Friday, August 31, 2012

Teflon Marriage and Parenting

God did not design our spouses to shield us from acknowledging, accepting and acting on personal responsibilities like parenting our children. The Jews of the Old Testament going into the New Testament were like children parented by the Law until God the Son Jesus Christ came and offered them a marriage relationship. In a marriage relationship we are adults with adult responsibilities. We don't stop being our parents' children, but our parents are no longer responsible for our behavior, and our spouse is not designed to take responsibility for our behavior. We are responsible for our own behavior while God and our spouse are to love us continuously in truth, mercy, forgiveness and other godly qualities.

Parenting is a job for each individual father and mother. Childlike spouses may complain that their parental spouses do not want frequent sex and/or creative sex such as putting on costumes and acting out love plays.

When a couple operates as the union of a childlike spouse and a parental spouse they will have trouble bonding because they act like Teflon to each other. Mature adults are repelled by sex with children. Mature adults are not disinterested in sex; they want sex with another mature, committed adult.

Yet sometimes a parental spouse enables the childlike spouse to pass off his parental responsibilities onto her which is destructive to both spouses' sex drive. One way mothers enable fathers to pass their parental responsibilities onto them is to require the family to have a certain economic standard of living that requires the father to work at one or more jobs, businesses and/or ministries for excessive numbers of hours weekly. When he is done working, his energy spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and physically is sapped. He doesn't have enough inside of him to give to God, wife and children.

Ohiyesa (Dakota for "Wins Often"), who took the name Charles Alexander Eastman when he received Jesus Christ as His Savior and Lord in the 1800s, is a husband, father of six children, physician, writer, author, speaker, advocate for Native American Rights, among other things, who described American culture as "a system of life based on trade." Many Americans both Christian and non-Christian worship trade which is really the love of money. The foundation of their lifestyle is money, not God. They value material wealth more than their relationship with God, spouse and children. We need to earn money to obtain things needed for survival and enjoyment. The source for obtaining anything is God. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 the Message Bible says, "If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I'm rich. It's all mine!"-well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors-as it is today.". 

In order for fathers to parent in the Biblical way, mothers and fathers may need to live in a town house instead of a single-family home, or they may need to rent instead of own, or they may need some other creative living arrangement. Some married couples can live in large houses with both spouses operating in Biblical balance in their marriage, parenting, employment and other areas of life. Other married couples are not able to do this; they need to reduce their material lifestyle in order to lift up their relationships with God, spouse and children. It's worth it to find a successful way to work fewer hours at a job, business and/or ministry in order to have the internal resources to build a balanced marriage relationship and to build a parental relationship with our children that is complete (male and female both active extensively in a parental relationship with their children) instead of incomplete (mother/child parent relationship with virtually no father/child relationship.)

Parental roles in order foster fun, fulfilling marital sex. These couples are more likely to totally share themselves in multiple ways. Dr. Gary and Barbara Rosberg write in their book The 5 Sex Needs of Men & Women Discover the Secrets to Great Sex In A Godly Marriage, "The reality is that we often want the same things. Our deepest desire, whether we're male or female, is ultimately to become one. He wants intercourse; she wants intercourse. He may want physical intercourse more than she does, and she may want emotional intercourse more than he does, but when a couple can meld physical and emotional intercourse, they will find the pathway to great sex."

Frequent, fun, filling marital sex is not simply physical unions. Our relations with our spouse is connected to our relationships with God, children and others. Marital couples have better sex when fathers have an active, loving, extensive relationship with their children. Ephesians 5:4 Amplified Bible says, "Fathers, do not irritate and provoke your children to anger [do not exasperate them to resentment], but rear them [tenderly] in the training and discipline and the counsel and admonition of the Lord."

If fathers tell their daughters and sons, they are priceless treasures, but spend little or no time with them learning who they are in detail, then their words are false and will probably inspire anger. Children want fathers to love them in truth and reality. Love takes lots of time and effort. When we become comfortable with the parent-child relationship, then a father may not feel compelled to answer a daughter's questions about dating and/or sex with "Go ask your mother." The same applies to mothers and sons.

