Tag: Spirit

The Wife of Noble Character: A Chunk of My Thoughts on the Topic

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Principles Of Relationships

40 years…..

I know the arguments….

The discussion….

The debates…..

And the back-and-forth….

And enough experience on receiving end of what it should not look like in several dozen facets.

First marriage destroyed through adultery.

Second marriage lost due to interference from control, jealousy, and witchcraft because I work with survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse.

January 14, 2005 to April 15, 2013: 3013 days.

April 19, 2014 to July 19, 2022: 3013 days.

And both marriages had many lessons to impart to me, and these treasures were not easily excavated. It was a crucible for the silver, and a furnace for the gold…

And I would like to offer the following bits, so thank you to those friends who enabled me to see some facets of a number of right ways of looking at this topic, and I would like to share things that maybe do not get enough daylight.

For those who ask if I am going to touch the egalitarian-complimentarian-headship debate, well, we will see.

But allow me to lead it with a couple of lines of thought….

Three Threads

Thread 0 offered, then set off to the side: Regardless of how I interpret Ephesians 5:21 followed by verses 22ff (I am very much of the view that in the context of the submission that all believers offer one to another, a wife still has a further place to submit in some way to a husband to loves her as Messiah loves His body), we are missing some critical ideas in this topic, because we look at roles, without looking at birthrights.

And design….

Women are not merely to play like they have hammers and swords….

Rather, they are to use them.

Thread 1:

A woman and her sword, once separated, leave her vulnerable in ways she should not be made so.

 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the L-RD G-d had made. He said to the woman, “Did G-d actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but G-d said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For G-d knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like G-d, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

Genesis 3:1-6 ESV

The chief clown, Lucifer (I call demons “clowns”) came to the woman with her man and spoke to the woman.

For those who say “the man should have spoken up”, I am going to stop you right there.

The attack of the clowns frequently shows us an indicator of design. Husbands and wives are made as foxhole partners. Period. Get that one into your spirit. I implore you. Wrestle with the junk that fights against both of you, and woman of G-d, pick up your sword.

Or your tent peg.

Healed Exhorter/Servant combos in action…

The Other Two Points:

At this point, the issue is not one of submission, but of dominion, and refusing the victim spirit. Also, it is not about blame-shifting, but about fighting together against the real enemy. The real question is not are you loving and submitted to one another. The real questions (and from this, submission and love will flow, as well as a whole host of other dynamics) are these:

“Are you together learning from Father how to build; and how to fight?”

“Not only that, but are you aware of the raw materials you have together with which to build in a creative fashion?”

Point 2: Building

I pose these questions to y’all, gang, because there are times when the Father is not going to give you directions to obey, but is rather going to turn the two of you warriors loose in order to make choices together about what to build creatively.

First, in the early days of your relationship, you are going to struggle because you are going to feel like there is no user manual for building. So you are might desperately struggle with working together as you slap something together because you feel like you have been thrown together with little training. And then, as you grow together, working with one another, synching with one another, you are going to get more intentional about what you are doing, and as you grow more intentional, you can begin to incorporate strategy, and timing, and understanding, and pacing, and wisdom, and you will get able to fold together intimacy with one another together with skill in building.

Slaves obey. Sons create.

Create and build together. There is something there that can be done. He wants to partner with you to enable and endue and empower you two to build.

Point 3: Fighting

Second, to fight together.

Are you also aware of the real enemy that you should both be protecting and covering one another from? Do you have your lover’s six? Can they count on you to protect them and to give the enemy an earful of the Word of G-d Himself, and a faceful of His shekinah on their behalf?

“Having done all, to stand….”
As Anne Hamilton has said, have you allowed the Bridegroom Warrior to kiss you into your armor? And that is something husband and wife were made to do in tandem with He who is Adonai T’Sevaot.

Again, as with the building part, you might find yourself clumsy as you work to direct your assaults away from your mate, whom the enemy will tempt you to attack as the source of all your problems, and against the real enemy. This is why you should exercise plenty of descretion when choosing a mate. And if you already have one, then work the best with what you have. This is not a decision to rush into, but rather to wait until the markers and evidence that this will be a redemptive relationship, one in which you can accomplish more redemptively together than apart. When you have the markers there, then a lot of the marriage prophecies and dependence on other people saying “thus saith the L-rd” can fall by the wayside.

Are you a safe place for your mate, and a terror to the enemy that assaults them?

Are you a confidant?

Do you hold secrets back one from another?

Can you share the little things together?

Do you have the common interests on some level?

