I often have friends that contact me and get advice about problems they are facing. This ranges from marital problems, financial problems, singles issues, family conflicts, new convert questions and just simple stress.
Recently I got a call after 1 a.m., from a new convert I won last year that is growing by leaps and bounds...sometimes. Other times I pull my hair in frustration when I end up having to counsel them on issues that saints in their home church could just as easily have answered. I chalk it up to trust. She has an excellent pastor, who knows the word inside and out. He's no Jeff Arnold, by his own admission, but he has ministered to me at times in the past when I have visited his church.
She called me just to tell me she was having a really hard time dealing with loneliness. She lives with her mom, who is in a denominational church and hates that her daughter is now a baptized in Jesus name, tongue-talking Apostolic, who has started to reproduce the same drive I have to win souls (one of the laws of God, you reproduce after your own kind). Her mom would rather her daughter turn back to the life of drugs she has been set free from.
This poor kid has done great, leaving one job for another after getting into church and God has begun to bless her in little ways I know she has not noticed yet. She grew up poor and still is, and I hurt inside when I see people struggling financially, especially if I know they are honest and on fire for God...ESPECIALLY THE LAMBS!!!
I’ve kept my distance over the past year as she is looking for a guy but still battles back and forth with wanting to date out of the church. No matter how much I preach against it to her, she still struggles with it. Twice in the past year I’ve visited or called and she stopped me and asked how I knew … each time she had planned on going out with a guy after service who was not in the church. God was trying to tell her something.
I’ve repeatedly made sure that I am not in her list of possible candidates, since I toe the line at not dating people I win to God. This is mostly because I've watched our young people drag boyfriends and girlfriends out of the world to church, date them, marry them and watched them drag them right back out of church as the hunter became the prey. Let’s just carve it in STONE, I am completely 100% against “evangelism dating,” since that is the new buzzword label that has been slapped on the age old sin Paul called being UNEQUALLY YOKED! (Sorry, but some or our preachers are going to bust hell wide open for condoning that practice! Can I get a witness?)
New Converts are exactly that, NEW. They need time to grow and develop in God without trying to build physical relationships with the opposite sex while developing their walk with God. I have preached this for years, but if a pastor does not back you on this, you will lose about 99.9% of your new converts to this kind of foolishness! Trust me, the devil will send along someone who looks good, smells good, says all the right things, feels perfect, acts perfect...and when the hook is set...WHAM!!!! Out of church they go and you are sitting holding an engagement ring or worse, a wedding band as they will not have the same biblical stance on holiness as we do...and for those of you that think that holiness is not akin to your relationship with your spouse, you had better think again.
We've read the scripture for years and misquoted it. "Follow peace with all men ...and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." We love to separate it, but in all honesty, if we don't follow peace AND holiness, we will not see the Lord! They are closely tied together....Now brag about ditching your husband or wife, or being the winner in your marital strife! No, I didn't intend to make that rhyme, but if one of you wants to rap to it go for it.
Wow, how did I get off onto this? Going to be a wild Bible study tonight and I am preaching on THE BRIDE! Woohooo!
It all boils down to relationship and companionship. We want close relationships with our spouses, or we should strive to, just like Christ strives to be our constant companion, but we abuse that relationship so much. He desires to be with us constantly like a new husband and wife. I read in my notes tonight a statement that gives me pause. The reason some of us have problems with our walk with God is because we have not learned how to properly nurture and build up our relationship with our spouse. I mean after all, it is the prototype for the Church!
That is my key question for tonight, the question that was asked of Rebekah, "Wilt thou go with this man?" Our answer to that is going to reflect in our walk with God. We can also see this in Ruth, when her response of "Where thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge, and thy God shall be my God and thy people, my people." You let that answer go south in a marriage and it is history. Same with your walk with God and the two are VERY closely linked! There is always a spiritual link in the physical. Open your eyes. I'm teaching, not nitpicking....
"One of the finest social institutions in this world is a marriage between a godly man and a godly woman. It was God's FIRST institution. Typically, the New Testament speaks of marriage as the joyous union between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church."
Oh, and this tidbit is free...if Moses violated the type and struck the rock the second time (we know that Christ will never be smitten twice!) then how much more so will we pay if we violate that sacred institution that God instituted. That's why Jesus said, Whom GOD hath joined, let NO man put asunder.
And for my friend who says that some people think that they can tell God what to do...Some people think they can take or leave the Word of God, the institutions of God, the law of God, and the mercy and grace of God, spit in his face, stone his prophets and trample the blood of Christ afresh and put him to an open shame and he will still accept them still. No HE WON'T!!!
Oh, yes, the Word of God is supposed to be a guide to us, but not in the sense that you try to imply and trample God's Word. It is not a guide as in, "Well I like that, so I'll do it. I don't want to forgive, so scratch that one off the list. Oh, and that ministry of reconciliation thing… you can stuff that one too, because I ain't doing it!"
Let me put it this way. Jesus' words, not mine:
[46] And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?
[47] Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:
[48] He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.
[49] But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. Luke 6:46-49
[31] Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
[32] And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:31-32
[34] A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
[35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. John 13:34-35
[23] For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
[24] Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
[25] Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
[26] That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
[27] That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
[28] So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
[29] For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
[30] For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
[31] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
[32] This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
[33] Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Marriage vs Loneliness...it's all about companionship!
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