Contents

• JUST VISITING
• DEALING WITH INFIRMITIES
• MIKAL'S MORSELS AND BYTES FOR THE FAMILY
  Will the "Real Thing" Please Stand Up?

Just Visiting

Mikal is back with an excellent article that helps us recognize the difference between romance and love. I was so impressed that I worked some of these concepts into my daughter's wedding ceremony. Mikal isn't against romance, but she sees the importance of having one's feet planted on the ground instead of in the air.

Back in 1988 I spoke at a weekend retreat near Memphis, Tennessee. After the last session, a man came up to me and said, "I know that the Bible teaches that the Spirit helps our weakness. Can you give me any good practical suggestions on how I can tap into the power of the Holy Spirit?" I don't recall just what I said. I do recall wondering, "How on earth am I going to handle this question? The man's question deserves a thoughtful answer. It has many applications for relationships in the family, especially when we're short tempered, self-centered, rude and hard to live with. I wish I had given the man in Memphis a better answer, but let me address the question after having given it a lot more thought.

The Greek term is "astheneia." The word is sometimes translated "disease," sometimes rendered as "sickness" and often sometimes translated "weakness." "Infirmity" is probably the most neutral translation. The term is used to mean different things in the scriptures.

In John 5:5, it refers to physical illness. It's the word which describes the handicap of the man Jesus saw lying by the pool of Bethesda. There are a number of other instances where the term has reference to a physical condition. In I Timothy 5:23, Paul said to Timothy, "Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses."

There are other times when the term refers to imperfections and weaknesses. In Romans 6:19, Paul told his readers they were ". . .weak in your natural selves." In II Corinthians 11:30, he used the same term in a positive sense when he said, "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness or my infirmity."

It also has reference to moral and spiritual shortcomings. In Romans 15:1, Paul said ". . . we ought to bear the failings of the weak." In that context weakness has spiritual and moral implications. In Hebrews 4:15, the writer wrote, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses." We know that has reference to spiritual and moral weakness, because the next statement said, "but we have one who has been tempted in every way as we were."

1. Some of us face the infirmities from the past.

Things have happened in our own personal lives that have not been resolved and our ability to mature in the faith and relate positively to other family members is stifled by these unresolved infirmities. In my own life, I've confronted this phenomenon several times and the way these things surface sometimes is rather strange.

As a child, I was often ridiculed by my peers. Children can be very cruel to each other. I could relate many instances in which I was the brunt of somebody's joke or the object of someone's scorn. I'll mention one small incident that really isn't very important in isolation, except that it is one of many such incidents that I dealt with during my growing up years. We had gone to a party for teenagers. It was well chaperoned. Parents monitored every move to make sure we didn't get out of line. I probably wouldn't have been invited except for the fact that the girl, who was inviting her friends, was a member of the church I attended. I figure her mother, who liked me, probably told her daughter she had to invite me.

At one point, we decided to go outside for some kind of activity. It was a sort of cool evening and you needed a jacket. Most of us were members of the football team and we had just received our letter jackets. When we first came to the party, we all laid our jackets on the bed. For some reason, the girls decided they wanted to wear the boys football jackets. So they made a run for the bed and started putting on jackets. Our names were sewn into each coat pocket. The girls naturally wanted to see whose jacket they were getting. One cute little girl picked up my jacket, saw my name and threw it back down on the bed in disgust. She failed to notice that I was watching. I guess I should have been happy that I got to wear my own jacket outdoors, but what I remembered from that incident was rejection.

That sense of not being worthy has followed me through much of my adult life. Even to this day, I have a tendency to put myself down and belittle myself. That's an infirmity from the past. It didn't stem from the letter jacket incident alone, but from a number of experiences in which I felt like I experienced rejection. Unfortunately, I thought I was being rejected because I deserved rejection. I now know that girl probably had more problems than I did.

It's helpful if we recognize our infirmities of the past and deal with them, but it is not helpful if we allow those infirmities to determine who we are and what we will do in the here and now. It's not helpful if we use the infirmities of the past as an excuse for the continuation of destructive behavior.

