Who are you sleeping with tonight?

.

How scandalous!  Especially for a devotional homeschool blog.

I can assure you, it's much worse than it sounds.

A number of years ago Paul and I decided to have no chat about other people or non family situations in our bedroom.  We were tired of having our room populated with other people and their stuff.  This has kept the sanctuary of our bedroom a place of peace and rest.  I really don't want to think about politicians or anyone else when I'm going to sleep, thank you so much.

Aren't we spiritual?!  We'd never have an adultery problem.  Or would we?

Many folks think adultery is cheating on your spouse.  They aren't wrong.  I think it goes deeper than that, however.  I think adultery is also cheating on God.  Recently I read this verse as I was thinking about keeping our sanctuary free from unwanted visitors and nearly fell on the floor.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.  Ephesians 4:26

Right before this verse God says to put away lying and right after he says to not give place to the devil.  The following verses refer to lying again, then evil communication, then to grieving the Holy Spirit.  A clear repeated pattern of ABC-ABC, which draws attention to the points in these verses. Lying with lying, wrath with evil communication, giving place to the devil with grieving the Holy Spirit.

I began to think about Wrath taking a seat in my room before going to sleep at night.  Hmm... Not pleasant, eh?  I didn't relish the thought of waking up to Wrath in the rocking chair either...or getting dressed in front of him.

While most preachers will tell you this verse means not to go to bed angry, there are a number of other ways to take this.  Sundown began the Jewish day in the First Century chuch, so another interpretation can be to not let wrath travel into the next day.  Don't welcome Wrath into your bedroom, whether between you and your spouse or anyone else. But also don't let the light go out on your wrath, don't bury wrath so it can't be lit up by truth, don't hide it in the dark, which reminds me of another scripture. 

Men don't come to the light because their deeds are evil.  Paraphrased from John 3:20.

Ever meet a thief who wants to hear you tell them how to stop stealing?  Umm, no.  They want to steal so they don't want to hear you say it's wrong.  They refuse to come to the light. 

Wrath stems from unforgiveness and if left unchecked by the light of the Word, it will morph - into murder.

Are you a murderer?  I don't know.  Have you ever spoken evil about someone?  God links that to murder because it steals the person's reputation and can shut them off from a community.  Some aptly describe it as murder with the tongue.  Have you ever cut someone out of your heart?  There are times when it's godly not to have contact with some people, and the scriptures are clear on when those times are.  But not having contact and cutting them out of your heart are two different things.  God doesn't look well on this, dear ones. Not because he wants to punish us, but because he looks after our well being and if we're not in his playground, we're playing in someone else's and become easy prey.

Maybe it's your brother who irritates you to no end. Maybe it's your spouse.  Maybe it's your pastor.  Maybe it's yourself.  Maybe it's your congregation or  your neighbor. 

Whomever it is, they are sleeping with you. 

The sun is going down on your wrath and it's sitting in the chair in the corner of your room when you wake up - pretty soon you will ignore it and be flabbergasted when someone points it out to you. 

God does know what he's talking about and his way will work.  Of course it seems counter intuitive, his ways are not our ways.  But when we try to protect ourselves, from anyone or anything, what we're really saying is that God isn't able to.  Forgiveness cures you from taking Jesus' place. 

Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive someone suggesting seven times.  I read a commentary recently that said the Children of Israel had a rule that you forgive someone three times but not the fourth.  Doesn't that sound like "Screw me once shame on you, screw me twice shame on me."?  Apparently Peter thought seven times was right because obviously three times wasn't. 

He was in for the shock of the century.  Jesus told him seventy times seven which is 490 times.  I can just hear Peter stuttering "Wh-wh-what?!" 

That is an Orientalism meaning we are to forgive always.  Stiff consequences come to us when we don't.  Some of those consequences are tormentors who refuse to leave your bedroom, figuratively speaking.  Ever think something was one way and it turned out it was completely the opposite?  Unforgiveness blinds you to what's really going on. 

Unforgiveness left unchecked in your heart will come out of your mouth and lead to murder.  Murder with the tongue, murder in the heart and sometimes physical murder.  This is how that nice guy down the street can come home from work one day and kill his family, shocking the  neighborhood.  Unforgiveness took up residence in that house long before murder did. 

What's the way out?  Repent.  That amazing five letter word!  Repent for unforgiveness.  It will change your life.   

Proverbs 29:8 says scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath.

