Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Our Anger is Our Problem
We do not cause someone else's anger, anyone who rages at the drop of a hat has underlying anger all the time waiting for a false excuse to emerge.
The narcissist who rages wants us to believe we are all bad merely for questioning them or disagreeing with them. They perceive a disagreement as hatred, this is why we have so many crazy ragers in demonstrations now, they don't even know why they are demonstrating and breaking the things of others.
If the narcissist cannot attack "what you said", they will pretend it was the "way" you said it. They are liars frequently, they count on us not remembering how we sounded or play upon our sense of desire to be kind people and accuse us of what did not happen.
I have experienced this on a number of occasions in my life with narcissistic family members. The mean-spirited person insults us over the style of our hair or some silly unimportant thing, we say, "that was mean" and the entire room comes against us for making the rude person feel bad by calling their actions mean.
This is the sort of culture we are living in right now because of the false teaching that we should be understanding and give a pass to mean people who may have been hurt sometimes in their life in the past. But wait a minute.....That mean person just hurt someone else but they get a pass, why are they not chastised for doing a mean thing. So what if they were hurt before in the past, why does this give them license to do to others unrelated to the past, unkind things that were done to them?
By the way, the people I know who have been mean spirited and arrogant didn't have bad things happen to them in the past that would cause lifelong trauma, just the opposite, almost all of them were indulged as children, having tantrums when they wanted something while the parents bent over backward to quiet them by giving them what they wanted. In fact, the process of giving the blackmailing children what they wanted cast in stone their belief that all they had to do was rage at someone, and others would bow to them.
Yes, I said that; "it is emotional blackmail for the children to demand something, have a tantrum if they don't get it so that every time they demand something the parents know there will be misery if they don't jump to the child's demand. The parents who jump to the child's demands are training their children how to rage and demand from everyone, not just them. These are the narcissists of today. Of course, not all children who are indulged turn out this way but most do, the very reason we have so many selfish young adults and middle-aged children today.
This is a lesson to those who are raising children right now, also for those who are finished raising children and have indulged their children to understand what is happening and repent from former failures. It is also for those who did the best they could and in their human frailties were not perfect but their children chose their own way in spite of their stable family structure.
Only the parents can decide which way they raised their children. No one else can judge another person's family dynamics. The key is that we see what has happened and correct it as far as we are able while warning others with our many years of wisdom.
This life is not about doing things perfectly, it is about learning from our mistakes and sins that allow us to grow in wisdom and holiness.
God never excuses bad behavior based on the bad things that have happened to them. We can choose kindness and the other character qualities of Christ through the power of Christ by becoming born again.
It is only the devil who wants to give us excuses for our bad behavior and attitudes, this keeps us from changing into better people. The more we excuse our actions the more hardened we become.
Let the Holy Spirit soften our hearts through confession of sin to be cleansed by Him.
1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Romans 6:23
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
No excuses for sin, sin is death, we must decide if we want to be cleansed or remain stubborn.
Monday, March 29, 2021
Angry with the Government......Blame Yourselves!
Are you angry that the government has gone rogue? Do you hate the direction this country is moving and has been for the past 70 years?
The Lord is giving us the country we deserve. We have wallowed in filth so long, endorsing sin even if we do not do it ourselves while placing more importance on family ties than on Christ. He has not been central in our lives for a very long time.
The culture has been mocking and demeaning Christ and His principles for as long as I can remember.
When I was a young parent I remember being mocked for saying it was better for parents to stay together to raise the children than for fighting couples to split, they mocked me for that. They said that it was better to split a family than to live with someone we were fighting with all the time.
How utterly silly it was what they said. I would say to them "there is one more alternative you haven't thought of, that is why doesn't one of you stop fighting." They laughed and mocked me as though I was the foolish one. I considered their thinking irrationally based on feelings rather than facts and solutions.
When a small child does not want to do the right or the difficult thing they make up silly arguments in the attempt to get what they want. They even say things like "you don't love me" or "I hate you, Mommy." When feelings are the objective in any culture all simple and rational answers are ignored and even mocked.
