Miseo

I was a Criminal Justice major back in college. I absolutely loved most of my CJ courses. Terrorism, Organized Crime, Criminal Procedures, Criminal Investigations, Texas Criminal Law.........Many of my classmates looked for reasons to skip as many classes as possible. Not me. I loved going to class. Dr. Robert J. Grant was the founding professor of our department at Midwestern State and also my assigned academic advisor. He was a former marine and had also been a police officer and organized crime investigator for the Phoenix Police Department for 16 years. This guy would tell some amazing stories from his days on the force. I loved going to his classes and listening to him talk about his experiences. If I had it to do all over again I don't think I would change a thing with regards to my core studies.

He told us a story one time that I have never forgotten. He explained one day that in all of his years on the police force he had only been knocked off of his feet one time. He and his partner had responded to a 911 call from a lady that was being beaten by her husband. When they got to the scene they found themselves breaking up a violent dispute between this couple. Dr. Grant went on to tell us that after they got these two people seperated and the husband handcuffed, the wife, the lady that was getting beat up by her husband, turned on Dr. Grant and punched him in the face while he was looking the other way and completely knocked him down to the ground. Let me say that again. She is getting beat up, the policemen save her from further abuse, and after cuffing her husband she turns on them and punches one of them in the face because she is upset at them for physically restraining her spouse. Now does any of this make sense? Not at all. And what the situation reveals is that both the husband the the wife had criminal intent in their hearts. Looking inside the heart, there was really no difference between the offender and the victim. They were both criminals, both abusers.

I have to tell you, I have seen this spiritually happen over and over and over and over with Christian couples....spiritually speaking. I have seen it in Albuquerque. I have seen it in Ft Worth. I have seen it in Dallas. I have seen it in Colorado. I have seen it on more occasions than I can count.  I have witnessed it over and over and over again while ministering.....I have seen situations where either the husband or the wife was crying out for help because the other spouse was not listening to God over protracted periods of time and it was creating multiple cracks in the foundations of the marriage. It was affecting giftings, callings, daily living, the kids, finanaces.....one facet or another of life in the home. And when I, my wife and/or others  stepped in too minister foundational things to help reconcile the people to God first and to each other second....and when the instigating spouse didn't respond to God's Spirit....the spouse that was being victimized turned on the peacemakers that were sent to bring order.

I have seen this over and over and over. I have seen spouses that are not being treated with love and respect. I've seen Christians that know that their spouses have rejected God's voice in both big things and/or small things that are almost unnoticable. Spouses caught up in pride and ambition. Situations where the other spouse is just neglectuful of his or her spiritual duties......And I have seen the victimized spouse in these sitations, the very same spouse that did the right thing and made the 911 call, just turn on God's ministers in the course of time and punch them right in the face with gossip, slander, rejection and subtle hatred.

Why does this happen? The absence of stamina. The absence of endurance. An unwillingness to continue in the sufferings of Christ and press in for deeper levels of maturity in spite of the other person's unwillingness to grow and embrace the calling of God on their lives.

"Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9 

"For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end." Hebrews 3:14

"For you have need of endurance that after you have done the will of God you might receive the promise." Hebrews 10:36

"But we are not of them that shrink back but of them that believe unto the saving of the soul." Hebrews 10:39

"In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." Hebrews 12:4 

No marriage is perfect all the time. There are times where my wife will prophetically sense something before I do and she will patiently wait for me to come around so we can move forward together on something. I have had to wait on my wife to come around on things. We have disagreements at times. Everyone does. I am not talking about those things. I'm talking about situations where there is either subtle or blatant wholesale rebellion by one spouse and the other spouse is trying to hold onto what God has for them. The sherrif arrives in the form of eldership in the church, pastoral oversight or maybe some apostolic and prophetic ministers enter the picture and the obedient spouse becomes disobedient along with the guilty party because they don't want to hold on a little longer....that is what I am talking about. "The Victim" doesn't really want to wait until God deals wholesale with things and makes things right in HIS way because really the heart is not wholly yielded to God's solution.

What is it that keeps the victimized spouse from holding on and staying obedient?...Simply put...They have not counted the cost of obedience and themselves are not willing to give up all things for the Lord. The victim is just as guilty as the offender because neither have abandoned all things for the Lord. They are both offenders. They are both guilty of the same sin.

     "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life -  he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."  Luke 14:26,27

The word Jesus uses for "hate" in verse twenty-six is Miseo. It means to love less than. Jesus is not telling us to hate our spouses with a carnal hatred. He is telling us that we must love our spouses less than we love him. This overiding love that we have for the Lord was first embodied for us by Abraham when he offered Isaac on the altar. As God conditions us over the course of time we are to grow in this perfection of grace within our souls. And along the way as we experience our journeys we are to operate in the sufficiency of his grace from one experience to another. We go from faith to faith (Romans 1:17). We go from hearing one thing from God to another. And we must learn to hold onto those things that God shows us, even if/when our spouses are not joining us in the process of revelation. We shouldn't let others hold us back from the faith that God puts in our hearts. Not now. Not ever.

The Body of Christ worldwide is coming into a time of great testing. We live in the generation that, for the first time in all of history, is watching all of the nations on the face of the earth functon with economies that are based on fiat currencies. A fiat currency is paper currency that is backed by nothing and will eventually be worth nothing at some point in time. And with that over 75% of the global currency reserves held by all countries of the world are US Dollars. The US Dollar has gone from being the most stable paper currency in the world to the most unstable. If you have been watching the news lately you now that the international banking cartels that run the US Government, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are actively debasing the US currency to a value of zero. Their doing this through a process called Quantitative Easing. The value of the US Dollar is now worth 5% of what it was in 1915. In roughly 95 years the US Dollar has lost 95% of its value. And it's continuing to plummet. Eventually all economies around the world will crash as the US Economy crashes due to God's judgment on America for abortion (65 million roughly) and all manner of sexual immorality. The entire world will fall under judgment soon but it will begin in the United States and will then spread throughout the world.

"The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt." Isaiah 24: 5,6

The earth is defiled. First America, then the world. Judgment must come in response to this defilement. First America, then the world. As this wave of judgment comes everything that can be shaken will be shaken, including unstable marriages that are founded on carnal desires.

"Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.' The words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken - that is, created things - so that what cannot be shaken may remain." Hebrews 12:26,27

God is going to shake the heavens and the earth through judgment and circumstances. And in the process, all created things, all things that are carnal and built on shifting sand are going to be shaken so that what cannot be shaken, that which is built on the ROCK (Christ), will remain.

I'll wrap up with this. A few years back while living in San Antonio I had a dream that I was standing in a mess hall on a military base. I was sitting down eating amongst a large company of officers. Suddenly I felt compelled to stand up and pray. I began to pace the floor back and forth and as I did a word of knowledge came to me. The Lord began to show me that a war was about to begin. And in this war, marriages would be divided and families would be broken apart.

Do you have a marriage that can endure all things financial, social, physical? Can you endure? Do you love your spouse more than Jesus? If you do, your marriage will not endure the coming days. It won't. The key to a marriage that has the 'capacity' to last in Christ is one where two people love God more than they love each other. Do you love your spouse more than you love God? Do you love the financial stability, the social stability and the physical stability that comes from your marriage more than you love God? If we do then God is going to shake our circumstances to show us that our perceived "stable rock" is really "unstable sand" and that our priorities are misaligned. It's time to repent if need be....before it is too late. I say this to myself as well.

JEB
jayblackshear@yahoo.com
http://www.miraclesinmerida.blogspot.com/