When fathers abdicate their parental responsibilities, and mothers absorb them, mothers are subjected to extreme pressure to function outside of the Biblical model for wives. They become like a parent to their husbands who are saying and acting out, "I am not mature. I want someone else to handle my responsibilities."

Immaturity and marriage don't mix well. Genesis 1:24 Amplified Bible says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall become united and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." God designed chronological adults to put some distance between them and their biological or adoptive parents, so that they may form a multifaceted, strong, higher order relationship with their spouse. A spouse who becomes like a parent to another spouse creates a desire in the childlike spouse to separate instead of bond with them.

While a wife may enable her husband to turn her into the father/mother, she resents the husband's behavior. Resentful people reek of anger. Anger can become depression, bitterness, meanness or something else that acts like Teflon preventing intimacy.

While often it is the father who may pass off his parental responsibilities to the mother, the mother may do the same thing. Sin is no respecter of persons.

Childlike husbands need to learn to switch from demanding infants who want their spouses to take care of their needs to adult husbands able to give themselves up for the needs of their wives and children. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Amplified Bible says about love, "It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]."

Childlike husbands do not consider that their wives have needs separate from their husbands' needs. Some of the needs of wives are for their husbands to love them and to love their children. When a husband has an active and expansive relationship with his children, he frees up his wife's time and her heart to pursue a job, business, ministry, a hobby, a friendship or something else. This type of husband helps his wife live in balance. Balanced people are often happy people. Happy people are often eager for marital sex. They are more willing to wake their husbands up with a kiss, a smile, foreplay and a sexual workout. My Twitter friend Nancy Wasson says, "When you choose to live a marriage of LOVE, your spouse changes before your eyes."

Please chat with me via my Twitter name "Michelelove30," Google+ and/or leave an on-line comment.
 
Parental wives need to learn to respect their husbands, and stop treating them like children incapable of fathering their children. Parental wives will need to learn how to encourage their childlike husbands to accept his parental responsibilities and to adapt to his parental style which may be very different from hers. She will need to learn to stop covering his parental mistakes and to allow him to reap the consequences of his choices. For example, if the husband feeds his children candy for Saturday breakfast, then he needs to spend the day caring for sugar-crazed children. Submission to a spouse is not about enabling evil but empowering good behavior. Ephesians 5:22 Amplified Bible says, "Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord." God is good and is molding His people into a clearer reflection of His goodness.

A spouse who insists to remain a childlike husband is not capable of being a Biblical husband. While God asks us to be forgiving, believing, trusting and welcoming to people like children, He calls His mature people to live and to share the full counsel of His Word. Ephesians 5:25-26 Amplified Bible says, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,  So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word." If a husband insists to be childlike, refusing to mature in Biblical principles, then he will not be able to sanctify, cleanse and wash his wife in the Word because the Word is not operating in his life at a high level.

A husband who is in authority is also living in his responsibilities. Jesus Christ had authority because he lived in Biblical principles. Jesus Christ was not irresponsible or accepting of responsibilities that were not His own.

Conversely, a parental wife has taken over her husband's parental responsibilities, so that her husband is no longer in authority in an area God designed him to be in authority. The parental spouse has become the head of the house. A parental wife like a childlike husband is not living in Biblical principles.

Because in America we tend to associate authority with tyranny, we may miss the Biblical truth that authority is service as it is applied to family relations. A great marriage involves both husbands and wives serving each other enthusiastically and expansively. Luke 22:24-26 Amplified Bible says, "Now an eager contention arose among them [as to] which of them was considered and reputed to be the greatest. But Jesus said to them, The kings of the Gentiles are deified by them and exercise lordship [ruling as emperor-gods] over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors and well-doers. But this is not to be so with you; on the contrary, let him who is the greatest among you become like the youngest, and him who is the chief and leader like one who serves."

