Power of Women

A woman holds the power to build her household or to tear it down. The choice is yours as a woman to do it Gods way or to follow the destructive ways in the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Mind Over Me, and my name is Stephanie. This will be a very real look into my mind, and I will hold nothing back about what I learned on how to shift the mind over me. I've been through cycles of depression and pain, self-destructive tendencies, and have spent my life healing from it all by the grace and mercy of God. If you can relate, let's dive in. Hello and welcome to episode number two. I'm glad you guys are still with me. Hope to keep this going to where I can touch your heart and show you how I overcame the mind over me. Today I would like to expose my heart concerning the mind that I had in a very dark time. I'm not going to go into my husband's story. I'm just going to tell you exactly what I went through and how I overcame my part that I was involved in concerning his 17 years of depression. So hold on. I I really got myself into a battle that I thought I couldn't win. And yet the Lord was still with me because he never leaves us or nor forsakes us. And he was always good to me and always helping me through what I was going through. He was a gentleman and he kept letting me do what I thought I knew was best. For 17 years, my husband was in a deep, dark depression. And it wasn't, it wasn't like he was, oh, feeling a little down about himself. It was an all-out demonic assignment put on his life where he thought that God had pulled away from him, that God had left him for something that he had done. I don't know what that was. He couldn't figure out what it was that he did wrong. But for 17 years, he hated himself, he hated his life, and he was angry at God. Meanwhile, during that 17 years, while he was struggling, I was praying for him and trying to figure out myself what was going on with him. So I went to some very dark places. I had my own issues I was dealing with, with uh borderline personality disorder. I was dissociating a little over 22 years ago, and I was in some very dark things in my own mind because of the abuses that I endured growing up. So having to help him, which is what I thought I was supposed to do, I also had to help myself until it all came to a head and things started to change. I want to start by reading in Proverbs 14:1. And it says in the New King James Version, the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands. When I really did a study on that, hands in this verse means the strength according to power. By her power, her means, or her direction, she tears it down. In the King James Version, it says she plucketh, which means to break down, overthrow, beat down, destroy, or to be ruined. So what I was doing in my marriage was even though I was praying and I thought that I was praying from a place of faith, I was not seeing any fruit, any progress. So I began to reach out to other people. I reached out to people in my household. Well, they didn't know what to do. They said simply, oh, I'll pray. But then when nothing happened there and there was no fruit, I continued outward of the household. In ignorance, I was breaking down my relationships and most importantly, my marriage. I was pleading my cause with people. I was praying from a place of pain. And then I was looking to some other human being that might have the answers. I was lost in his depression. I was lost in what I was dealing with in my own heart and in my own mind. And I did everything from a place of pain. I would plead my cause, and when my motives finally changed, it was because I had disrupted relationships around me, even outside of my marriage. I perpetuated my own grief in my heart because I was reaching out to men and women who might be able to help me. Maybe they have the answer. Maybe they know how to get to my husband and make him see himself in Christ instead of seeing himself as lost and forsaken and left alone to deal with his own pride and his own pain. I was trying to explain to people what he was going through, but because it was in a place of pain that I was bringing such revelations about my husband, who people really didn't know his struggle and what he had been through. And I was asking for help for him. Why? Well, nobody likes to see their loved ones in pain or struggling or dealing with such loss of spiritual awareness of God in their life. But this was from such a place of pain that I wanted him fixed so that I could deal with myself and so that I wouldn't be hurting because of what he was going through. The subject of my pain was always directed at other people. The Proverbs 31 woman eluded me. And as I perpetuated this grief, I went deeper and deeper into a deadened mindset towards God. At one point, I even lost my best friend. The motives that I had, I had this revelation that the motives were wrong. Something was off, but I didn't know how to get out of it. I had been telling people about what my husband was doing. Like he was angry all the time. He was screaming and yelling and cussing, and he was turning to drugs and alcohol to deaden the pain that he was feeling in his mind. He wasn't out partying with friends. He wasn't out living a lascivious lifestyle. It was more of a private, I drink alone type of thing. And he was doing it so that he could calm his mind. And those things bothered me because I had this religious mindset that said, oh, well, a Christian man shouldn't drink and shouldn't do