Lesson Summary, So Far - II

It has been over ten days since the last post.  This is not because I have nothing to write about. To the contrary, I have notes or draft versions of three posts waiting in the queue.  However, they are all taking a different direction. They are more related to current events, and they are illustrating how KatieLyn's decision making has parallels with the decisions that our politicians have been making for us. I don't want to "go there" without first solidifying where this blog is now. It is appropriate to have a post that summarizes this.

The first "Lesson Summary, So Far" was post #25 dated Saturday, August 15, 2015. At that time I thought I'd be summarizing about every 25 posts and probably be done with this blog by Thanksgiving, 2015.

Today, over 150 posts and a year later, I am posting my second summary. There was never a need for interim summaries because not all that much has changed. Here is what I wrote back then:

To be a good wife, it is important to be able to hear and follow the leading of the Lord. I am of the opinion that the Lord allowed this to come upon her because she really does have the grit it takes to stand up for herself. But she has not had much practice doing that and it is very uncomfortable for her.

I still believe that KatieLyn has the grit it takes to stand up for herself, but she has not.

You probably have a hint at the new direction for this blog—Americans are starting to stand up for themselves against the nanny state. They had not had much practice, they were regularly lectured to be tolerant, and it has been uncomfortable to face the fact that those in authority were deceiving them. But that is changing, and it is most evident in the Trump Movement. Stay tuned...

I think it is important at this point to briefly explain why Joe's early prayers to have KatieLyn see the truth have not been answered yet.  The explanation is this: He was not going to indulge in witchcraft.

That might sound like it is coming out of left field, but really it is not. Witchcraft is using any power other than Allowing God's Power to control or change another person. Using this definition, which can also be restated as witchcraft is the intent to control people and make them do what you want by any spirit other than the Holy Spirit, it is easy to see that witchcraft is performed regularly in Washington. Witchcraft has two forms of abusive power: works of the flesh (cf Galatians 5), and demon-assisted power.  That is the basis for the connection, and Lord willing, that will be explained more fully in future posts.

For now, however, and to stay on the topic of the Runaway Bride, a prayer for KatieLyn to "see the truth" can sound very 'religious.' But such a prayer is pious only if the Holy Spirit does the revealing, and the Holy Spirit will not force KatieLyn or violate her own will to choose. Whenever intimidation, domination, or manipulation is used to make KatieLyn doubt the truth, witchcraft is being used. We know this because God does not intimidate, dominate, or manipulate. A codependency is ungodly because all three of these are in play in that kind of relationship.

The Lesson
It would be an evil thought to assume that because KatieLyn and Joe never worked things out and got back together that God's will was done. Satan's will was done. KatieLyn's low self-esteem makes it unlikely that she will ever be able hang onto and pursue God's best for her. God gave her the grit to stand up for herself, but it is buried very deeply beneath the lies that she believes.  She will not throw off the shackles that make her feel safe as long as she chooses to believe those lies.

KatieLyn is a bookworm, but I guessed she missed one of the main lessons of CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia: Aslan is not a tame lion.   I believe that she was attracted to Joe because he was the "wild side" complement that God had placed in her life to meet her need to know that. She rejected it.




PS. I am taking a short break from this blog to write on my newer current events blog, Bootcamp Planet. Don't look for any new posts here until well after Labor Day and even then, rarely until the election. As the tagline on Runaway Bride says, this is a Bible-based blog comparing real life with scripture; there are a lot of time-sensitive comparisons to be made between politics and scripture during this election season! Bootcamp Planet takes that similar approach with current events. Hwere is a link:
Which Bible Character is Donald J Trump?

Another Poster Post

The Message Bible - Matthew 12:22-32

22 A poor demon-afflicted wretch, both blind and deaf, was set down before him. Jesus healed him, gave him his sight and hearing.
23 The people who saw it were impressed - "This has to be the Son of David!"
24 But the Pharisees, when they heard the report, were cynical. "Black magic," they said. "Some devil trick he's pulled from his sleeve."
25 Jesus confronted their slander. "A judge who gives opposite verdicts on the same person cancels himself out; a family that's in a constant squabble disintegrates;
26 if Satan banishes Satan, is there any Satan left?
27 If you're slinging devil mud at me, calling me a devil kicking out devils, doesn't the same mud stick to your own exorcists?
28 "But if it's by God's power that I am sending the evil spirits packing, then God's kingdom is here for sure.
29 How in the world do you think it's possible in broad daylight to enter the house of an awake, able-bodied man and walk off with his possessions unless you tie him up first? Tie him up, though, and you can clean him out.
30 "This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you're not on my side, you're the enemy; if you're not helping, you're making things worse.
31 "There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives.
32 If you reject the Son of Man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you, but when you reject the Holy Spirit, you're sawing off the branch on which you're sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives. 