2. Some of our infirmities result from our frustration in having dealt with life's problems on a superficial level.

In an old "Peanuts" comic strip, Charlie Brown attempts to explain the mystery of life to his friend, Lucy. He says, "Be kind. Don't smoke. Be prompt. Smile a lot. Eat sensibly. Avoid cavities. Mark your ballot carefully. Avoid too much sun. Send overseas packages early. Love all creatures above and below. Insure your belongings and try to keep the ball low." Everything Charlie said is good, But Charlie Brown's answer really didn't deal with Lucy's question. Unfortunately, many of us listen to the Charlie Browns of the world in an attempt to resolve our problems.

Sometimes books, even books that profess to be Christian books are guilty of dealing with problems superficially. One well known theory of so-called Christian counseling suggests that counseling is simply a matter of locating the sin that a person has committed, confronting him with that sin and calling for repentance. Sometimes, that's what needs to be done, but many people have been emotionally damaged because they were approached that way.

At other times well meaning Christians say things like "Well, all you need to do is read your Bible and pray," or "you just have to trust God" or "you just need to have more faith." All of that's true, but sometimes people have tried those simplistic solutions. They didn't bring healing for their infirmities and their problems got worse. Worse yet, they became disillusioned with the Christian faith.

A man discovered a roach in his food while he was traveling on a dinner flight. He was so angry that he wrote a letter of protest to the president of the company. The president wrote back and said, "We've had the airplane fumigated. We stripped out all the seats and the upholstery. We took disciplinary action against the stewardess who served you. We are considering terminating her employment . It is highly probably that this aircraft will not be returned to service. I assure you that this will never happen again and we trust you will continue to fly with us." The protester was impressed by the letter until he noticed the president's hand written memo to the secretary, which was stuck to the back of the letter. It read "reply with a regular roach letter." Some of our efforts to help people with their infirmities fall into the "regular roach letter" category. Human problems are more complex than that. It is irrational to think we can think out a few well phrased answers that will cover all human problems.

When people are dealing with difficult infirmities, we make matters worse with our regular roach letters -trust God, read your Bible, pray, have more faith.

(3) Sometimes infirmities grow out of our failure to measure up to the standards that we think are expected of us.

I had that problem because I had a father who was hard to please. At least that's the way I read him at the time. I finally realized that his bark was worse than his bite, but I had the impression for many years that he was a man who couldn't be pleased. Some people transfer their feelings of being unable to please their parents to their feelings about God. They are afraid they will never be able to measure up to his expectations.

Step one involves your attitude.
One of the buzz words of our time is the word "mindset." It's really not a new concept. In Romans 8:5, Paul said, "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live according to the Spirit have their mindset on what the Spirit desires. " Tapping into the resource of the Holy Spirit begins with a conscious desire to want what God desires.

Those who work with Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs all know that the beginning point of alcoholic recovery is (1) one admitting that your are an alcoholic and (2) deciding you want to change. Admitting that you need to change may be harder than it appears on the surface. It's relatively simple to recognize the overt, visible forms of immorality as sin. Nobody has any problems seeing drunkenness, murder, adultery, theft and so on as sin.

But not being able to function in a responsible manner is also sin. So is the inability to love. So is unwillingness to forgive. So is not being joyful. It's also a matter of sin, when you place control games in your home, when your treat your spouse with disrespect, when you become so involved in other things and don't make time for the family. You must be able to recognize that such behavior is not what God wants and you must decide that's not what you want, in order to access the Spirit's help. The Spirit won't make up your mind for you.

Step two involves the harnessing of the will.
That also involves a decision on your part. In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul gave a list of the components of the Holy Spirit's fruit. When you're living a responsible, productive, joyful life, these things are going to be present. They include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. The NIV translation is perhaps unfortunate in one respect because the term "gentleness" does not really convey the same thing as "meekness." Meekness is a key ingredient to tapping into the Holy Spirit's power.