Continuing to live as a childlike husband and a parental wife will systematically cause spouses to act like Teflon to each other preventing intimacy, love and sublime sex from sticking to their relationship.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

How to Stop Spinning Out of Control

Sometimes we are in relationships with believers and certain interactions repeatedly spin out of control. Neither one of us wanted to end up in sins of anger, envy, selfishness, etc., but we seem to repeatedly move there. Often these interactions condition us to have a mindset of fear regarding how we will behave in certain circumstances. Fearing the worst behavior or something less than the best behavior is not believing the best. God calls us to the best. 1 Corinthians 13:7 Amplified Bible says, "Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]."

As believers, "Esperamos." Our hope and confidence is not in someone's ability to change to good behavior, but in God's ability to change someone. As long as our hope and confidence is in people we will be prone to expect failure, and we will try to flee and/or fight as a means of protecting ourselves from sin. Placing our confidence in God and walking in love is not operating with unrealistic thoughts about human behavior. Rather love sees and understands the truth about ourselves and others and turns us over to God for the ability to do good in increasing likeness of God.

Examine ourselves. Ask questions like, "What behavior am I afraid he/she will do?;" "Why do I respond in fear?" Then ask God to set us free from the fearful thought pattern that is motivating us to respond in an unloving way. Ungodly fear entangles us in more sin because wisdom declines and low expectations increase.

God has already placed Himself in believers giving us self-control to master the fear and to respond in love. 

When we are walking in self-control we are in God's will. We don't have a perfect body yet, so we will not walk in perfect self-control. A Japanese proverb says, "Fall down seven times, get up eight times."

God is already aware of and taken care of all the sins we ever did, are doing and will do. When we are imperfect, but chasing God, God is willing to make the changes we ask Him. 1 John 3:22-23 Amplified Bible says, "And we receive from Him whatever we ask, because we [watchfully] obey His orders [observe His suggestions and injunctions, follow His plan for us] and [habitually] practice what is pleasing to Him. And this is His order (His command, His injunction): that we should believe in (put our faith and trust in and adhere to and rely on) the name of His Son Jesus Christ (the Messiah), and that we should love one another, just as He has commanded us."

Contact Michele Jackson and Rafael Fowler at email address michefrancesjackson@gmail.com to join our live relationship group to conquer fear and to live in love and self control among other things. God created us and preserves our life from fertilization through birth, youth, old age and beyond death for people who are African, European, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, working all different kinds of assignments at all different kinds of hours and with different minds and abilities and with multiple mixtures of these characteristics. God created us to have a good relationship with Him and to be in relationships with people who are just right for us.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

God is for Freedom

No matter what chaos is going on around us God is still willing and able to produce good growth in our relationships. God always starts with our relationship with Him. Romans 7:4 Amplified Bible says, "Likewise, my brethren, you have undergone death as to the Law through the [crucified] body of Christ, so that now you may belong to Another, to Him Who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Bearing fruit for God is not about striving to follow rituals, but rather seeking a closer communion with God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit who lives on the inside of believers. Talking with God and studying the Bible are ways that God works through us to bear fruit. The fruit He is bearing is revealed in Galatians 5:22-23 Amplified Bible: "But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, Gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence). Against such things there is no law [that can bring a charge]."

God made each person unique. The Apostle Paul warns us in the Bible book of Galatians not to get caught up in rituals as a way to have a relationship with God. When he wrote Galatians, some were teaching that circumcision is necessary for forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God. However, Galatians 5:6 Amplified Bible says, "For [if we are] in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love."

So if our relationships are different from other believers relationships that's not bad provided the difference is in alignment with the love of God. God gives us freedom in our relationships, but it's freedom to bear the fruit of God.

Chaos will come into our life because of a clash of those who are free in God and those who are not free in God. A daily challenge is to focus on God as He is revealed in the Bible. Talk to Him about how He is trying to plant and to develop fruit in you and others around you. Keep on living in God free to do good. 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Freedom, Diversity and Unity

"Vive Libre" is a statement I recently saw on a T-shirt as I walked past someone. It's a good message, so long as the freedom is the freedom to do good.