At first, it may not seem like that passage has a lot to do with this poster—

But keep reading...

A man had been miraculously healed! The people were in awe and began using their research skills to evaluate if this was God, but the Pharisees were willfully blind, unwilling to face the possibility that Jesus was who he said that he was. Like the dog in the poster, they choose to reject what was right in front of them.

There are countless nuggets of revelation in Jesus' response, but the one that connects closely to the Runaway Bride is this:
• One of the indications that a person is willfully blind is that their conclusion does not make sense.
Or to say it another way:
• Nonsensical explanations are indicative of willful blindness.

Jesus calls them out on this.  Their accusation made no sense. It is illogical that Satan would cast out Satan.  In the same way, KatieLyn's explanation that Joe would grow to hate her made no sense. It is totally nonsensical that the man God was using to answer her prayers would not be capable of loving her completely.  Both the Pharisees and KatieLyn were proposing ridiculous explanations for the evidence. In fact, this time, Jesus did not even have to quote the Torah to show where they were missing it—the Pharisees were not even reaching the lower standard of human logic.

Jesus continues to speak.  And it gets a lot more serious.  KatieLyn's rejection of Joe was also a rejection of God's plan for her life. She rejected the plan of the One who is able to save and forgive. That matches verse 31: "There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives."

Here is how that same 31st verse was translated for the Berean Literal Bible: Because of this I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men; but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

Deliberate persistence.  On purpose and ongoing. Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people. Joe forgave KatieLyn within a matter of weeks. She can be forgiven for how she mistreated Joe by trusting in the work of Jesus. But has she blasphemed the Spirit? Jesus said blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a settled rejection to the Spirit’s witness to Jesus Christ. It is unrepentant willful blindness to the Spirit’s witness to Jesus. It’s not so much a point of “no forgiveness” as it is a point of “no repentance." ~ Author unknown

That is one of the best definitions I have seen. Not so much no forgiveness, but no repentance. There is an old rule of thumb that says, "if you are concerned that you may have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, then you haven't" This is because a heart that is soft enough to be concerned about that possibility is not deliberately and persistently hard toward the Holy Spirit. 

Prior to, throughout, and even after the engagement period, we had many evidences from the Holy Spirit that marriage to each other was Jesus' plan for their lives. The Holy Spirit witness was so powerful that neither Joe nor I could doubt it. Joe knows that KatieLyn had that witness at the time he proposed. Now she is in a settled rejection of it.

Has KatieLyn blasphemed the Spirit? No. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a settled rejection to the Spirit’s witness to Jesus Christ, not to another person. Has she blasphemed the plan that the Holy Spirit revealed to her? Probably.  As recently as last month we came across an indicator that she has not yet repented of rejecting the Lord's revealed plan for her life. I started writing about it, but I've left it as a draft. As I said, it was an indicator, not solid proof.  So at this point, I think the Lord showed me something to pray about, not to write about. 

The Lesson
The lesson this time is cautionary, not declarative. I am not pronouncing that KatieLyn's heart is one way or another—I don't know.  But Jesus taught that such hard-heartedness was rebellion against God, and being in rebellion against Him is a very dangerous place. And not just because there will come a judgment day, although there is that; but it is dangerous because when one's relationship with the Lord includes unrepentant rebellion, one is more likely to compound the original error. 

 

meme credit: https://ifunny.co/

Lessons from a Deliverance Ministry

Is Satan really alive and well?
The answer: He is. Bad news for a world that operates virtually unaware of the oppression, depression and very tangible torment daily added to millions of lives by unseen spiritual forces and sources – often infiltrating through the portal of popular entertainment. As Christians, we too often play into the hand of Satan and his demonic hosts when we approach demonic warfare as a theoretical game or ‘curiosity’ rather than a life-threatening conspiracy from the pit of hell.
 Publisher's book review for  Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization, and Deliverance (Payne)

♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦

I wasn't actively seeking to write about this topic. A couple things just "fell into my lap." I am always looking for good reading material; it is not unusual for me to read book review ads like the one above. But a publisher is biased toward its own product, so here is an excerpt from a slightly more balanced description on Google Books (which also wants to sell its product, of course):

We live in a world of distinct opponents; our very lives are a battle. Yet too many Christians lose more battles than they win and endure their walk with God rather than enjoy it because they don't recognize the enemy when they see it.

