Prayer for our marriages….. September 2, 2011

Father God, this day we choose to lay our lives and our marriages before You to receive Your healing touch. I ask that You would keep our hearts soft toward each other and not allow any hurt to build to anger.

I ask that You make the changes in us necessary to be the husbands and wives You have designed us to be for our spouses and we release them to You that You should change them only as You will.

I pray Lord that you will protect our mind and our hearts from the lies of the enemy and fill us Heavenly Father with Your Holy Spirit. I ask you Holy Spirit to come and remove the lies that have taken root and I ask that you will plant in their place Your truth and Your love. Father, build in us a restored and new love that can never die…. for what You create will remain forever.

Father I ask You to make us tools of reconciliation. Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the threshold of separation where the realities of divorce begin.
Father God, if love seems to have vanished then I also pray that You would speak to those hearts and souls and remind them of the love that they once knew for each other, let them rediscover that love and build in them a new and stronger love.

Father, deliver us from the bondage of past mistakes. Take away anyone and anything that would inspire temptation for our spouse.

Change in us our habits of indifference and busyness that we may not take each other for granted. I know Father God that only the transforming power of the Holy Spirit can make changes that last. I trust You to transform us and make us the husband and wife You have called us to be.

Father bring into our  lives Godly friends that they might openly share their hearts. May they be trustworthy people of wisdom who will speak truth into our lives and not just say what we want to hear.

I pray that we, as well as our spouses, will listen to Godly counselors and not be a people who are unteachable. Give each of us the strength to reject the counsel of the ungodly and hear Your voice above all others. Instruct us and our spouses even as we sleep and in the morning I pray we will do what is right rather than follow the leading of own flesh.

Father I ask that you would protect our marriages from the things and evil spirits that would destroy it.

Shield it from our own selfishness and neglect and heal the wounds that have been inflicted by such.

Shield us from the evil plans and desires of others. Set us free Father from the past hurts and ties of things that have happened outside of the marriage You designed.
I pray Father that you would convict each of us, as well as our spouses, of any error in our lives. Let there be nothing covered that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Cleanse us from any secret sins and teach us to be a person who is quick to confess when they are wrong. Bring all of us to full repentance before You.

 If there is suffering to be done, let it be the suffering of a remorseful heart and not because the crushing hand of the enemy has found an opening into our life through unconfessed sin. Deliver us Father from those things that bind us. Set us free from any thing that causes us or our spouse to stumble and bring deliverance  quickly and be a rock of refuge and a fortress of defense to save.
Father, You have taught us that if we regard iniquity in our hearts, You will not hear, I beg You to hear our prayers….. I ask You to reveal where there is any disobedience in our lives, especially with regard to our spouse. Show us where we have not obeyed You and we confess it as sin and ask Your forgiveness.

Father God, nothing happens in our lives that You have not given permission, and as hard as this is I pray that we will be able to see Your glory through it.

Please Father God calm our mind and spirit. I pray that You will grant us the confidence and patience to allow Your work to be revealed. Give us the strength to take the next step in faith.
We offer our marriages, ourselves, our spouse, and our children to You Lord God that we will glorify You.
In the name of Jesus Christ I pray these things,
Amen.

Over The Top Forgiveness April 4, 2009

Remember Cain?  When I read those lines in the book of Genesis where God deals with Cain’s sin and retribution I always think of the movie ‘Michael’…  ”I put a BLOCK on you!”.  You see, we’re all born with a little justice alarm that goes off when things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be.  Kids have it the worst of any of us.  No filters, no discretion.  Just try grabbing a toy away from a 3 year old who wasn’t done playing with it and you’ll know how acutely that child is in touch with the idea of what is right and fair.  But for Cain, humanity’s original son, God in His mercy blocked the natural tendency of human retribution against  injustice.  He said:

“If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 

      ~Genesis 4:15, New International Version

Then along comes Lamech, arguably one of the most violently arrogant men in human history.  Lamech kills an innocent man in cold blood and then tries to escape justice by boasting about the retribution that he himself would magically bring on anyone who tried to hold him accountable.  He says:

 

   “Adah and Zillah, listen to me; 
       wives of Lamech, hear my words. 
       I have killed  a man for wounding me, 
       a young man for injuring me.

