuratively puts on on his/her high horse. 
Christians would not be instructed to pull down and demolish these kind of thoughts if we never had them. God did not give these thoughts to us. He will not oppose Himself!  So either we dreamed up ideas that went against God or Satan gave the ideas to us.

Satan not only can, but does, put thoughts that go against the knowledge of God in people's minds. To deny that this happens to you is to be willfully blind.










* Joe is the run-from groom

[Here is a bonus bit of wisdom: If somebody is complaining about a problem that money can easily fix, then it is either a superficial complaint that does not reach over into the spirit realm, or they are lying about what is bugging them.]

Jonathan's letter to God

Cute, isn't it? And we can chuckle over this because we know it was written by a kid. We can see that his brain is starting to kick in with a higher level of critical thinking skill, but he hasn't arrived as an expert logician just yet.

God makes allowances for erroneous reasoning like this. Jesus probably got a chuckle out of it himself—we know that He likes kids, and Jonathan's heart seems to be in the right place.   The young author directly compliments God for doing the right thing, and, reading between the lines, we see that Johnathan acknowledges that it is due to God's goodness and provision that we have a country.

So, how does this relate to a runaway bride?  

We also can see that even at a young age, Johnathan has developed some rigid ideas about proprieties and he is unabashed about sharing his opinions with God. This is a natural part of the growing and learning process; we do not fault him for trying to make sense of the dinosaur's extinction. However, he has made some presumptions and directly accused God of letting the dinosaur become extinct. We must judge if that is accurate, otherwise we will eventually end up with a badly mangled world view. 
Did God let the dinosaur become extinct, and if so, did He allow it so that we could have a country?

I am not here to answer such questions.* The issue for today's post is to look at how human reasoning and rigid paradigms are often not God's ways.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9

The point of today's post is two-fold: (a) God had His own purpose for the dinosaur, and (b) Jonathan's opinion about the right or wrong thing does not change God's purpose.

God had His own purpose for bringing KatieLyn and Joe together, and neither KatieLyn's opinion nor her mother's matter squat as to the rightness or wrongness of His purpose. The place that their opinions do matter is in the directing of each's own human will to either accept God's purpose by faith or to choose to rely on her own reasoning instead.

KatieLyn decided to follow her mom and go with her own reasoning; because of the codependency, (see earlier posts from last fall,)  the pressure to use worldly wisdom (rather than to walk by faith) was enormous.

The Lesson
Human reasoning is incompatible with God's purpose. This is why the early church at Rome was instructed to have their minds renewed.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

This is what KatieLyn tried to do until overtaken by fear, and it is what her mom refused to do:  be transformed by the renewing of her mind. This is why she became confused after hearing the will of God, and it is why her mother was never sure about the will of God in the first place. When tested, and Satan used the dirty trick of implementing her mom in the test, KatieLyn failed to discern what is the will of God.  Even though her mind had started to be renewed and had begun to distinguish the will of God, the fighting with her mom took her right back to her old way of thinking. (See post from 10/30/15 and many others.)

Johnathan, the young scribe whose letter is pictured above, had his heart in the right place, mostly. The result is a strange concoction of being able to honor God and praise His wisdom while still making a proud judgment of God's decision.  He could have just as easily concluded that God did the wrong thing based upon some other reason because Johnathan's level of discernment was, let's be nice and say that it was "age appropriate." His level of reasoning caused him to believe that dinosaurs and civilized countries cannot coexist.

This is the fallacy that KatieLyn fell for. She was so trapped in her codependency that she reasoned a new family could not coexist with her old one; and she could not leave her old one. Her result was a strange concoction of giving lip-service to the Lord while making the decision all by herself.




* For the record, I believe that the Holy Spirit inspired men to write the Holy Scriptures for men. As such, to an observer on Earth, the world would appear to be formed in six literal earth-days, and on the seventh, God rested. Angels were created in another realm outside of earth's time and that spiritual realm can interface with Earth's physical realm. When speaking of the fall of Lucifer, phrases like "before time" are often misdirected; saying "outside of time" is a better choice. He fell into earth's time. There was no "time out" during the six days of creation. Dinosaurs still existed in the days of Job, where two (Behemoth and Leviathan) are described, but were on the way to extinction even then. The same factors that caused mankind's lifespan to drop into double digits completely wiped out the dinosaurs. Job did have a country, however, so Johnathan's assumption is not entirely accurate.   

America on Independence Day

According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.¹

And that was using data collected in the 2010 census; in 2000, 57 percent of American adults were married, so if the trend is projected forward, less than half of American adults are married now.

Pop goes the relationship!

This 4th of July, a greater percentage of Americans have independence from committed relationships than ever before.

There are a lot of directions one can go with that statistic:
• It is hard on the national economy. •  "Freedom to Marry" now refers to homosexuals. • Fewer children will experience family life with married parents and multiple siblings. •  Lower wages due to globalization and technological change may further reduce incentives to marry.