Life is really not as complicated as people want us to believe, it is however more difficult when we seek answers and ignore our feelings to do the noble things. Children have been marginalized, marriage has been ridiculed as outdated and restraining, and yet it is the institution of marriage that made the culture stable and the children secure and purposeful.
It really is true that "bad is being called good and good is being called bad."
The Devil and the Narcissist are Deeply Connected
1 Corinthians 15:33 " 33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
There were times over the years when I was tempted to respond to the narcissist in kind, I was thankful that I did answer back but not in rage as they were doing.
However, I was tempted to act just the way they do, but it was not my personality to do so. I ruminated on what they had done far too long after leaving their presence.
The least the narcissist does is cause emotional frustration and anger in us that we would rather not be feeling. I believe their goal is to make us become mean like they are, it makes them feel justified in their attitude toward us.
The more we remain calm the worse they get, in an attempt to cause us to sin the way they know they are sinning.
I have been tempted over the years to really "chew them out" for their bad behavior, always after the incident but resisted because I knew they would love it, the more they can cause us to respond in frustration and anger the happier they are, it's food for them.
At one point years ago I wrote letters to those who were in a lifelong pattern of acting rude and superior toward me. I quickly found out that narcissists do not feel guilty they feel enraged when confronted with their sin. Rather than being ashamed of their sin they become more hateful, gossip more about us, and seek to ruin our reputation based on their desired belief about us rather than what is actually true about us.
I do not feel bad about everything I have been through with narcissists, it has been a boot camp for me to learn to feel nothing negative when they attack, they no longer have an effect on me because I know what they are doing and it's not about me, its all on them.
I am convinced one of the reasons we get frustrated when the narcissist attacks are because inside we have a "feeling" that we did do something wrong. That was their goal to cause us to think we were the terrible ones when it was they who acted badly.
When we know we didn't do anything wrong then we do not have to suck into our soul what they have done. Jealousy is often the catalyst behind the narcissist's feelings of hate toward us. They hate our happiness, our life purpose, and our steadfastness.
Kind people hate the feeling that they have hurt someone, the narcissist plays on this vulnerability, they see it as a weakness giving them license to attack. We agonize over what we might have done but see nothing we could have done differently when we come away from a narcissist.
The narcissist never points out an error in us to help, they do it to shame. Narcissists are all about causing shame in those they hate. Even when we do a good act that the Lord has directed us to do, the narcissist will attempt to shame us into thinking we were foolish for doing it. Narcissists never admit their sins, they justify them, excuse them and even deny them entirely.
One of the tactics they use to shame is holding past forgiven sins against us as though we are still doing those sins. The devil is going regularly to the throne of grace accusing the brethren, just as the narcissist on earth is accusing the brethren of sins that have not only been forgiven by God but are buried in the deepest sea. We as believers have been transformed into a completely different person, no longer that person we used to be, the narcissists and the devil prefer to hold forgiven sins against us.
They love to believe we have not changed, that we are still a child and that we have not moved forward in our walk. Sadly they want to believe this about us because they know they are believing about us what they are, it's called projection. Those who have been changed into a new creation by Christ love it when someone's life has been changed by Christ, they celebrate the new person in Christ.
I have heard family members accuse others of things they were doing and the target was not. I have heard some of their gossip describing to their flying monkeys what they wanted to believe about their target, not what was true. Often the narcissist will make up stories in their mind they wish to believe about someone and pass these stories on as facts. They don't need any evidence of what they are saying only their desired guesses.
The proof I have of this is the tactics of the devil as described in the Bible. The devil is behind all this and is as busy today as he was in the time of Christ, attempting to destroy believers.
The devil used Peter's mouth in an attempt to influence Christ not to do something He was meant to do. This is the tactic of the narcissist when they mock or demean us for doing what is right, especially what has been directed by God.