Using different words, they both point out the same thing:  People are "virtually unaware" and "they don't recognize the enemy." But this is not all just a sales pitch so that you will buy to find out what you are unwittingly oblivious to; it's a truth that many persons are not mindful of their enemy.  It is even worse when Christians are in willful denial that their enemy exists and has already attacked them. But the fact is that there are two spiritual kingdoms operating on the earth, and being a citizen of one puts you at war with the other. You need to know that.

Many "good Christians" don't think they can be influenced by unclean spirits. They haven't dabbled in the occult. They may have been taught that a Christian can't "have" a demon or be possessed by one. The problem with such reasonings is that men have made them up; they are half-truths.

There are many ways that a demon can gain access to a person's mind or his emotions, and playing around with the occult is only one of them. It is not a matter of all-or-nothing 24/7 possession either, because there are many degrees, levels, and routes by which a demon can stalk and frustrate a person. Satan isn't fair, and just the fact that you were created in the image of God is enough to make you his target.

If there is even a teeny bit of sin, the devil can capitalize on it. Furthermore, the sin that the devil uses to get to you may not even be your own; Exodus 20 makes it clear that sin from three or four generations back is all the permission that the devil needs to attack.  Unrepented sins that you have long forgotten about,  things you don't even remember but which were never put under the blood, a demon can use those as its license to attack and bring mental, emotional, or physical torture and torment. Plus, we live in a fallen world, so interacting with almost anything includes some risk of encountering what 2 Corinthians 4:4 calls "the god of this age."

Many Christians suffer under the influence of religious spirits and spirits of legalism which make them judgmental and hypocritical towards others. It is not hard to find examples of this, and common experience with such people ought to refute the notion that a Christian can't have a demon. Spirits of rebellion, resentment, and tale-bearing are often found in churches and among church people, as are spirits of unbelief/doubt, compromise, and confusion. Demons often travel in packs, so if one of those was present and not dealt with, then before long unclean spirits of loneliness, rejection, and depression will show up as well.

One kind of seducing spirit is aimed almost exclusively at the Church: a spirit of heresy. It typically works progressively to bring damnation. It will begin subtly, introducing questioning of truth. This is the seducing spirit that worked on Eve. As soon as Eve began entertaining thoughts in her heart about whether or not such an enticing fruit was really as bad as what her husband had told her, she was as good as out of the garden. The serpent had appealed to her intellectual honesty. Her questioning progressed to doubt, which progressed to confusion, and then ultimately led to the act of rejecting what God had said. Oh, but at least she could be "intellectually honest" and say that she wasn't sure anymore!  


Gateways for Entry

The late Derek Prince, whose experience in deliverance ministry spanned more than fifty years, wrote about some of the common points of demonic entry that many Christians are unaware of. Most people with a nominal knowledge of unclean spirits are aware of the list in Deuteronomy 18:10-12 that includes witchcraft, sorcery, fortunetelling, necromancy, and human sacrifice. Most people who are trying to live a committed life for the Lord do not indulge in these. Dr. Prince said that he did occasionally find these demonic spirits operating in a church because people were involved in these practices, but more often, the point at which a demon had entered was less obvious. The following list of these lesser known ways that a demon can gain access to a person came from his teachings:

• Prenatal influences, especially rejection. A baby is 100% human spirit in utero. He/she can sense and respond to the mother's emotions. If the mother does not want her child, it is possible to pick up a spirit of rejection that may appear to lie dormant for years, but is subtly coloring the way a child views the world. Later, it may attract spirits of  anger, rebellion, or any number of things including homosexuality. (A few homosexuals actually were "born that way," although they were not "created" that way; most, however, seem to have acquired a homosexual spirit during an abusive childhood episode.) 

• Childhood pressures. Demons can approach a child when he/she experiences pressures in the environment. God will protect a child with an initial dose of grace, but if parents are not perceptive, if they continue to keep the child in that environment, or if they brush off an emotional event as 'no big deal,' an unclean can return to "offer help" until eventually the child will latch on to it. Parents should always scrutinize their child's daycare giver, and if something is "funky," they ought to believe the child, not the caregiver's assurances that nothing happened. 