However, for the purposes of Lessons from a Runaway Bride, and in keeping with the theme of personal Independence this holiday, and due to the fact that this is a Bible-based blog comparing real life with scripture, today's post will look at the biblical view of marriage and how KatieLyn received and followed advice that was not biblical; in fact, she followed advice that aligns with America's divorce culture.

  ⋆  ⋆  ⋆  ⋆  ⋆

The percentage of Americans marrying by age 40 has decreased below the level of any previous generation.¹ There is no single reason for this other than the broadly stated fact that Satan is out to destroy God's plan for His creation.  A good analogy is found in walking a woodsy path on a day when the spiders have been spinning their webs. It is possible to run into dozens of spider webs in just a few hundred yards. We can label the webs with any name that produces stress or confusion. With the way the path turns directions and because an overhead canopy of leaves is constantly moving in variable winds, it is nearly impossible to avoid running into some of Satan's traps. Even with good training and sharp eyes, some of the webs will still be so nearly invisible that you will be in them before you know they are there.

Continuing the metaphor, KatieLyn was afraid of spiderwebs. That is not totally unreasonable. They are a sticky uncomfortable mess. Walking into one means that you are only inches from a potentially biting spider. But when God has told you that the destiny you have prayed for lies at the end of the path, one should buck up her courage and have faith for making it through.

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent? Luke 11:11

God does not give his children back alleys with overloaded dumpsters. He'd offer a tumbled waterfall at the other end of the path with a sparkling pool beneath, or a breathtaking vista of a snow-capped mountain, or a wide beach with balmy breezes, or whatever He knew would make her happy. But she has to TRUST Him more than she listens to her mother. THAT was her test; and she flunked it this time around.

The good news is that God allows do-overs. Maybe that ought to be The Lesson where I end with firecracker optimism. But do-overs get easier only if you are willing to learn from past mistakes. God rarely lets one move on without first dealing with what was broken. KatieLyn will keep having challenges in her life that are God-designed opportunities to break the codependency that she shares with her mom.

The idea that you can simply decide to move on is not supported in scripture.  Oh yes, there is that verse from Hebrews 12:1, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Except that KatieLyn did not throw off the encumbrance that kept her as a child; to the contrary she ran back to it!  And she did not lay aside the falsehood that so easily entangled her; instead, she rationalized it. 

Time and time again, the story from scripture is one where the offense must be dealt with head on. King David did not walk scot-free after sending Uriah to the battle front. Jonah didn't get to sail away to Tarshish, which he regarded as a better direction for his life; if he had not repented the fish probably would not have resurfaced near the beach. 
In the New Testament, the woman who was about to be stoned had to come to terms with Jesus before he told her to go and sin no more. 
In the parable of the prodigal son, even though we can deduce that the Father was always looking for and hopeful that his son would repent, based on his father seeing him while he was still far away, it is only after the son "came to his senses" that the son was able to be restored. The Father had been willing all along, but the son's own heart-attitude had prevented him from receiving acceptance. 
John Mark, whom one might describe as an "intern,"  had started out with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey but abandoned them at Pamphylia. When it came time to revisit and check up on the churches, Paul chose to travel with Silas instead of giving John Mark another chance. Only years later, after John Mark had proven himself by helping Barnabas, did he regain Paul's trust. 

Tragically, KatieLyn was not challenged by her mom to come to terms with missing the mark.  Her mom told her that she would support "whatever she decided," even when her decision took her further from God's will. The advice KatieLyn took did not come from Bible examples; it was more like the advice from a worldly magazine found in the supermarket check-out line that encourages women to just move on.  All of the reasons and that her mom used to justify herself to me sounded like the the arguments used to try and justify getting divorced. In other words, KatieLyn never heard biblical marriage advice from her mom, she got divorce advice instead.

The Lesson
In the Gospels, the blotting out of sins and mistakes is constructed with an if/then statement. If we repent and turn, then the sin is blotted out; Acts 3:19. If we confess, then He is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse; 1 John 1:9.   Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish; Luke 13:3.  These are not limited to repentance for salvation and being born-again.

James 4:8 makes it clear that it applies to the double-minded as well, and several of the earlier posts on this blog are dedicated to showing how Satan used the words of KatieLyn's mom to rob her of her original faith and refill that vacuum with double-minded confusion.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

The same kind of disorientation that KatieLyn's mom planted in her mind by picking fights with her was addressed in Jesus' post-resurrection message to the church:  Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent, Revelation 2:5.  KatieLyn fell from her faith that the Lord had answered fifteen years worth of prayers to land in a swamp of confusion and double-mindedness.   

KatieLyn has joined the 50%+ of unmarried adults in America because she allowed herself to be robbed of an already-answered prayer. Unfortunately, she foisted her tragic loss of faith upon Joe as well. 





¹ Martin, S., N. P. Astone, and H. E. Peters. "Fewer Marriages, More Divergence: Marriage Projections for Millennials to Age 40." (2014). Urban Institute, Apr. 2014. Web. 30 June 2016.