Want to bless your city?  Repent for scorn and turn away wrath with wisdom.  Your city will prosper and you'll be taking spiritual responsibility.  God will reward you for such things.  What we do in secret he rewards us for openly.

I wonder what it would be like if we all repented for unforgiveness.  I think mountains would shift across the universe.  I for one try to do it routinely.  In 2004 I had a revelation of repentance and forgiveness that irrevocably changed my life and I haven't stopped preaching it yet.  I have lived my life at the butt end of many men's sins.  I'm not alone, we all do in one way or another and all of us have suffered from Adam's sin.

Whose sin affects you?  Everyone's.  Forgiving them changes it all and opens up the miraculous to you from God Almighty.  Give it a whirl and be sure to share the miracle reports.  Jesus paid it all at the Cross for us.  What have we got to lose, except some unwanted visitors in our bedrooms?

So, who are you sleeping with tonight? 

Make it God and your spouse only and you will have a restful sanctuary and live a protected life. He's not slack concerning his promises.


photo credits: morguefile.com

Have a Mary day...

My middle daughter will soon be sixteen.  Wasn't it yesterday she raced around the living room in her slippered sleeper? I am joyful and sad at the same time. My beautiful girl is smart, funny and compassionate. But my baby, my baby is left to my precious memories and photographs.

When she was a toddler, I strapped her into the cart at the drugstore so I could look through the birthday cards. Soon she grabbed every card on the racks, opening them up, quickly shutting them and stuffing them back into their slots, not very neatly I might add. I was mortified wondering how many cards were ruined and what was she thinking? As I went to scold her, God flashed me some understanding and I realized she was copying me. I stopped myself from berating her and simply watched in amazement. She was having a great time doing what her mom was doing, and he spared me from ruining her moment of joy.

Another time I brought the laundry upstairs and placed the neat pile on a chair in the living room. Within minutes my little cherub was shaking the folded towels, and throwing them into piles on the floor. Acting up? Deliberately undoing what Mom had done? No, not any of these things, she was copying her mother doing laundry. All she’d ever seem me do was separate the clothing. She displayed a great amount of intelligence – here was a pile of clothing and that meant time to sort it. Copying, imitating, mimicking are all so very necessary to growing up. I wonder how many times we berate our children for doing things that seem wrong, when all they are doing is trying to follow in our footsteps?

One time I found a friend of mine scrubbing my bathroom sink. I asked if my sink was really all that bad. Sheepishly he told me his mom insisted the sink be cleaned after every visit to the washroom and now as an adult, he couldn’t seem to let the habit go, even when it wasn’t necessary. It was a cruel reminder of the damage I can do as a parent. No wonder God advises us to be temperate in all things. There’s nothing wrong with a clean sink but this person was slammed to the point they relived the childhood incident continuously as an adult.

I cringe to think I almost berated my precious baby for jamming cards into store racks or messing up my laundry pile. At some point I had my wits about me long enough to realize it was my driveness trying to replicate my sin in my children and I was able to stop it with God's help.  It's only by the Grace of God we can see these things because they masquerade as such worthy goals like peace in your home, or training your children to be good Christians, or godly discipline; you often see this with bible memory verses...  need I say more?  Little Johnny knows every verse in the book of Psalms but he flinches when it's his turn to recite and he can't keep his eyes off the floor or mom's wooden spoon. 

The old man is dead and beating him into submission makes, well, a mess.  Oh, the floor will be clean enough to use as a dinner plate, and you can have guests over unexpectedly and even bible studies and pass the religious cleanliness test, but the mess is still there... on the inside... in the heart.  You can scrub the outside till it sparkles like the sun but the heart will out, there's a few verses about that.   

There's actually a saying in Christian circles about training the heart.  I didn't realize how insidious that is until tonight as I'm writing this blog post.  We really have to let God give us discernment, and quit trying to do it all ourselves.  Chapter and verse for training the heart?  No folks, there isn't one.  Guard the heart, prepare the heart to worship but even our worship is not our own, he has to help us.  The best we can do is believe unto; he has to bridge the gap.

So if the dishes didn't get washed today, and you didn't train little Johnny to take out the trash on time, and you forgot to have devotions, I think it's ok.  We've been delivered from the god who whips us all into shape.  Jesus busted his act 2000 years ago. 

If your house is falling apart, it may be a sure sign that your heart isn't - because only Mary's will spend time at the feet of Jesus, while Martha's insist that everyone DO something.

You go ahead and have a Mary day.  She chose the "needful" or necessary thing, he says, because nothing else matters.

 

photo credits: morguefile.com