    If Cain is avenged seven times, 

        then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

           ~Genesis 4:23-24, New International Version

To be honest, Lamech and his violent boasting make me sick to my stomach.  And I think that’s the point.  Do you hear the arrogance in his boast?  God said he would revenge Cain 7 times – I’ll do it 77!   He’s the epitome of human self-centeredness – brash, over the top, and out of control.

So when Peter asks his master Jesus about the limits of forgiveness, he’s not far from Lamech’s score-keeping mindset.  But Jesus points him back to Lamech by saying:

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.“

     ~Matthew 18:22, New International Version

What’s His point?  Go over the top in forgiveness.  Forgive extravagantly, brashly, try to out-forgive God!  Forgive like your life and freedom depended on it.  Because it kind of does!

I am asking God what forgiveness is supposed to look like in my life.  I’ve written at length about forgiveness and what it is not.  It’s not about me feeling good and it’s not about making people happy with me.  It’s not about living a lie.  That said, how do I forgive lavishly, abundantly, even arrogantly?  How do I live in freedom?

Thanks for reading!

Hosea and Gomer~Part One January 26, 2009

This past fall I read the fictional book Healing Stones by Stephen Arturburn and Nancy Rue…this book opened my eyes to many, many truths. So many of the pages were ear tagged and sentences high-lighted…and so often the Holy Spirit would whisper to me-are you getting this? Are you reading this with more than your head? Is your heart hearing this? He would say “this one” regarding a certain sentence and I knew there was something to glean from it, a truth to replace the lies.

 

I continue to be on a journey~I felt like I was reading my own story in this book…I was Demi…and though it was 20 years ago, I still carry the stigma of the woman caught in adultery…I still carry around my own stone. *quiet tears*….but as I process, journal and pray I am trusting and believing that more healing will come… my Lord has used this book to crack open the door to where I can now look more fully at self-forgiveness….already I feel the grip on the stone lessening.

 This feels risky sharing this part of my story~ will people pick up stones, will they reject me? Abuse from my past brings with it shame and guilt, and although this part of my life’s story is about choices I made as an adult, woven throughout it reveals hidden wounds from my past not yet healed and brought into the light of the cross of Christ…it reveals a deep shame still needing the healing touch of my Lord.

 I sense the Lord saying it is now time. I have often said that the Lord supernaturally brought my husband to me. And I liken it to the story of Hosea and Gomer. Because I can get wordy and long-winded (forgive me) I will share this part of my story in stages. Please bear with me and I will try to not share to many “messy” details, for two reasons. One- because I realize that there is a wide range of readers on this site…perhaps some quite young. And two- because sometimes when one has wounds not healed reading someone else’s pain can stir up unresolved emotions and pain….I will try to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

 I realize that ultimately the story of Hosea and Gomer really portrays God’s jealously and love for His people……yet it was the first time a prophet dared to speak of God as a husband and Israel as His bride.

 It is a tangled love story…. One where God’s heart is repeatedly broken…… it is a story of two lives Gomer and Hosea…. knit together as a living reminder of both God’s judgment and His love……. this is our story……

 Gomer- her name means “Completion”

 “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. Let us acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” From the book of Hosea

 I came into our marriage dragging behind me baggage…. ugly and messy baggage. Baggage that I tried to hide. But how does one hide bulging baggage? But I tried…..I tried to keep the lid so tightly closed on it hoping it would never spill out or heaven forbid “explode”. Sure my husband brought his own baggage too…. but to me the outside of his baggage looked pretty good…. not ugly and dirty like mine…his didn’t seem tattered around the edges and he didn’t seem to work so hard to hide it……actually, he denied it was even there. But this is my story and I won’t be sharing about my husband’s baggage, that’s for him to share if he so chooses too…..I won’t be going into the “if onlys” and placing any blame on him…..this is about my “part” of the story….my “messes”.

 Why do I say that God supernaturally brought my husband to me……in order to do so I need to back up a bit…. Have any of you watched the movie Georgia Rule? If you have, I was Rachel…… I am not saying I condone the movie, its rather raw, but it gives you an idea of who I was. I was pretty messed up.

 I wept through the scene where Rachel leans on Simon as they watch TV, just as she said she liked to do with her stepfather. She longs for real, fatherly love from Simon, but that longing inevitably gets confused with sex. Later, Rachel puts on lingerie, gets in bed with Simon and says that she loves him. Simon refuses to take the bait, telling her, “I’m never going to have sex with you. Never.” He tells Rachel that her stepfather took everything from her, including her capacity to tell right from wrong and her capacity for trust. Real love, he says, is impossible without trust. Rachel thanks him sincerely for saying no to her sexual advance.