• Manipulation by another person. Some demons will get another human to do the dirty work for them. This may result in a double bonus for the demon because it can destroy two people at the same time. Soulish manipulation by another person—that is abuse of a soul-tie—creates a point of entry for a demon. When a person becomes unnaturally tied to another, it is demonic. Over time, the relationship generally evolves one of two ways: it can become violent/submissive, or it can have an appearance of unity that is actually idolatrous. (The control may include sexual abuse or fornication, but it is primarily a Power thing, not sexual.)

• Moment of weakness.  A demon can find a point of entry at times when a person is vulnerable. Physical tiredness, being emotionally drained, a temporary loss of self-control, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can give the demon a metaphorical foot in the door.  The Bible describes this situation as a breech in the hedge of protection that is usually there. 

• Ancestral curses.  A person may not know the history of an ancestor four generations previous, but generational curses are real, they are described in the Bible, and they can give a demon access an unsuspecting person.

Notice that in all five of these situations, the person who is being oppressed by the devil may be completely innocent and done nothing to provoke an attack. Satan does not play fair; he seizes an opportunity. No matter how diligent a person is, we live in a fallen world where the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  If you are a child of God, then Satan's demons are your enemy. It is not being paranoid to accept this, rather, it is foolish to deny that your enemy is out to get you. Satan oppresses people who have done nothing to "deserve" it.

Two Surprising Points

As I was studying this, I discovered two surprising things that are "typical demon," and which are a perfect fit for what we experienced. They are the things that turn this into a Runaway Bride topic!

Lying spirits lie to you. No surprise there. But the lies that they tell often follow a pattern. They tell lies to discourage the brethren.  To discourage a child of God and get him/her off the path that the Lord has set before that person is very wicked. So when someone with a half-century of experience in deliverance ministry used personal examples to illustrate his teaching, and when he mentioned that demons were telling one woman that came for deliverance to "run," my ears perked up. Apparently running is very common. It is one of the tactical lies that demons use to derail God's life plan for people. If they can convince a person to run from God by their "own choice," then everyone in that person's circle of influence is affected too. Except that it wasn't really that person's choice. In his example, the woman had been tricked, pressured, and manipulated into believing that it was her choice—she had not really wanted to make it, but was convinced that she must do it for the "greater good." She disobeyed what her own heart was telling her because the demon persistently told her it was the noble thing to do. KatieLyn kept insisting her actions were also the right thing to do, even though she had great difficulty explaining why she believed it. I see a strong parallel in these women's responses here. 

The other point that seemed to fit KatieLyn as a runaway bride was that demons like to take advantage of sudden terror. Psychologists call them panic attacks, but in reality, demons are usually behind these wildly irrational acts. It never made sense that sensible KatieLyn would pick up and bolt in the middle of the night, unless— unless it was inspired by Satan. If she had rationally decided that this marriage was not for her, there were rational ways to end the engagement. Running off in the middle of the night was not one of those ways. If calling off the wedding was truly of God, then he would have directed her to end it in a more God-like fashion; and He would have told Joe! 

The 3-Part Lesson
1. Running is common a common indicator of demonic influence. KatieLyn's actions seem as nonsensical today as they did the night that she ran away from the Lord's plan for her life. The best explanation for her actions is that she was under the influence of demons.

2. Wildly irrational acts are indicative of a subject being under possible demonic influence. KatieLyn was reportedly hysterical in the hour immediately before her decision to run. (She was in the house alone, so no one saw this, but she phoned her mom; her mom labeled her "hysterical.")

3. And in case you missed the third indicator of demonic influence, I will edit a sentence that you read earlier:  As soon as Eve KatieLyn began entertaining thoughts in her heart about whether or not such an 'enticing fruit' was really as bad as what her husband mom had told her, she was as good as out of the garden wedding. Meditating on thoughts that are contrary to what God has already said is a sure sign of demonic influence.

Payne, Karl I. Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization, and Deliverance. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011.

How to find your Place Derek Prince

Two Spiritual Kingdoms

• There are two spiritual Kingdoms.

• Being a citizen of one puts you at war with the other.

• One proof of two opposing kingdoms is found in Colossians 1:13. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.

