from the frying pan into the fire

What not having salvation looks like

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Good morning. This is Cindy Lou from Just Pray Over It in beautiful Tennessee. It's a little cloudy today and a little muggy and damp and wet, but we definitely need the rain, so I'm not going to complain whatsoever. Today I'm going to talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. And I think a lot of us do that. I know I did, and I had a lot of problems from adjusting from childhood to adulthood. And one of the things I'm going to say here is, you know, how we're going to talk about how not to respond to a controlling spouse. Respect everyone and love your Christian brothers and sisters, it says in 1 Peter 2.17. An overly controlling spouse is the cause of many a troubling marriage. Living with a controlling spouse kills the spirit. And when one spouse treats the other as a child, that person has violated basically the basic idea of marriage. So marriage is a partnership that must be built on mutual respect. And you'll see that I had no mutual respect in my marriage whatsoever. So that's a big, big problem. Um, the basic building blocks of any marriage are two are better than one, the Bible says, right? So, but when one makes all the decisions alone or hurts the other one, the value of two minds is totally wasted. And it says in Ephesians 5.25, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her. Well, I totally agree with that. And I wish I would have been saved long before my 30s because I didn't know God. I played church, and that did not help any. Um, it took something horrific, like a gun being held to my head for the third time, before I decided to go to the altar. And when you do go to that altar, it changes your life. It just there's something God does to you that changes your life. I can't explain it, but the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and you want to know you have a hunger for God like you've never had in your life. And um, if you're to look at my Bible, you would think that I'm the highlighting queen, but it's it's the Holy Spirit. It just wants to take over and you want to learn as much as you can. And it's something very special. But I played church and I have no problem admitting that. When I say play church, I'm going to explain that to you. I would sit in the pew and I would listen and I would start to understand, but I didn't have salvation. I didn't admit my sins. I knew Jesus died on the cross for my sins, but I didn't go and admit it to a pastor, to the congregation, or out loud. I didn't, I didn't do what I needed to do. I didn't feel the urge to just say it and to believe it and to truly feel it through my body. And when you finally do that, it will change you. But back to out of the frying pan into the fire, because if I would have done that, this would not have happened to me. And I pray I can save somebody else from going through what I did. Because when I left my parents' home, I was 17 and a half years old. And I moved as far away as I could get. And here I am in Tennessee. I got tired of financially supporting my mom and dad, my brother and my sister, and I worked 40 hours a week, as you know, paid $100 to $125 a month. And um I had a side hustle selling Avon for my mom so that she could have her nail polish and her lipstick. Dad always asked for more money, saying he could he'd borrow it and he'd pay me back. But you know, I never saw that. I even had to pay for $900 for a station wagon, his motor blew up. But I never saw that money back either. Never even saw the title. Um, he drank, he did pop pills, second all. He smoked, he gave me my first drink and my first cigarette, but deep down, my dream was not to be like them. I never wanted to say what they said, I never wanted to be like them. My dream was to be a great mom with a bunch of kids and a white picket vent. But when I looked in the mirror, I didn't see what others saw. I didn't think I deserved any better. So just as most do, you go from the frying pan to the fire. So I married a man worse than my father. He beat me worse, he drank more, he gambled way more. He took and did a lot worse drugs, drugs I had never heard of, never seen. I thought it was love. I thought the beatings were love. I thought the black eyes would love. Well someone was detected at your pray tell it wasn't love. There were even guns involved. Guns held to my head, where I was told if I breathed wrong, my head would be blown off. If I cried, my head would be blown off. If I moved, my head would be blown off. 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 6 says, Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. Leviticus 25, 35 through 43, it states somewhere in there, rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And in verse 8, it says, Love never ends. Well, I never knew that until November of 24 when I met the man of my dreams. I'd already lived here for about two months when I met him. And um it came into my life at a very special time when I was probably at the worst point of my life, and he probably saved my life. And um I was actually thinking about going back to Florida, and he is a pastor, and he came into my life, and three weeks in he asked me to marry him, and I just said yes. It's like God overtook my words, and the first thing I thought was, I can't be a pastor's wife. I can't, there's no way I can be a pastor's wife. But love never ends, and it truly doesn't, because in Ecclesiastics 4.12 it says two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. Though a man, and in 4.12 it says, though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him, for a three-chord is not quickly broken. We believe that because God is who we love first. We