Is there a cause?

The biblical text that gets overlooked, and I think the King Jimmy puts this best.
Matthew 19:5

For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

It’s not about the love and submission (shorthand for the Ephesians 5 text) at this point….

Go beyond the elementary principles to the roots of those things which give life to a marriage.

And at the root of every marriage, let me CAPS out three words in Matthew 19:5.

FOR THIS CAUSE….a man will leave his parents and be joined to his wife….

You have to have a cause….there has to be a reason….a purpose….for the connection….

What’s your cause…..

What’s your reason for wanting to wake up with this man, this woman…

As David said before he fought Goliath….”Is there not a cause?”

Do you have a reason? Is there something you do incredibly well redemptively with this woman that you do not do with another? Or this man?

The cause will show you what to build and what your fight is.

And are there connection points between you and she….or you and he…..?

And is there enough diversity and difference between the two of you to make things interesting.

And is there enough of a draw beyond the superficial that you will last?

I cannot believe I am sharing this cut…..

Oy,

Thanks Tiffany….

Before You “I Do”

Though, a man should be confident enough in his own identity and authority on some level BEFORE HE STEPS INTO A RELATIONSHIP BEFORE IT TURNS INTO MARRIAGE that he will not have married a harpy or yielded his authority and is asking a woman to lead him or make decisions for him OR TO OTHERWISE GIVE HIM HIS LEGITIMACY…

Conversely, a woman should be confident enough in her own identity and authority on some level BEFORE RELATIONSHIPS AND MARRIAGE HAPPEN that she does not marry either an abusive or controlling jerk or a passive, milquetoast man, or an immature manchild who will not listen to her voice when she speaks to him in fullness, honesty, and rawness.

There has to be not merely the biblical text triteism of mutual submission, but also some level of mutual vulnerability, and both parties walking in partnership with Messiah, and willing to work through the tough issues, especially of growth, healing, deliverance, and love with one another.

And G-d did not say we had to be completely healed before we step into relationships or marriage. Nobody in Scripture, including Messiah who was fully human was fully whole without emotional issues as a human before stepping into relationship.

What G-d looks for is willingness and vulnerability, not absence of wounds or scars. The three together of y’all, working through things and journeying on this adventure…G-d looks for people who will just walk with Him and put Him at the center and forefront of their lives.

And couples who will walk together with Him, protecting one another.

It really means something when we war together against the enemy of our souls. And instead of the usual dynamics, we look at life between two battle buddies, two partners in crime, two companions in this eternal adventure.

And we engage with one another without passive/agression.

Some couples choose the way of sarcasm, and that works for them.

The real clincher here though is, are you together on close to a similar page about the L-rd, and the enemy?

And the next question that I would ask is, is there a spirit-to-spirit connection between you and your beloved, because so much happens in that space, when the portions of your spirit, and the portions of your beloved’s spirit actually interact and mingle.

It’s not just about being one flesh. It’s about the joining of spirits and the connection of journeys so that things flow in alignment.

More about that in another post…..

Blessing of Stillness #23: Father of Lights

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Blessings, Blessings of Stillness

Beloved,

I would like to invite your spirit to be present to hear the word of the L-rd for today.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

James 1:16-17 ESV

Spirit, there is a place of stillness, before the Father brings His light into your life, where the enemy may send darkness. But that darkness is a lie. It is a deception.

I begin the blessing in this way, not so you are frightened to step into the sequence leading to the ultimate blessing of love, but rather so you are aware of the risks associated with moving toward the Father of Lights.

I bless you to find the space that is necessary to allow your discernment time to adjust to the current circumstances. You are allowed to take time to discern. You need not feel pressure to rush as you are engaging an exercise of spiritual discernment.

After the L-rd’s promise to our father Abraham, the first thing that happened, after a season of not bearing children, was the movement toward dark solutions. Sarai offered up her maidservant Hagar to Abraham, ostensibly to provide the child of promise. And for a moment, I imagine Abraham probably froze and thought, “wait a minute. what about the promises of G-d?”

And then after that moment had passed, when Sarai had prevailed upon him, Abram took Hagar and married her and immediately produced a child. He probably thought this was the provision because of the suddenness of the conception and birth.

However, it was that birth that sowed jealousy and discord between the women in the home.

Spirit, the promise of the Father does not come because we help G-d out; His solutions to a problem never involve something that will intentionally breed jealousy as a product.

It is true that people may grow jealous because of the gifts G-d gives us, but G-d never blesses us with the intention of causing other people to stumble and fall.