 

 I won’t go into the details of my childhood sexual abuse and rape but will pick up where my husband came into my life. I had been involved with a group of guys where I just was one of their chattels…..sure one of the guys was my boyfriend but really I was everyone’s property. Life was one big party……I was both the tough girl and the party girl. The summer I met my husband to be I had begun to walk away from this group…..I know now it was the Lord leading…..only back then I didn’t know it.  I had gone to church from time to time and had even been confirmed in the Lutheran Church but as my lifestyle began to take the forefront I walked away from the church. I felt too dirty and stained…how could any God love me…. I wasn’t pure and certainly not “good”.

I knew my sins……they were many!

 That summer through a mutual friend from another town I met my husband to be and we began dating. He was unlike any guy I’d ever dated…..Sure he drank and smoked but he treated me like a princess……with such tenderness and a love that was foreign to me. I’d only known abuse.

 We were married a year later, I at the young age of 18 and he was 19. I realized later that I’d married to escape the life I’d known……and he for different reasons…..perhaps one day he will share his reasons.

We were as different as night and day. He came from a Christian background, a good moral and upstanding family. I came from the wrong side of the tracks!! His family never raised their voices…..mine only knew how to holler. Violence was foreign to them, I was raised with men who were misogynists.

 Coffee was the strongest drink they drank……my father was an alcoholic. I really didn’t know what a Christian was……but I knew how to party and I knew how to be seductive and to use my sensuality to manipulate.

 It took me many years later to understand or even accept that my husband loved “me”……..While dating I saw in him goodness, integrity, decency, kindness all the qualities I had never known……lavished on me…..I didn’t know how to receive it or how to handle it. And so even as we dated I did the only thing that I knew how to do……. I gave sex in order to get love…..I enticed a young man to stumble……I have grieved over that many times.

 And so when we married that baggage I dragged behind me began to open and spill out. All the emotions I had tried to hide began to spill out….guilt, humiliation, blame, anger, rage, shame and the biggest one-fear.

  It was a tempestuous marriage…..and like Gomer I was the wife who could not remain faithful to a husband who not only remained faithful but loving.

 I think this is where I will leave off for now……I have never shared the next part of my story with anyone……because of the deep shame-perhaps… it’s not a story I am not proud of or one that is easy for me to  share…..but I sense the Lord saying that I need to……its time…..healing will come as I release it….

 Even now the tears flow…. not necessarily because of shame…..but because God loved me long before I ever thought of loving Him…. its a story of my unfaithfulness and God’s forgiveness……

 To be continued…………

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Prodigal Son November 22, 2008

(OK, maybe I should explain.  I got to thinking about forgiveness and what comes with being forgiven.  I wrote this from the perspective of the Prodigal Son.  I hope you like it.)

 

I bathed five times and rubbed my skin with rose petals.  I burned my clothes and shaved my hair.  It might be my imagination, but as my trembling hand pauses on this old familiar wooden door I can still smell the pigs.

 

A hundred eyes wait for me on the other side of the door.  The side where the wine flows freely and the song of the lyre drips like honey.  But I’ve already looked into the eyes that matter and those eyes told me all I need to know.  

 

In all my life I’ve never seen him run like he ran to me today, his robe hiked up in his belt like a common worker.  The disgrace he wore was mine, should have been mine.  Standing there in my father’s arms I cried like I haven’t cried since I was a little boy.  We both cried until we ran out of tears, until all I could hear was the sound of dry leaves scuttling across the path like so many crabs at the seaside.  He didn’t say much but the relief I saw in him only thinly veiled the pain and worry I had put him through.  I meant what I said, ‘I am not worthy to be called your son’.  But he wouldn’t listen.   Sometimes I think forgiveness is harder to take than it is to give.

 

This isn’t what I wanted.  If I could only work for him like I had planned.  I could serve them anonymously, alone with my shame.  In so many ways that life would be easier than living with the disappointment in my brother’s eyes.  For the rest of my life I’ll be living on his charity.  I’ve spent my part of the fortune.  Asking for my cut with my father still alive was like telling the world I wished he was dead.  My brother may never forgive what I’ve done.  But what I’m about to do is not for him.