did a three-chord marriage and we braided that three-chord with God being at the top and us both loving him more than each other, and we braided that three-chord, and we have that three-chord hanging on our wall because we are entwined with God. And I wish I would have understood that prior to this marriage, because it would have changed my life. But even after having a gun held to my head, I stayed. He would be out all night long. I stayed. He cheated, I stayed, he beat me, I stayed. But then one day I became pregnant. For me at that moment, I gave up. I didn't want my son to be raised like that. I actually pray he would change. Even though I didn't know God, I started praying. But it only got worse. He was out most nights all night with his ex-wife. He actually got her pregnant while I was pregnant. He told her lies about me. Left me with no food while I was pregnant, no money, no transportation. And yes, the car that he was driving was mine. He never came to the birth of his son. But I made sure I got my car back and I traded it in on little blue Honda since he wanted it. He gave me the cash value. Not long after I gathered myself my car and what savings I had from being a waitress, and I had my son and I filled that Honda and went right back to the frying pan. Yep, that means my dad's house. Where I was too old to punish now or too old to spank. I started drinking and tending bar. Of course, tending bar, you start drinking. I paid my father rent and I paid him also to babysit, so he was finally making some good money. And as soon as I had enough money saved up, I got my own apartment. But I let my father continue to babysit my son for the safety of my son's sake. Because my divorce was scary. It was quick and it was quiet and it was to the point because my ex-husband told me if I had asked for child support, he would kill me. But he also told me he was going to find me. That scared me even more, because he said he was going to get come after his son. He knew where I was, but he also was afraid of my father. So I felt safe with my son at my dad's house. But when my dad died, not long after, I had to go on the run. I was on the East Coast, the West Coast, all over Florida, finally settling in Lakeland, moving multiple times there. Once he called and told me right where I was, and he was around the corner. I remember pushing out the screen out of my son's bedroom, holding my son's little arms while his feet almost touched the ground. And I had him standing there in his pajamas. He was now four years old. I went to my safe, I took my gun out, I put it in the back of my pants, I left my purse, my money, and everything behind. I was barefoot. I ran to my girlfriend's house almost a half a mile down the road carrying my son. Only to realize I couldn't t continue to do this. When I knew I left Tennessee and I couldn't continue to do it, I remember hearing gunshots in this little yellow car. That child was strapped in the car seat. And he was in the front seat and there were holes all along the side of that car. But the motor didn't get hit. He didn't get hit. The child didn't get hit. All by the grace of God. God had to be with me all these times. And yet I wasn't thanking him and I wasn't saved. That's a gracious God. It was quiet again for a bit. A few days later my girlfriend and I went and gathered all my things, packed it up, and we moved yet to another spot. But for how long would I be safe, and how long would my son be safe? Tending bar was the easiest way to stay on the run. And that's not a career nor a life for a child, nor for a mother. I had to finally sit down and make the most unselfish grown-up decision of my entire life. One that would change my life and my son's life forever. I decided to give my son up for adoption to a Christian adoption agency. He was fostered immediately and adopted immediately by the foster parents. It haunted me for the remainder of my days. At first I started to drink and drink very heavily. And of course, I met a man. And that man we will discuss in the next session. God is much better than we know. There are two typical ways to respond to a controlling spouse. You can argue to them or you can submit to them. Neither leads to a genuine unity. Arguing with a controller is useless because you cannot win. You can extend the argument for hours and hours and hours and hours, but you'll never win. A controlling person will not give in. As an alternative to arguing, you can choose the road of submission. And that's even worse because you're either beaten or you just crawl into a hole and cry. They think, I'll go along with my spouse just to keep the peace, and then you become this meek person that is will you you don't even know yourself anymore. But this renders the person a slave to the controller's demands, and the slaves eventually rebel. External peace and internal turmoil is not the biblical ideal of marriage at all. The biblical ideal is two people willingly seeking to meet each other's needs, but putting God first. Mutual love, respect, and consideration are the marks of a Christian marriage, but keeping God first. I'd like to end this in prayer. Father God, I pray that everybody's relationship is to honor you. Please show us the best way to respond to our spouses when he or she tries to exert too much control over each other. Please guard them from trying to control themselves or each other. Help us to be respectful and considerate towards each other and always put you at the very top and love you more than we love each other. Without you, we will never have the three-fold cord, and it will never be quickly broken. We pray this in your holy name. Amen. This is Cindy Lu, closing from Just Pray Overt from Beautiful Tennessee. I pray you all have a blessed day.