The devil spoke to Eve, using flattery, he attempted to cause Eve to come against the commands of Christ and believe the devil's lies. He told her that God meant for evil his commands when the opposite was true. The devil uses the narcissist to come against God and us the way he did with Peter and Eve.
Have you ever done something that brought you great joy that was a gift from God only to have a narcissist come along and shame you as though you were doing something evil?
The devil did this with Christ, he used the mouths of the Pharisees to accuse Christ of doing His miracles by the power of the devil. They, the narcissists and devils, attempted to turn people against Christ because Christ was getting too much attention for doing good. The Pharisees were narcissists who could not tolerate Christ taking the power and attention away from them. Their loss of power over the minds of people was what angered them more than anything else.
Matthew 23:27-28
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you too, outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
Christ knew the Pharisees wanted power and control, they wanted to be the gods in the eyes of their underlings. they were not interested in loving and worshiping God, they only wanted their power and control.
Christ came along and showed them what hypocrites the Pharisees were so they worked to destroy Him, just as the narcissists are used of the devil to destroy born-again believers through shaming and demeaning. We are seeing more of this in our world today because the hour is late and the time is short before Christ takes us out of this world.
Narcissists are nothing more than pawns in the hands of the devil, when we know this we can feel sorry for them, pray for their salvation, and move on to those who love our Lord as much as we love Him. There will not be many people who love the Lord just as there were not many compared to the population around Christ, but they are out there and God can find them for us.
If we keep focused continually on Christ He will protect us from the narcissists. He will also protect us from becoming like the narcissist. If the devil can cause us to become angry and rage the way the narcissist does he can ruin our Christian witness and fellowship with others. Let's not let him!!!!
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Friday, March 26, 2021
The Holy Spirit Prays on our Behalf
I am so thankful that the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf. He takes what we say and turns it into a prayer that is according to God's will.
Romans 8:26-27 " 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. 27 And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.…"
Aren't you thankful as I am that God prays on our behalf only in the will of the Father. We so often beg God for our own will thinking if we beg long enough He will give us what we want.
The Lord has been teaching me not to "beg", but to rest in His perfect will, asking for my desire and then leaving it with Him. My emotions get in the way sometimes and I yearn for the very things that may not be His will for my life. Possibly the very things that are not necessarily good for me.
1 Corinthians 10:22-24 Are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? 23 “Everything is permissible,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible,” but not everything is edifying. 24 No one should seek his own good, but the good of others.…"
God wants us to seek Him for His will, this is why the "prosperity gospel" is anathema to God, it presumes that God is our servant to give us all that we want and we always want wealth. In other words, according to the prosperity preachers, we are the "little gods" that rule over and command the "big God." I feel sick to my stomach just writing this concept.
2 Timothy 4:3 "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, they shall heap to themselves teachers in accordance with their own lusts."
Bottom Line: Seek God for His will as we bring our petitions to Him. He may give us our desires but He may not and we must accept what He is doing, He knows best.
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Because the Hearts of Men have Grown Cold
Because the hearts of people have grown cold there are more apostates in the world who are religious but not born again. They are giving the devil a forum in the culture that was not allowed before. Evil is growing in the hearts of men and so is demonic activity.
We see more rebellion in the Christian churches because they are mostly made up of cultural Christians who depend on their own intellect and the culture for their answers to everything.
When the culture is more important than God we must go with God and leave behind the culture. I have known people who defended their unbiblical traditions more than they defended the Bible. These people have this backward, it is not man's traditions that we should follow, it is the principles of God in His Word we ought to be concerned about. After all Christ is the WORD, He is the very essence of His own word, the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit and the Bible that we ought to seek, not the traditions of men.
Mark 7:7-9 "…7 They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.’ 8 You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.” 9 He went on to say, “You neatly set aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition.…"
Do not be one of these who worship their traditions and other men, be one who follows hard after Christ.
Just Saying!
Why Does God Remove People From Our Lives?
God removes people from our lives for a reason, He removes anyone who will stand in the way of the calling He has on our lives. We can trust Him.
