10 replies to this topic

[CHRISTOPHER310]

This is what my family ( the family I was raised with ) are like then and still now. The only comforts I find in all of this is that I minimize my contact with them as much as I can, I am not biological related them ( was adopted at 2 ½ ) and that I am raising my daughter with a stronger closer sense of family.

* Jeremiah 12:6
Your relatives, members of your own family— even they have betrayed you; they have raised a loud cry against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you. (NIV)

* Luke 21:16
You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. (NIV)

[Candice]

Yes, Christopher, first of all and foremost, Jesus can certainly relate to our sufferings in this area as he was rejected by his family and even his whole neighborhood.

 

I can relate to the family of origin issues.  My family are not saved, and even though we don't fight, there's just going to be the most important,, all encompassing Lord missing between us.  So, relating to anything at all is very limited.  However, there is a scripture verse and I cannot remember which one, but it does say something that if we just kind of abandon our family, we are worse than an unbeliever.  I suppose this verse is worth trying to find and studying this more extensively.

 

I find it interesting that, although many people I know in the church at-large have unbelieving family members with the typical array of dysfunction, these Christians still ditch their brothers and sisters in Christ to spend holidays, including Christmas, Easter, etc. with the family of origin.  Like, go to Christmas Eve service, only to run out of there to go join all the non-believing family.  It makes me wonder why we ditch our true family.

 

Something to think about.

 

Blessings,

Candice

[Meema]

Under the old Covenant, God’s people were commanded to stay pure and not co-mingle with other peoples, meaning pagans. Familial ties were much more important then. The mandate had its purpose. As we can see what happened, over and over, when God’s chosen people amalgamated with other tribes. Instead of the Israelites bringing their God to other tribes, in most cases, they allowed themselves to adopt the other ways, kicking God to the curb.

 

What does this mean? It means under the new Covenant, there is no Greek or Roman or Jew or man or woman or slave or free. Jesus is an equal opportunity Savior. He is our Father now, we are related to each other through a different kind of familial tie.

 

I once had to travel across several states to rescue a relative from her son who was robbing her blind and physically abusing her. She had no will or power of her own to get away or make him stop. Through a concerted family effort we basically kidnapped her and hid her far away from him. He had no knowledge of where she was or access to her or any other resources so he was homeless on the street for a period and then forced to go to a shelter. At that shelter he was diagnosed with schizophrenia  and put in a drug rehab program. He was also given an opportunity for a real job, which suited him perfectly. The next three years were the best of his life and then he was stricken with throat cancer. 

 

When he was diagnosed he was destitute and his family relented and brought  him to his mother. One day, knowing he was dying, he said he wanted to be baptized. They called me. He had a stoma in his throat so there wasn’t going to be any ‘emersion’. I sat with him and we talked about the significance of baptism and what it represented. I asked him if he believed Jesus was the only begotten Son of God Who died for his sins. He said, yes. I put a towel behind his head, had him lean back and I poured water from a small cup carefully over his hair into the towel. He died the next day.

 

Here’s the crux of this story, and why I tell it. God isn’t looking at our traditions. He is forever looking directly onto our hearts. How we define words, like ‘abandon’ is not necessarily the same way God defines it. In effect, we (I) abandoned this relative and basically forced him to the street. But we didn’t do it from hate. We did it from necessity and, I know, with God’s permission. This lost young man had to have every single safety net removed. He had to be smacked down to the bottom and very end of himself. 

 

He got it just before he died. Praise Jesus. 

[Charles Miles]

Growing up in the deep South as a young man, I guess my experience was different and from the opposite side.  My whole family were believers and walked the Christian walk much, much better than I. They never "pushed" anything on me and never demanded that I conform to their belief system.  I did attend church every Sunday, every Wed night, any went to all the "church type activities" such as RA`s and Bible School simply because that is what my family did....and I was part of the family.  Many times I did not want to go but being there was just what we did and I was expected to be there.....no matter what. I certainly thought all this was a bit much and would rather have been out playing ball or hunting, but I went to all the "church things" because I simply had no choice. I was not a "happy camper" at many of these events, but my parents made sure that I was one of the "campers".

 

I now look back at all that and praise the Lord for my family and their persistence and prayers.  When I left home for school, I did stray and do the prodigal thing for a while, but deep within me I had the template already stamped.  Later, when the world`s problems caved in on me, I at least knew where to go and who was able, even when I was not. I say all this to mention one thing.....don`t give up on your family Christopher!  By what you do or what you say, you may influence some of them to look for a way to change.  Jesus said...."I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light..."  At some time or another we will all look for a Way, a Truth, or a Light to help us get through a bad place in our lives and maybe by your example of love and care, you show them where to look.  Loving someone who apparently doesn`t care for us or love us is a hard thing to do, but then that is what we are supposed to do....does not matter about how hard it is to actually do that love.  Some people are soooooo hard to love aren`t they?  Yep, that is the challenge because anyone can love the lovely, but it is our job to love the UNLOVELY, to travel the road less traveled, and be an ambassador of love.  "Love one another even as I have loved you, love one another...." .  Quite an order but we must try and yes, we must do it.  The love my family had for me was not appreciated in my youth but oh how it is treasured today. 

 

May the love of God surround us and bathe us daily,

 

Charlie

[CHRISTOPHER310]

The family I was raised with aren’t just unbelievers, but mean and evil. Meaning they seem to get a good feeling hating each other, insulting ( put down ) each other, passing very negative damnation judgments on each others, and acting like their are superior and a dictator over everyone’s life. Just mean and evil then and now. If I do good, they pick it apart in detail to find flaws the can nail me for rather than giving me credit for the good I did. If I fall and need support, oh no, they are the first ones to step on me and kick me when I am done. They all do this to each other from day one until now. Pure ego and greed driven people that I do not trust or feel safe having contact with. I am surviving them now as I have survived them all my life.