 

My father wants things back the way they were.  His love powers the courage I need to walk through this door, the courage to put the past behind me, the courage to forgive myself.  Standing on the path I looked deep into his eyes and what I saw changed me forever.  I saw an image of myself reflected there, me but not me.  Gone were the smelly clothes, the dirty hands and ratty beard.  In my father’s eyes I was stood strong and tall and glorious.  In my father’s eyes I am a prince and from now on I will do whatever I must do to be the man he sees.

Forgiveness Part 2 – More Stuff Forgiveness is Not October 31, 2008

Continuing on with the last topic…

#6 Forgiveness is not saying ‘it’s OK’ when it’s not OK.  That’s not forgiveness, that’s lying.  There are some times when it really is OK, and at those times saying ‘it’s OK’ is fine.  For example, when there’s been some small infraction that doesn’t require forgiveness — it really is OK.  No harm done.  Or when something happened that was unfortunate, but not wrong. Sometimes you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and unknowingly or unwillingly set off a chain of events and cause some minor damage to someone.  In those cases ‘it’s OK’ is a perfectly fine thing to say.  But there are other times when real wrong was committed that steps up to the level that requires real forgiveness.  In those times I can sometimes feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight when I hear the offended party saying ‘it’s OK’.  I think saying that demeans real forgiveness when it happens.  (Don’t worry, I always manage to keep my thoughts to myself.)

#7 Forgiveness is not blocking things out of your mind.  That’s not forgiveness, that’s dissociation and it’s a bad idea.  Take my word for it.  I believe there are some cases where a person could forgive so completely that the offense could be completely forgotten.  But I believe there can also be deep and true forgiveness without forgetting the offense.

#8 Forgiveness is not always preceded by repentance.  Holding out until the person who hurt you repents only hurts you even more.  Sometimes the long awaited apology never comes and sometimes it can’t come because the person who hurt you is dead or you don’t know who he or she is.  I’ve heard people say that God doesn’t expect us to forgive people unless those people are sorry for what they did.  That never made sense to me.  Why should my suffering be compounded by not getting the blessing of forgiving someone because the person who hurt me is unable or unwilling to be sorry for what they did? 

#9 Forgiveness is not easy.  You can’t do it until you are ready.  Sometimes you have to forgive more than once because you get a chance to forgive at deeper and deeper levels when the pain comes back around.  Each chance to forgive again is a blessing, not a failure.

Forgiveness October 29, 2008

I am no expert in forgiveness.  But in my search to give and receive forgiveness I have learned several lessons about what forgiveness is not.

#1 Forgiveness is not forgetting in the sense of letting people continue to hurt you.  You can remove yourself from dangerous or negative situations and still be a forgiving person.  Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone who is hurting you is to stop giving them the opportunity to continue hurting you.

#2 Forgiveness is not excusing.  A professional counsellor once told me that I would know when I had forgiven if I could say that the people who hurt me did the best they could do.  I couldn’t disagree more.  First of all, I can’t know for sure if someone did or didn’t do the best they could do because I can’t see their heart.  Second, we all have wounds and our wounds predispose us to hurt each other in ingrained, almost scripted ways but that is completely different from saying people always do the best they can do.  If we always do the best we can do we have no free will and no reason to try to do better.  That’s one philosophy I just can’t stomach.  Third, if there’s a true excuse for what you did then you don’t need to be forgiven because you are already excused for it.

#3 Forgiveness is not restitution.  I guess what I mean is that getting forgiveness is different than paying something back.  If I get mad and throw and smash my daughter’s cell phone I should definitely buy her a new one.  But buying a new cell phone doesn’t automatically make me forgiven.  As a separate issue she can choose to forgive or not forgive me for what I did.  It’s also not the same as trusting me again – like letting me hold her cell phone when I’m angry – but that goes more to point number one.  By the way, I didn’t really smash my daughter’s cell phone or any other cell phones – it was just an example.  I considered going with the neighbor’s broken window story but I think that one gets overdone.

#4 Forgiveness isn’t the same as ‘making up’.  You can’t always make nice with someone – but you can always forgive.

#5 Forgiveness doesn’t always take away the pain.  Sometimes you do everything you can do and still have to live with the consequences.  That works for the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.

Well, that’s a start.  I have a feeling I have some more learning and some more blog posts about this topic inside of me.  What lessons have you learned about forgiveness?  I really want to know.