drugs. And I had come to a place where I had stopped loving at all times. A friend loves at all times. And I was failing. I was failing as a Christian. I was failing as a wife. I was failing as a woman of prayer, a woman of faith. I was going down into my own deep darkness. I stood at the gates of my city, and my husband was not well known. My husband was ill-known. I had stopped praising my husband for what good was in him, what good I did see about him. But it wasn't like I was telling the whole world. I was just telling friends, people I thought I could trust, people I thought I could expose his heart to, which was really not my place. So I had no inner peace and I saw no fruit, no change. There was just nothing but pain and heartache going on. And then I became absent at the gate of my city. I was hiding in the city looking for a companion to agree with my pain. I thought if someone could see that they then would set him right. Yeah. So self-righteous. If he could only see how he's hurting me, maybe he'll change. This is not how a hurting person thinks that they'll change because they're hurting someone else. It it there's a freedom that was lacking in him that he needed, not that I was the one that had to make him see. But during the years of his depression, I would go through these ebbs and flows of building up and tearing down, building up and tearing down. And I got exhausted. I was exhausted from it. I reached out finally to who my best friend was at the time. And this last episode cost me my best friend. I was desperate. So I reached out. I knew I didn't want to talk about my husband anymore. God had told me that what I was doing was I was tearing down my household, like the Proverbs 14. I was being unwise. I was being a repeater of matters. And I was destroying my relationship with him because it kept setting my mind against him, which is exactly what the enemy wanted. When I reached out to her, I wanted to talk about me. There was something wrong in my heart. I didn't know how to deal with it. I was so deep in my pain that I was dealing with between my own childhood and my husband and his depression. But something was wrong. Something was off in my heart. I knew that I was desperate. So I asked her to counsel me and to leave him out of it. But the problem was is the center of my pain kept coming up that it was his depression. It was his issues that were affecting me. He was the focus of my wrong heart. I wanted somebody to finally deal with my broken heart without bringing him into it. But here's the problem that we have in most people's ministry. It's like John has said before. Can you love the poor without despising the rich? A friend loves at all times. John was not my problem. I was my problem. And that's a hard place to come to. We want to blame everybody else for our pain. We want to blame everybody else for what we go through. You hurt me, you made me feel bad. You spoke things that I felt were untrue. You questioned my character. You questioned my motivation. You betrayed me. Pick your poison. We think that everybody else is the one who is responsible for making us angry, making us hurt, making us upset. But really the problem is within. It was always me. It was always me. Did he do things that hurt me? Yeah. Did he do things with intention to hurt me? No. So when my mock counseling, quote unquote mock counseling, seemed to create a hatred in her for my husband, our relationship suffered. Ladies, listen. Our friendships and relationships are private. Now, if you can find someone who can love you and the person you struggle with, you have found something special. If they don't despise them while loving you, then that is a real friend. Proverbs 17, 17 says, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A friend loves at all times, all times, not when it's convenient, not when it makes you look good, not when it feels good. But a friend loves at all times. And a brother is born for adversity. This love is without break. This love doesn't hate the one who hurt the other. The brother of adversity reveals the selfish motives to restore the heart of the offended. This is what I needed. I needed someone to tell me that the way that I was feeling is my fault. It's not anyone else's fault. They didn't make me. God made me. And I'm telling you, sisters, He made you. If I said something to offend you, if I said something that hurt your feelings, if I betrayed you, it came from the depths of darkness inside of me. But I didn't make you the betrayed. In your own mind, you alienated yourself from the knowledge of God that He made you and that you can live in a place of love even though you've been hurt. So this brother that offends, they won't defend your stance. Love doesn't defend a wrong heart. They won't agree with you just simply to make you feel better and to make you think you are right. This brother, his stance or her stance is reconciliation. Not necessarily with the offender, depending on the situation, of course, but this brother restores the offended to a right heart. The goal of offense is to get you off of the love of God, to get you to think ill of yourself or others. So I got bogged down in my pain and only thought of myself. And then one day the Lord told me, You are the sheep. And I'm like, Okay, yeah, and I feel like I'm always offered up for slaughter. And he said, Sheep don't have sharp teeth. And that that blew me away. That like floored me. Sheep don't have sharp teeth. Sheep are always led into slaughter. They're always