In the original Greek, two different words are used for kingdom.
    The first one, used with the kingdom of darkness, is exousia. It means the power of authority, the power of rule or government. The second one, used with the Kingdom of His Son, is basileia. It refers to royal power, kingship, or dominion. It describes a reign of royalty as opposed to brute force and coercion.

There are many more scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments that testify to this dichotomy.

Isaiah 60:2
For behold, darkness will cover the earth And deep darkness the peoples; But the LORD will rise upon you And His glory will appear upon you.

Acts 26:18
...to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.

There is an ongoing war in the heavens between these two dominions. Being a citizen of one puts you at war with the other. They do not mix. They cannot coexist all snuggled up like Yin and Yang.  The Bible consistently and foundationally uses the terms light and darkness to describe them.  The normal condition is for light to overcome and dispel darkness. However, strife, unbelief, fear, and other sins will bring on a thick darkness. In this state, men will not hear God, they will not receive his teachings. Although they may wish to be enlightened, the darkness makes this difficult because the darkness frustrates and literally bedevils a person so that they become confused.* 

What does this have to do with a Runaway Bride, you ask?

This:  Those who live in denial about the reality of the two kingdoms will give God credit for the works of devils. This is a terrible accusation.

The claim that God led KatieLyn to break the engagement is an accusation about God's character.  It says that God is not able to do what He said that he would do. It says that he cannot get His people to hear Him accurately!  It blames God for Satan's attack!  It claims that God is the author of confusion.

I have laid out in this blog previously that Satan HATES godly marriage. He HATES the formation of godly families.  Satan's nature is to destroy them. And Satan, not God, worked the works of strife, fighting, and destruction in KatieLyn's life. (This will be the subject of a future post: Lessons from a Deliverance Ministry.) The attack on the engagement was an attack of Satan. It was not an "enlightenment" from the Lord.

The Lesson
There are two kingdoms that oppose each other. The strife and fighting with her mom blinded KatieLyn's mind to the beauty and excellency of the character of the Lord Jesus. It weakened her until her mind was indisposed to receive His instructions. Just as darkness has no affinity for light, if the one exists, the other must be displaced.
KatieLyn decided to appease the dark kingdom. She wanted the fighting to stop, and the only way (she felt) that she could make it stop was to appease it. That meant she had to break up with Joe.
The dark kingdom of Satan had maneuvered her into a place where she was being pressured to choose between her mom and Joe. She did not see any way to peaceably have a relationship with both. The fighting had overwhelmed her and bewildered her into a place where she could not think clearly. Such is the effect of a codependency—she relied on her mom to do some of the thinking for her, and her mom's thoughts were all toward what her mom wanted, not what God had said He had chosen.

KatieLyn remains convinced that she made the right choice by appeasing her mom. Next time she will let her mom choose the husband for them.





* Being "in the dark" here does not mean that a person is not saved. Believers whose citizenship is in the Kingdom "of light" can still be assaulted by the prince of darkness. A mind or soul can be "in the dark" and confused even though the spirit of a man is still safely held in the hands of the Lord. The paragraph is speaking of darkness covering the soul, not the spiritual darkness of the lost.

Door Openers to Disaster

Galatians 5:19-21 is a list that many Sunday school curricula will title as "Works of the Flesh." 

That is accurate. But is is also true that 'works of the flesh' are exactly the things that unclean spirits can capitalize on and manipulate to wreak havoc in the life of a believer. The works become doors that open a person up to demonic influences.

Below is an edited version of passages found in Galatians 5. I have tried very hard to not change the scripture, but only to change the viewpoint. The reason for doing this is that believers tend to become familiar with scripture over time. That is generally a good thing, but as they do, they also tend to either put the Bible verse in their doctrinal box or allow it to settle into a rut of familiarity that partially blocks receiving fresh and new insight.  So this edited and paraphrased version takes the emphasis off the "sinful works" aspect and redirects the emphasis to "things that open doors to demonic attack."

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not open the door to evil influences. For these devilish influences are opposed to things of the Spirit and will booby-trap you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you will avoid these things.
Now the doors for demonic attack are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
I warn you, as I warned you before, that such things will impede you from inheriting the kingdom of God. ... Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh and slammed shut the door on to these ungodly passions and desires.

When we change our viewpoint, when we see these more as gateways for the destroyer, it can change our attitude about the people who are around us.  We are less inclined to have an Us v. Them attitude. It also gives more insight into why KatieLyn ran off in the middle of the night.