God the Son Jesus Christ wants us free to do good. John 8:32 Amplified Bible teaches us that truth and freedom go together: "And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free."

In the beginning when the first man and woman choose a plan for their life that seemed good, but wasn't, one of the dynamics they set in place was they were no longer free to function as God designed them. The choice they made instead of giving them a better relationship with self and each other actually caused their relationships to deteriorate.

When Adam and Eve got along great with self and each other and were preparing positively to expand their family Genesis 2:25 Amplified Bible says, "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not embarrassed or ashamed in each other’s presence."

Without God living in us we do not have the person we need to empower us to grow in relationships of positive freedom with God, self and others. God wants us to experience this freedom. But by ourselves it's impossible. We need new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Amplified Bible says, "Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!" When we receive God by faith, God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Ghost come to live inside us giving us new life, giving us the ability to function in freedom to do good.

God on the inside does not show up on the outside in full all at once. One reason God gave us the Bible is because He likes for us to chase Him something like we would when we are passionately in love with someone. We want to take the time to know everything about our loved one, and be our best self in relationship with our loved one.

Genesis 2:25 shows us that freedom to do good is diversity and unity: male and female, distinct yet harmonious. Please contact Michele and Rafael at email address michefrancesjackson@gmail to join our relationship group celebrating God's gift of freedom, diversity and unity in our relationships.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Got Problems? No Worries Mate.

Sunday I was looking at a photo in the August 2012 edition of Enjoying Everyday Life, the magazine of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Joyce is reading a leather-bound Bible while sitting on a wooden chair on a wooden deck without guard rails above tranquil waters with a forest in the distance. Yellow/white sunlight hovers over the waters and everything else reminding me of Genesis 1:1-3 Amplified Bible: "In the beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light."

Light reveals things. God describes Himself as light. John 1:4 Amplified Bible says, "In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men."

One of the things God wants to reveal is that God's best plan for us is loving, eternal, family relationships with God and people. John 1:12-13 Amplified Bible says, "But to as many as did receive and welcome Him, He gave the authority (power, privilege, right) to become the children of God, that is, to those who believe in (adhere to, trust in, and rely on) His name—Who owe their birth neither to bloods nor to the will of the flesh [that of physical impulse] nor to the will of man [that of a natural father], but to God. [They are born of God!]"

There was never a time when God didn't choose to be in relationship with each believer. Imagine the goodness if we always choose a relationship with God and each believer God connects us to.

God put Rafael and me together. Rafael is a believer who has autism. I am a believer who does not have autism. Rafael and I love each other. In loving each other we are celebrating God, people with autism and other different minds and abilities and people of multiple other characteristics.

God made Rafael with autism on purpose. Proverbs 16:33 Amplified Bible says, "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly of the Lord [even the events that seem accidental are really ordered by Him]."

God made Nick Vujicic and Daniel Martinez without arms and legs. Nick and Daniel are not biologically related, but they are part of the family of believers; and God created them and had them meet for a purpose.

One day Nick was set to give a speech at Knott Avenue Christian Church in Anaheim, California. Up until the time Nick was a young adult he had not met a person like himself without arms and legs. Meeting Daniel was inspirational confirming for Nick that there are others like him and giving him the privilege to guide someone younger, Daniel was a toddler at the time they met, over the obstacles of not having arms and legs through a faith that with God there are no limits.

Some say I am unrealistic in seeking marriage for Rafael because he has autism. Growing up Nick wondered how he was going to have a job that would pay enough to financially support a family. Nick wondered how he was going to have girlfriends and eventually a wife without arms to hug them.

So many mysteries that can become worries. Do you have autism, no arms or legs or some other challenges? "I ain't goin' worry about things I can't control . . . . Hold up. Why? God's got it," sings African-American Gospel singer James Moss on his CD V 4 ...The Other Side track "God's Got It." For believers God is able and willing to work out our lives for good even when we can't see how.