led into being fleeced. But yet they go about their business. After being fleeced, they go about their business. They fellowship with the other sheep, they run with the other sheep, they play with the other sheep, they do what sheep do. But they never turn and rend on each other. So what was it that broke me? Was it the pain that I was in? No. Was it the counseling that I sought from everyone? No. Was it losing my best friend over this issue? No. What broke this wide open for me? I had gone through that last episode drinking until I was in a stupor. My mind was so overloaded, and I thought this has got to be the way to get some kind of relief. So I was drinking on a daily basis. Was I addicted? No. Can I still have alcohol today? You might think I shouldn't, but I can handle alcohol now. I wasn't addicted to it. I was using it for medicine. That doesn't mean that everybody should. I shouldn't have. It took my dependence off of the Holy Spirit. It took my eyes off of God. And it put it solely on myself. I was responsible for myself to ease the pain that I was in. And it got so bad that one day when I was at my best friend's house, this was towards the end of her being my best friend. I stood in her kitchen and I was as drunk as a skunk. And she looked at me and she said, You are drunk. And it was this condemnation that I felt. And I looked at her and I was so arrogant. So arrogant. I said, and it's working. And she was taken aback by that. I didn't drink after that night for a very, very long time. After seeing who I was without my dependence on God, I knew that something had to change. I just didn't know what. I said, God, I don't know what to do. After all this, I finally got honest with God. I don't know what to do. I've prayed, I've read your word, I did what I was supposed to, and now I'm in a rut and a really bad place. And I don't know what to do about it. And I need you. So I walk into the room one day, and my husband is watching a guy called Dan Moeller. If you don't know who Dan Moeller is, I suggest that you look him up. When I first heard the things that Dan Moeller was saying, I was very angry. Oh man, I just I went through the roof. I hated this man. I despised him because he is the brother that was made for adversity. He started to penetrate my heart. It would make me mad. My husband would put him on and I would walk out of the room. My husband would listen to him and quote him, and I'm going, shut up. I don't want to hear it. I was still angry from the 17 years of depression that he went through. I was still focused on myself and my own pain and how I had to deal with him on top of healing my own heart from the things that I dealt with. And every time I would walk away angry, the Spirit of God would raise up in me and say, Sheep don't have sharp teeth. I'm like, yeah, well, I don't feel like a sheep right now. I feel like a bull. I got horns and I'd love to ram them right into that TV. But the more he put Dan Moeller on, and the more I listened to him, the more my heart started to soften. And I started to see how much I had made my whole problem about me. And the Lord really started to show me some places where I had not prayed in faith, places I did, and then places where I got to the point where I would pray from my pain. I don't know if any of you can relate, but when you're only thinking of you, how does that make you feel? I felt really bad. Because the basis of most of my thinking my whole life is nobody loves me, nobody cares what I think, and nobody wants to know what I have to say. Nobody wants to hear it. That's a deep dark place because behind all of those statements, there's a why for each one of them. And it's all sensual, worldly, demonic wisdom that I picked up from all of my experiences that it was all the evidence of my experiences that solidified those what I called truths. So one day, after my heart had been starting to soften, it was a really cold day, and we were snowed in. We had been down that road and we took care of that. So how can we restore my heart to my husband, his heart to be trusted in my hands, and for you to be able to come in and just bind this marriage together like it's meant to be in you? And the Lord asked me, Will you give him to me? Will you give him to me? And I fell on the floor and I wept. The only answer was yes. But the magnitude in which he showed me what he was asking for, I didn't realize until that moment that he had asked me. He blew it all up in my face. You have made John the Lord of your life. Is not the uh it's like I get I get choked up there, I get my mind goes into places where I had allowed John to be the dictator of my heart, and he wasn't trying to be. He didn't even know that that's what was happening. But underneath how he behaved, the things that he did, the things that he said, the force in which his words came out of his mouth, the faith power that came behind his words, they were so powerful. I would try to make sure there was nothing that would upset him because he was angry all the time. And when he did get angry, I'd try to calm him down. I I was trying to do all of my life surrounding keeping John padded. And it it wasn't even until about, I don't know, maybe six months ago, the Lord told me, if you continue to pad him, when will he ever be able to learn from me? And I said, I'm sorry, Lord. Teach me to keep my mouth shut, teach me to build my house. I don't want to be the foolish woman who tears down her house with her hands. I want my power to be used for good. We