This post was just because I found something I like that seem to connect with my experience dealing with this group of people. Pretty much my reason for this post. I like the scripture I found an dhow it seem to connect to these people.

[Meema]

There are all sorts of people in the world. Some people are just hard to deal with and unloveable so we are encouraged to put up with them and love them anyway. Some people are actually dangerous, destructive miscreants and prudence grants that we can pray for them, but at a distance. There are those who are anointed to minister to dangerous people but it takes a special appointment to wear that mantle. 

 

Sometimes we must use discernment and walk away, if possible, to a safe distance from those kind. Scripture cherry picked and skewed into rigid dogma can do much damage, i.e., in many fundamentalist doctrines a woman who is physically abused by her husband cannot leave him lest she break the doctrinal law of marriage. I refuse to accept that. It is the concept of Christian ‘love’ turned into a weapon.

 

The wisdom in when to hang in and when to walk away can only come from the earnest desire to hear God and what He wants us to do. It begins with forgiving. But forgiving is about cleansing our hearts so that nothing dark remains. It doesn't require returning to be abused.

 

Tozer understood this;

 

Life or Death Choices

To keep the whole Christian witness in balance we must teach what the Bible teaches about the future of the impenitent. But we should watch over our own hearts lest, unbeknown to us, we unconsciously welcome the idea of hell as the revenge we take against those who do not believe as we do. Just as the fear of excommunication or purgatory serves to keep the faithful Romanist in line, so it is entirely possible to use the fear of hell to make people knuckle under to the dictatorial pastor or the evangelist trying to fill his quota of converts for the evening.

The idea of hell found in the Scriptures is so fearful that the first impulse of a loving heart is to wish it were not so. But human pity is both a beautiful and a dangerous emotion. Unless it is subjected to the sharp critique of moral judgment it may, and often does, put our sympathies on the side of the murderer instead of on the side of the dead man and the widow and children he has left behind him. Unholy sympathy moves starry-eyed women to send flowers to the criminal awaiting execution while the innocent child he may have raped and mutilated scarcely rates a fugitive impulse of pity.

In the same way uninformed and unreasoning sympathy tends to take sides with the fallen and rebellious race of men against the Most High God whose name is Holy. That He gave men life and intelligence, that He has been patient with them while they defied His laws, killed His only begotten Son and scorned His dying love, is overlooked completely. That men use their gift of free will to reject God, choose iniquity and with wide open eyes persistently work to prepare themselves for hell, seems not to matter to some people. In a welter of uncontrollable emotion they throw themselves on the side of God's enemies. This is unbelief masquerading as compassion.

[Meema]

And then there’s this.

 

For the past two years I have been focused on helping my great niece to let go. To get her to forgive her family and move on instead of remaining stagnant, hiding behind her pain. But she refuses to humble herself, she can’t see that her bad attitude and the dark cloud over her is something she must own. Instead she prefers to blame her past, her bad childhood, this person and that person, this experience, that bad episode, anyone and anything but herself for her inability to become who she could be for Christ. She sees all the faults in her dysfunctional family, and anyone else, but she cannot see that the resentment, the anger, the rejection has become a growing cancer inside of her. She doesn't want to give it to God. The longer she holds on, the sicker she becomes, the older she gets, the more life she could be having is squandered.

 

She has reached a crossroads. She has been given opportunity after opportunity to rise up and out. And still she clings to her comfort zone and attends her own pity party daily. She has been warned that God won’t strive with us forever and therefore He can and will remove the blessings she has been given until she hits bottom and either gets it or not. Will she? That’s what I pray for. Watching someone you love have to go through the trying fire is painful even when you know it must happen.

 

We are all accountable, regardless our experiences. God orchestrates our lives in such a way as to test and refine us. No one can make the choice to let go and become all we can be, except us. The Scriptures are full of stories of great people overcoming. I recommend Hebrews 11-13 for anyone who thinks they are the only ones who have things to overcome.

 

FYI, this is known as 'Meema Love'.  Some say it's not unlike a big ole tablespoon of castor oil. 

[Kenny]

 

 Jesus is an equal opportunity Savior. 

 

 

I like that Meema

 

Reminds me of the following Scripture

 

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.  Rev. 22:17

 

"Whosoever" is a term of inclusion rather than exclusion

[radar]

Having a similar family Christopher, it can get downright disheartening and lonely at times. I know you love them or you would not be hurt by the things they say and do. But we will burnout trying to love them with our fleshly power.  God loves you Christopher, and we cannot love them without God's love through us. You have a family here, brothers and sisters in Christ who are concerned and love you. Some of us here have problems with the brethren we have in our own local fellowship, and come here to encourage and exhort each other. Others here have similar problems with their own families. I know because they have shared this. But one thing everyone here is known by is their love for one another, and that is priceless. You demonstrate your love for us by being transparent and in an unsafe environment that can get you hurt. This is how we overcome because we have to have something that comes against us in order to do so. I pray that your faith will not fail, and that you will overcome the pain of betrayal and have the abundant life. I am praying for you brother that God will reveal the local fellowship who are truly known by their love for one another.

 

Shalom and Simcha!

 

radar (chris)

[radar]

I wanted to finish liking to Christopher, Meema, and Kenny on their posts but once again I was moderated on my daily limit. Glad their is no limit with God

[Meema]

Well, let's just say "Amen!"

 

Kenny, 'inclusion' is a very powerful word. I'm inclined to believe it ought to be used instead of 'replacement'.