The Good Of The Father (Wrecking Balls)

 

"Understand that it is external things of the flesh like alchohol, porn and infidelity that will take down your marriage 

~Charlie Kirk~ 

As someone who has spent part of their life embroiled in the slavery of pornography, I can fully understand how it is that it could be a wrecking ball to any marriage.  While it wasn't porn that doomed my own parents marriage, my fathers infidelity certainly played a large part in it.  See, back in my dads day, men were told that they were the dominant ones.  They were strong and expected to shoulder the load of any marriage.  This was just how it was not only in mainstream culture, but in Christian circles as well.  I won't get into the specifics of how it is that a porn addiction could bring down a marriage, let's just say that I've seen my share of unions busted due to a partners addiction to this monster.  Add to that the addiction of alchohol and you have a duo of marriage killers.  While not the only issues which married couples deal with, they certainly are difficult to overcome.  What makes the slavery of addiction difficult to overcome is the underlying belief that man is his own self, his own being.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In my own time spent in my addiction, I believed that I could shrug it off at any time.  After all, I was a man.  Well, that was another lie that I told myself.  The first being the lie that I was my own self.  I ran my life.  I did my own thing, lived for the day as they say.  Unfortunately, all of that brave talk couldn't save me from the false narrative that I alone controlled my life.  My first memory that I have of a realization that this life was not my own came at a Promise Keepers conference that a Christian friend of mine dragged me into.  Most of that weekend is lost in time, but I distinctly recall a speaker, himself a reformed addict who found Christ, tell the men in that arena, "Jesus is waiting for you to give it all to Him."  Huh?  Jesus can do what I couldn't?  I remember praying that night that He help me in my fight.  Well, it took more than a few years to overcome my resistance of the self, but He eventually lifted those bonds of slavery which had held me for so long.  

Or are you not aware that your body is a temple of the holy spirit in you, which you have from God, and you are not your own?  For you are bought with a price, by all means glorify God in your body

Paul to the Corinthians (1) 6: 19, Concordant New Testament 

It wasn't until I had spent a few years removed from the mainstream church that I began to hear the words of a dear friend of mine, that my life was not my own, but as Christ in me {Paul to the Galatians 2:20}.  Ironically, my friend had been having the same struggles in his life and his place in the Father.  I have been fortunate enough to have shared in that journey with him and see my life in the Father as well.  It's no secret that couples who are believing in the Lord have a much lower divorce rate than those who don't.  Yet I continue to see these marriages struggle under the commitment to the lie that our life is indeed our own.  For it's part, the traditional church has spoken to this false narrative for thousands of years.  I recently had a conversation with a gym friend who insisted that sin was our own barrier to God.  I would call Bernie Sanders on that!  The barrier that is between ourselves and God is in our own mind.  It is our belief that sin separates us from the Father.  If this is true, what of the work of Jesus on the cross?  For it is Jesus Who has given himself for sin {Paul to the Corinthians (2) 5:21}.  How is it that Jesus could have died to sin, yet sin still be alive and well?  Again, this has been proclaimed from the pulpits of the church for thousands of years.  If porn, booze and drugs are a wrecking ball to marriages, then our own belief that our life is our own is a wrecking ball to our relationship with the Lord.  

There is no independent, self-operating self in the universe, except the One who calls Himself the I AM {Exodus 3:14} and says, "I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside Me" {Isaiah 45:5}.

Norman Grubb ~ No Independent Self 

~Scott~