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 Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 2:06 pm
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 10:25 am
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:14 pm
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Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2017 1:32 pm
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PurpleAngel2God Please keep me in your prayers. I have a husband who is addicted to alcohol and marijuana. He has made it clear in his attitude and mannerism towards me that he does not love me or even tolerates my presence anymore. When he drinks or not and gets boiling angry, his anger is directed at me whether I did something wrong or not. He is a bully to me and I have been abused verbally, emotionally and mentally from him for years. I have defended myself by being unkind to him and selfish which with God's help, I am now trying to stop and overcome this sin. In my heart, I feel a divorce is inevitable by the end of this year and it WILL be ugly. Please pray for him that he will fully commit his life to God and will fall in love with me again as I still love him. HIs own kids think he is stupid when he gets drunk and hate what he does to me. But unfortunately will never say anything to him, only to me. If they would voice how they feel to him, maybe he might listen....? So please keep me in your prayers. Also, there is a job at my current workplace that will benefit me financially as well as the family. Two weeks on, two weeks off. I am praying God will allow me to get this position. Please pray that I do. Thank you and God bless.
I want to comment on something specific, an area to reflect on, for your consideration (this is an aspect of the Word that is often not preached because of fear of not being comforting, thus wishing only to refer to the examples of Job, righteous suffering, things that are not convicting—but the whole truth is what comforts and throughout the Bible righteous suffering is not the majority example).
That said, considering that your husband's anger is not always drug-and-alcohol induced, I just want to mention that our Heavenly Father has been known to manifest/reflect back—through the people and circumstances around us—what we have been making Him and/or others feel (e.g. if we've been making Him or others feel unloved, abused, offended, then He makes us feel unloved, abused, and offended in return). I have a topic in another guild going through these examples, demonstrating how God treats us back in response to the way we treat Him and others (and in the end of a second topic, I also included examples of righteous suffering as well, the suffering not being dependent upon how we treated others): [Do Good: A Man Reaps What He Sows] &
[The Divine Judgments of God].
In light of that, and as it relates to specifically making God feel unloved, do you care about the way He wants to be loved (e.g. He commands that He wants no paganism adopted in us, in His set-apart [holy] people, even if we dedicate the pagan practice to Him)? Your signature prompts me to go this route, you could be unaware or fully informed, but regardless: the practice of bringing evergreen trees inside the house for a winter holiday and putting wreaths on our doors, originates from the practices of nature worshipers; the Catholic church gave it Christian signification, but in disobedience to what the Father says (how He actually wants to be loved, and to not obey this Command is to make Him feel unloved, by honoring others gods indirectly through our traditions and symbols): YHWH forbade us from copying such spiritual practices and symbols, even if we didn't worship their deities, but worshiped Him instead, with the practice, thus dedicated the practice to Him. Breaking this Command is not how we make Him feel loved.
John 14:15 (NIV)
15 “If you love me, keep my commands.
1 John 5:3 (NIV)
3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,
Deuteronomy 12:30-31 (NIV)
30 and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” 31 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
Jeremiah 10:2 (NIV)
2 This is what the Lord says:
“Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though the nations are terrified by them.
Jeremiah 16:19 (NIV)
19 Lord, my strength and my fortress,
my refuge in time of distress,
to you the nations will come
from the ends of the earth and say,
“Our ancestors possessed nothing but false gods,
worthless idols that did them no good.
Leviticus 20:26 (NIV)
26 You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.
Matthew 6:7 (NIV)
7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
Not even praying in the useless (if not detrimental) ways of the pagan. Does our God command practices that are useless, worthless, lies, or detrimental (detrimental to the obedient/blameless practitioner)? No. So, let's not profane His Holy Name by mixing in with the spiritual lies, myths, ways (and symbols that honor said spiritual lies, myths, and ways) of the nations / nature-worshiping pagans.
Isaiah 57:8 (NIV)
8 Behind your doors and your doorposts
you have put your pagan symbols.
Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed,
you climbed into it and opened it wide;
you made a pact with those whose beds you love,
and you looked with lust on their naked bodies.
Why is this relevant? Because to do otherwise arouses His anger and jealousy:
1 Corinthians 10:19-22 (NIV)
19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Deuteronomy 6:15 (NIV)
15 for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
YHWH has been known to "beat his wife" (His set-apart people), by sending attack, opposition, animosity, and even giving her a certificate of divorce (in the form of exile), through the hands of other humans, when she's in idolatry/honoring idolatrous practices: as I addressed in the midst of replying to this topic: [Pray for Nabeel] (a Christian insinuating that the God of the Bible didn't beat His wife, oh He does—Old Testament and New Testament alike; YHWH or YHWH-incarnate [Jesus], He is the same).
And the people whom God uses to beat His "wife"—punish her on earth, to be hostile to her, attack her—do not have to be aware/cognizant of how they're being used by the Most High against us, for the Most High to use them in this fashion. Like YHWH did with the king of Assyria and his army against Israel in the past. Assyria only had violent conquest in mind, conquering, thus terrorizing more than just Israel, but unbeknownst to the king of Assyria, he was being used to punish Israel for the sins God saw in her (and in the hearts of others, not just Israel). However, the Assyrian king (a total gentile, uncircumcised in heart to obey God) would be judged too for his own sins, after YHWH had finished using him to punish Israel and make her realize her own sins/disobedience/expressions of infidelity/making God feel unloved, thus acting godless:
Isaiah 10:5-19 (NIV)
5 “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,
in whose hand is the club of my wrath!
6 I send him against a godless nation,
I dispatch him against a people who anger me,
to seize loot and snatch plunder,
and to trample them down like mud in the streets.
7 But this is not what he intends,
this is not what he has in mind;
his purpose is to destroy,
to put an end to many nations.
8 ‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says.
9 ‘Has not Kalno fared like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad,
and Samaria like Damascus?
10 As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols,
kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria—
11 shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images
as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?’”
12 When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes. 13 For he says:
“‘By the strength of my hand I have done this,
and by my wisdom, because I have understanding.
I removed the boundaries of nations,
I plundered their treasures;
like a mighty one I subdued[a] their kings.
14 As one reaches into a nest,
so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations;
as people gather abandoned eggs,
so I gathered all the countries;
not one flapped a wing,
or opened its mouth to chirp.’”
15 Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
or the saw boast against the one who uses it?
As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up,
or a club brandish the one who is not wood!
16 Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors;
under his pomp a fire will be kindled
like a blazing flame.
17 The Light of Israel will become a fire,
their Holy One a flame;
in a single day it will burn and consume
his thorns and his briers.
18 The splendor of his forests and fertile fields
it will completely destroy,
as when a sick person wastes away.
19 And the remaining trees of his forests will be so few
that a child could write them down.
Footnotes:
a. Isaiah 10:13 Or treasures; / I subdued the mighty,
So, we need to repent of any idolatry and paganism in our lives. Otherwise, it is a spiritual target we place on our body for God's jealousy and anger to come and attack us (our household, even the nation) by the hands of His creations (whether they are aware that they are being used by God or not). As I provided in the topics I linked to above, Jesus does the same thing to those in His church who arouse His jealousy (thus make Him feel unloved by their disobedient behavior, honoring idolatrous ways, with no signs of repenting). Take this into consideration as you go about in life. We may do things to honor God that God never asked us to do but that in fact offend and anger Him once you analyze them in light of His Commands. He will use other people to hurt us in response to our disobedience—physically and/or verbally—to get us to introspect, repent of anything we may be doing that offends Him. Be sure you're walking in His Commands to express love to Him and not make Him feel unloved, because with the measure you use it will be measured back unto you (though the timing of the reap may not be the same for everyone, as addressed in [Do Good: A Man Reaps What He Sows]).
Peace be with you, in Jesus' Name. |
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