Ishmael, who came first, was the false hope and the false light.

Ishmael was the plan of the enemy to supplant Father’s ultimate plan, which involved Sarai being blessed in her womb, thus breaking the curse of barrenness.

Isaac was the true child of promise, and it was his presence that gave life to Sarai’s womb.

Spirit, I encourage you to apply that here.

You will have the opportunity to engage with the false light and the true light. The false light frequently comes first.

And you will have the opportunity to choose. You will have the chance to ask Father to show you what the counterfeit looks like, as well as the real.

If you will ask Father, he will show you both the true and examples of the false.

Spirit, when that initial and maybe scary or intimdating moment of darkness comes, I bless you to be still and stay put and await the light of Father to radiate into your own life. I bless you to be still even when darkness is what you see and even when counterfeit light is provided to you. I bless you when you are thirsty for the true light, with a stubbornness of resistance to every false light that seeks to destabilize you.

I bless you to remain absolutely still and I bless you to breathe deeply.

Spirit, I bless you deeply with the capacity to wait on the L-rd’s solution and His life. I bless you to move when that light-filled solution comes, while remaining still when the enemy counterfeit comes. I bless you to drink deeply of that light and to absorb it into the light that you are, spirit. And I bless you to shine with that light in its multi-faceted wisdom to others in need, as Father directs you to hand it out to them.

I bless you to be what you are, the prism, the diamond, and the crystal through which His brilliant light is broken apart into its full spectrum. I bless your season to bathe in and be healed by the Light that does not shift, change, or vary. I bless you with the revelation that His light is possessed not just with consistency, but also constancy.

As William Shakespeare once uttered the principle that was meant to be uttered by the King of Glory:

“I AM constant as the Northern Star”.

The Father of Lights is fixed between all dimensions, in all realities, and he does not vascillate. He is not wishy-washy. Even should the guide stars and parallaxes and pulsars and red giants fall from their places where they were placed on the Fourth Day, He will not be moved from his place of steadiness. He is constant beyond the constant of light, spirit. He is the Radiance of all light that is.

And just because he is constant and immovable does not mean that His heart is not moved when one of his children is hurting or destroyed or damaged or beaten.

To the contrary, He does move toward them. But He moves, spirit, with an anchoredness. He will not be shaken.

And He is not merely the Northern Star. Rather, and better, he is the G-d of the Seven Stars.

And I bless you not to be shaken when confronted with counterfeit light. I bless you to be gathered by the true Light of Father’s affectionate and warm countenance.

I bless you with SHARP discernment to know the difference between lights, and to welcome the Father of Lights, who will not force Himself on you, but will wait for your invitation and who also offers you an invitation.

Be at peace, spirit, and receive the blessing of the Father of Lights.

I bless you to know that the Father of Lights is not shifty or shady. He does not tell you He will provide something, and then not follow through. He gives what He says he is going to give.

I bless you with a relationship with the Father of Lights that is free of deception. I bless you, if you have previously taken the bait of offense, to rest in His light as He removes all hooks from your mouth, all snares from your feet, all chains from your arms, and all shrapnel from your body.

I bless you to rest and heal in the warmth of His Light.

I bless the scales to be removed from your eyes, spirit, as you follow His path and through His gate, which is narrow.

I bless you to traverse the high places which might have unexpected turns with the Light of His steady presence and affection.

I bless you to know that He allows the crooked paths and in partnership with You, makes those paths as if they were straight, and He is your guide.

I bless you with the knowledge that the Father of Lights is a better, more accurate, and way more surefooted guide than any sherpa on Everest.

I bless you to enter into His ever-rest.

I bless you, spirit with a life that is unplugged from unsustainable covenants and agreements with darkness, and I bless you with the freedom that comes from the one-sided covenant He made with you, that does not have any hidden clauses or gotcha statements or fine print with exceptions and signing statements.

I bless you with a relationship with Father that is free from guile and duplicity.

I bless every path you traverse with sure-footedness.

I bless you that as you submit to His plan, He will transform you from glory to glory, and from strength to strength.

I bless you to stand in His light, and I bless you to flow with Him in peace, and even when you are climbing and healing and running and resting, to be in a place of stillness that keeps you rock-steady in His light and in wholeness and peace.

I bless you with peace in the midst of readiness.

And I bless you with stillness in the midst of discerning between the real and the false.

I bless you with those things in the name of Yeshua ha-Meshiach.

And most importantly, I bless you to fall in love afresh with the G-d of the Seven Stars.