Growing up Nick couldn't see that he would be a motivational speaker, run a nonprofit group called Life Without Limbs and marry, but God not only knew it all along, God also had a plan for Nick to get there. God's got a plan for all of us. Chase God, and He'll reveal the plan.

Clues to God's plan are everywhere. Rafael is very spiritual. He enjoys music, meditation and intimate relationships. Women love spirituality and intimate relationships. Ninety-four percent of women in a 2002 Gallup poll reported that a spouse should be a soul mate first and foremost.

Soul mates start out as friends. The Bible talks about sex as a husband and wife knowing each other. While God did not design for singles to engage in sex, God did design for both singles and married couples to have same-sex and opposite sex friendships. Begin and improve your friendships by joining Rafael's and my relationship group. To join contact us at email address michefrancesjackson@gmail.com.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Individuality Please

God sent me some inspiration Saturday while I was sitting amidst my balcony garden. Researchers from the University of Munich Germany found that looking at green for as brief as two seconds stimulates creativity. "God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things" (Proverbs 25:2 the Message Bible).

I have had people lie to me and say that my son, Rafael, was born with autism because I and Rafael's father had sex outside of marriage, and Rafael was conceived from one of these sexual encounters. While having partner sex outside of marriage is a sin that I have asked for and received God's forgiveness and no longer practice, it is a sin that is not connected to autism. John 9:1-3 Amplified Bible says, "As He passed along, He noticed a man blind from his birth. His disciples asked Him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, It was not that this man or his parents sinned, but he was born blind in order that the workings of God should be manifested (displayed and illustrated) in him." God is working through Rafael and me to bring healing to others regarding a dehumanizing view and treatment of persons with autism and other different minds and abilities. This type of mindset tries to erase the individuality of persons with autism and other different minds and abilities through steering them into certain custodial and administrative careers. Custodial and administrative careers are good careers if they are a person's calling. However if a person is singing jazz notes by spontaneous expression of an internal gift from God, why not educate and develop in as many ways as possible the singing ability, so that this person may bless society through a musical career?

The First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, was born to unmarried, African American parents. First her father died. Then several years later when Fitzgerald was still a youth her mother died. Fitzgerald ended up in a New York orphanage. Instead of encouraging her singing gift, governmental employees forced Fitzgerald to take up "marketable skills" like typing and stenography.

Ohiyesa (Dakota for "Wins Often"), who took the name "Charles Alexander Eastman" when he received Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord in the 1800s, is a husband, father of six children, physician, writer, speaker, advocate for Native American rights, among other things, who described American culture as "a system of life based on trade." Things haven't changed much with today's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" mentality.

American culture is high on the drug of conformity. Our culture compels people to pursue certain "marketable careers" irregardless of an individual's gifting from God.

Not everyone gets hooked on the drug of conformity. "Trabajare no por mi mismo, pero para otros" ("I shall not work for myself, but for others,") is a maxim of Reverend Patrick Fernandez Flores, the first Mexican American and the second U.S. Latino priest appointed a bishop in the Roman Catholic church.

Christians are not called to conformity, but to use their gifts and all of themselves to love God and to share the love of God on the inside with themselves and other people. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2 New Living Translation Bible, "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Paul goes on to say in Romans 12:6 New Living Translation Bible, "In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. . ." Live always incredible and improving empowered by God's love while cultivating and sharing your gifts. Read my 6/14/2012 article "Connecting Relationships and Faith."

Come off the drug of conformity and receive an ever evolving relationship with God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Ghost. God is for us. Chase and receive Him continually. Former drug addict current Pastor Wess Morgan sings on his CD Look At Me Now track "You May Not Know Me" about God's drastic change in his life, "You may not know me the way I am. You used to know me back when I was dangerous, reckless so frivolous."

Once America looses the dangerous, reckless so frivolous drug of conformity perhaps we will see persons with autism and other different minds and abilities in mass in all kinds of private and public places fully participating in society using the gifts God gave them to bless society.

Join Rafael and my relationship group to participate in the transformation process by contacting email address michefrancesjackson@gmail.com. We also welcome on-line comments.