I will copy that same passage below, but this time I will add highlighting to the doors that were opened by KatieLyn's family.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not open the door to evil influences. For these devilish influences are opposed to things of the Spirit and will boobytrap you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you will avoid these things.
Now the doors for demonic attack are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity,* strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
I warn you, as I warned you before, that such things will impede you from inheriting the kingdom of God. ... Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh and slammed shut the door on to these ungodly passions and desires.

Quite frankly, even now over a year later, I was surprised at how many attack routes had been opened up to assail the engagement!  W have discussed all of these at some point in this blog, but I had never seen them laid out in a listing before I saw Galatians 5:16-21 in this new light.

Idolatry — we've discussed how the co-dependency was an idolatrous relationship where KatieLyn ultimately valued her mom's words more than she did what the Lord told her on New Year's Day, 2015.

Enmity*  —  Enmity may or may not belong on this list; it is a "somewhere on the scale" thing. The definition of enmity is "deep-seated, often mutual hatred." It can coexist with deep love, hence we get the term love-hate relationship. I include it here because at some level, enmity was in KatieLyn's mother-daughter relationship at the time Joe met KatieLyn. The hatred was not widespread, but a filament of it ran deep. KatieLyn resented that her mother was holding her back and taking advantage of her help around the home. It appears that Gwen uses filial responsibility as one of her passive/aggressive controls in their codependent relationship.

Strife — KatieLyn's mom provoked fights about the engagement; this created strife.

Jealousy — It was Joe's belief, and I readily concur, that KatieLyn's mom was jealous of her Katie being in love in such an honorable way, (as opposed to Gwen snagging her guy via pregnancy). Gwen was jealous of KatieLyn's success in finding a man and was fearful that she would "lose." She said repeatedly that Joe was "taking" KatieLyn away from her. That is baldfaced jealousy.

Fits of Anger — I did not witness this personally; the closest I came to having first-person knowledge was Joe telling me about a text that he received from KatieLyn's mother along with the testimony of him and KatieLyn about the fighting with her mother being very upsetting.

Rivalries — this is another aspect that stems from the idolatrous co-dependency and Gwen's jealousy of her daughter. It qualifies as a "rivalry" because Gwen felt like she "won" when KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night. Gwen got KatieLyn and Joe didn't!

Dissensions — a dissension is a difference of opinion. Boy, do I have personal evidence of that!  The emails that Gwen sent me and her confiscation of all means of communication after KatieLyn ran away from her place as bride were just plain nasty. We still have a difference of opinion; I know that KatieLyn rejected the Lord's plan for her life, while Gwen thinks that Katie was smart for disobeying since she was feeling confusion. The confusion had been planted by Gwen during their fights.

Divisions — this came out in the night of KatieLyn's midnight flight.  She chose to divide herself from Joe, with whom she had entered into an engagement promise before the Lord. Her stubborn refusal to allow a Christ-like resolution remains. I have not posted all of the information on this yet, although I have written it up in a draft form.

Envy  —  First, I need to make a distinction between envy and jealousy. Sometimes the two are so interrelated that it becomes hard to know which is which. Jealousy is directed at another person. It could be a fear of being supplanted by someone else, or it could be a resentment of another person. No one gets jealous of a diamond ring because no one want to become a diamond ring. While jealousy is person-directed, envy is greed-related. You could be envious of another person's tangible possessions, like a diamond ring, but you could also be envious of a quality that they possess, a talent or position. Envy can result in covetousness and ingratitude, whist jealousy can result in mistrust or fear of losing a relationship that is important to you.
With that distinction made...
Envy appears to have been Gwen's main motivation for provoking the fights with her daughter. Money was an issue for Gwen the entire time that Joe knew her, but it exploded after KatieLyn ran back home. Gwen was demanding a refund on every penny that she had put into the wedding, which proportionally, wasn't all that much. These issues have been adequately covered elsewhere in this blog and I am not going to belabor them here. 



The Lesson
In the modified version of Galatians 5, I called these behaviors doorways that can give a demon access to afflict you because that is what they do. In the standard version, they are called works of the flesh because that is what they are.  They could also be called sins because that is how the Lord judges them when they have not been confessed, repented of, and placed under the blood.

All of these open the doors to disaster. We thought that because Joe was not experiencing them with KatieLyn, that everything was good. We were wrong.