When Christ is more important to us than anything and anyone else we will not agonize over the loss of someone who walks away or ignores us. They do it for evil but God means it for good.
We see this in the account of Joseph when his brothers were jealous, throwing him into a well to be sold off into slavery. That action on the part of the brothers was evil but God used it to eventually elevate Joseph to a prominent position, in which he was an authority over his brothers.
Genesis 50: 20 "
" As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,"
When we feel a loss because of rejection of others when we have studied our own heart in light of Bible truth and found that we could find nothing that we did to cause angst in others, then we can rest assured that God has a purpose, either for this life or for the next.
We must always be sure that we are not at fault, ready to own our flaws and bad judgment, however, in our day there are many people ready to accuse believers of what the others are doing and we are not. Just as Christ was accused of doing His miracles by the power of the devil, we too will be falsely accused in this age of apostasy.
Good is being called evil and evil is being called good in our day and the born-again believer is a particular target of the devil and all those who are influenced by him.
Matthew 5:11
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account."
I have been gossiped about and lied against because I would bring scripture to the conversation in the presence of Christians. In our day most people who say they are Christian have no interest in learning God's Word or even obeying it. They are satisfied to know enough to feel safe but so little they are often violating it unknowingly. Those who violate the scriptures unknowingly will be held accountable for being lazy in refusing to ask the Holy Spirit and search for the answers in the Bible.
Proverbs 11:9
"With his mouth, the godless man would destroy his neighbor, but by knowledge, the righteous are delivered."
Proverbs 19:9
"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish."
Psalm 109:2
"For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues."
If we speak boldly about the Word of God and remain faithful to His teachings we will experience those who would lie against us, it's a promise from God's Word. The beauty of knowing this is that we do not have to worry about it, we can leave it with Christ, choose carefully our close friends, and sense no obligation whatever to remain friends with people who attempt to ruin our walk with Christ.
Please remember that God warned us that members of our own families would be against us. He made it clear that we can and must remove them from our lives in order to follow Christ.
Luke 14:26-27 "26“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be My disciple. 27And whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.…"
Matthew 10:37
"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;"
John 12:25
"Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
Matthew 10:36 For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ "
We are seeing this as a common occurrence in our day, many children have turned against believing parents, accusing them of things that were not true in order to absolve themselves of their own disrespect and dishonor of their parents.
Some may judge this post as a negative one but it is just the opposite. Those who have been rejected can be encouraged that our Lord warned us of these things to help us learn to move past the attacks and the rejection into a full and joyful life with believers who love the Lord as we love Him.
We have not lost anything when the bio family rejects us, we have gained loving and kind brothers and sisters in Christ who walk in the Spirit and demonstrate all the fruit of the Holy Spirit as a lifestyle. Our family changes from those we were born to, toward those who are born again in the family of Christ.
Matthew 12:48-50
"But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
John 13:34-35
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Matthew 12:50
"For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
See that? Those who love God and live a lifestyle of doing His will are those who are members of the family we are born-again into. We no longer are members of the bio-family who carry our blood unless they too are members of God's family.
One of the reasons so many Christians do not grow in holiness and even regress if they do some growing is because they remain continually with blood relatives who do not love the Lord. They spend more time with their bio-relatives than they do with their born-again family. It ought to be the other way around, we should spend most of our time with born-again brothers and sisters than we do with bio family.
This does not mean we don't love our bio-families, it just means that they are no longer family and that we cannot relate to them anymore because we have been Spiritually and emotionally changed into new creations while bio-family who are not born again remain rebellious thinking in opposing ways to God. These people will hold us back from Spiritual and emotional growth as we diminish our walk to keep them happy.
In Matthew 10:36 it is clear that those in bio-families who are not born again will come against us because of Christ. We must live a life of peace in Christ with most of our relationships to be those who love Christ. We can witness from time to time to the unsaved but they cannot become our constant companions.
Just Saying!
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