all have a power inside of us. It's even in Ephesians, he can do exceedingly abundantly. Unto him, unto him, he can do exceedingly abundantly above all you ask or think, according to the power that works in us. How are we going to use our power? Will it be for good or for selfish ambitions? Because in my immaturity, I was using it for selfish ambitions. I was using my power to draw other people in to try and correct my husband. And when I stopped doing that, the train was already moving. It was too late to stop it. I didn't have a real plan except for somebody help me. Help me, help me. It was all about me. And I knew that I knew that on some level it was right. It was me that was causing the problem. It was me giving power to the enemy. It was me tearing down my own house. I wasn't as close to my husband as I wanted to be. I wasn't as close to my friends as I wanted to be. And every time I had a problem with a person, I had to have somebody to talk to about it. I had completely left Holy Spirit out of the process. I excused him and said, I got this, I'm gonna deal with this. Somebody's got to have some wisdom in this earth that can do it. I was earthly minded and I was using my power, not for good, but for evil. I wasn't doing it on purpose. I was ignorant. I didn't know what I was doing. But now that I know, you're not gonna catch me talking bad about my husband. You're not gonna catch me talking bad about anybody trying to work out why they said this or why they did that. And now I'm in a place where if somebody comes to me and wants to talk to me about another person, I deal with that person's heart, not the person they brought to me to talk about. And that makes the person feel like they are the enemy because they can't get you on their side. But a brother is born for adversity. If you're going to go to the brethren and talk to them, if they're not correcting your heart and they're only agreeing with you, they're not your friend. They're not your friend. I encourage you to help them with their heart, not agree with their pain. When you agree with their pain, you become akin to the problem. You you become you become one of the power supplies to continue the lie that that person made that person this or that. But you've been made the righteousness of God in Christ. That's what you've been made. And when you allow somebody else to make you, you're gonna use your power to tear down your house. And I know I know that this podcast seems kind of deep and dark, and and it is not with a light heart that I talk about certain issues, and this is one of them, because I've watched the destruction of my friendships throughout the years. I've watched the destruction of families because of my mouth or my power. I have wrecked too much, and now I'm going through the process of rebuilding. Can I have the same relationships I had before? No, no, it's it's not gonna be the same anymore because I don't want you to agree with my pain. I don't want to agree with your pain. I want to agree with what Christ has done, and that's what we really we want to do. Your purpose, our purpose as the brethren is to love each other. Bible says that we will Jesus, Jesus said, they will know you are my disciples by your love for one another. Not because you overcame your pain that your brethren gave you. When Jesus was dealing with this, and Peter said, How many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times? And Jesus said, No, it's gonna be about 490 times a day. A day? You mean I'm gonna have to be betrayed, talked bad to, abused emotionally and mentally, verbally, maybe even physically, and I have to forgive them. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't have to give your heart to everybody. People who people most people can't handle your heart. But Jesus can. Jesus wants your heart. There's no one in this world that will love you like Jesus. There's no one in this world that will know you like Jesus. Holy Spirit has all the answers. The Trinity is within you and is asking for permission. They want permission to come in and change your world for you, to build you up, make you the light of the world. A city set on a hill. A beacon of love and the kind of adversity that changes a person for the good. Sheep don't have sharp teeth. I'm done biting people. I'm done biting them. And as a sheep, all I'm doing is gnawing on them. And I don't want to do it anymore. That was my stance. And that's what began to change me. I started seeing the value of people because I'm starting to see the value of myself in God. This was the mind over me, and it continues to change. My love gets deeper for the brethren. My love gets deeper for the sinner. My love gets deeper for the ungodly. For the broken, for the downtrodden. But I'm also born for adversity. I'm born to help you see that your heart does not belong to anyone else. It belongs to him. You belong to him. You fit in his kingdom. He tailors you to the robe of righteousness. He tailors you. You don't tailor yourself. The ultimate goal is to live our lives by the life of Christ. To be the life of Christ in the earth. To show forth his glory. Be the light. Be the light and take control over the mind over you. We can do it together. God bless you and stick around because there's more to come. I really appreciate you listening to the podcast today. If you found the content relatable or know someone who might, please like and share. Stay tuned because you never really know what might be said. I really hope to hear from you soon.