It means to be brought under control, to yield, to let God have his way. Originally it was a term that was used to describe the breaking of horses. Meekness is fundamental to dealing with infirmities, because when we have infirmities, that part of us is out of control. Notice how Paul admits that in Romans 8:26, "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Tapping into the Spirit's power involves a recognition of the fact that we don't know how to control our lives. In fact sometimes our thinking is so crazy, we don't even know what to pray for. To tap into the Spirit's power is admit that and say, "O.K. God. We'll do it your way."

That's not easy, because we don't always want to do that. Sometimes we are so comfortable and familiar with our infirmities that we actually harbor them, protect them and resist any suggestion that we give them up. Remember the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5. Jesus said, "Do you want to get well?" He was calling for him to yield control

Step three involves getting accustomed to relying on the Spirit's power.
I don't have to explain the promise. The Bible says the Spirit helps us with our infirmities. He intercedes for us. But we're used to independence. The idea of surrendering control - even to the Holy Spirit - is repulsive to some of us. It goes against our nature.

For that reason, we need to consciously and regularly check in with God on this matter. Garth suggests that if you're dealing with a problem, don't try to deal with it a day at a time. Deal with it 30 minutes at a time. If you're struggling with an infirmity, ask God about it. And don't worry about whether you're using the right language. The Spirit will take care of that. Thirty minutes later, ask God about it again. Ask for the strength to live responsibly for another thirty minutes and when that thirty minutes is up, ask for another thirty minutes. You'll be surprised how much difference this will make in your family, if you are regularly checking in with God about the way you are treating other members of your family.

What that does is get you used to depending on God. And we have to break our old pattern of dependency because most of us have been depending on ourselves and relying on God only when we are in a bind.

My Aunt Alta's breakfast table sat under a double window which overlooked her sprawling farm in Rising Star, Texas. There, I uttered perfectly ominous words, definitely "under the influence." I said to her, "I would be happy for the rest of my life in a tent out there in that pasture with Jim Frazier." The love bug had struck and I was smitten, with no hope for recovery. Reasoning with her old oak table would have been more successful. The crazy phenomenon duping my faculties was so intense it was painful.

Leaders in the field of marriage and family therapy recognize that kind of emotion to be fleeting, short-term, and without reason. The authors of The Mirages of Marriage refer to courtship or this "in-love-ness" as a "time of ecstatic paralysis." They also inform the reader that the Greek origin of the word ecstasy means "derange." Those under this spell are in a state of being beside themselves, beyond all reason and self- control. And many of us seem to believe the feeling will never diminish as did Cathy in Wuthering Heights when she requested Heathcliff to "Make the world stand still. Make the moors never change."

Dr. Frank Pittman, leading author and lecturer in marital therapy states, "there should be a clinical diagnosis called the 'romantic personality disorder,'" with the telltale symptom being a need to make everyone miserable. He states, "believing that in- love-ness is what marriage is about misses the whole point."

An article in the February 15, 1993, issue of Time Magazine calls this passion, "A mad conceit that the entire universe has rolled itself up into the person of the beloved." The terms ecstatic paralysis, mad conceit, derange, and romantic personality disorder should give rise to a serious reality check.

According to the Time Magazine article researchers have identified certain amphetamine type chemicals which flood the brain and produce the overwhelming euphoria experienced by those who have "fallen in love." And so why is this pleasure so short-lived? The fact that the body cannot accomplish this feat for more than two to three years explains the dwindling of delirious passion. But our bodies do not abandon us with no chemical support for lasting relationships. Continuing with your partner prompts the production of other chemicals which result in a feeling of security, calm, and peace.

I often have people tell me, "I love my spouse, but I'm not in love with my spouse." I want to tell them, "That's great because the in-love bit isn't a stable state anyway, and now you can get down to the business of reason and responsible living." The option is to become an attraction junkie and run from relationship to relationship chasing that titillating high. Pittman compares this lifestyle to passengers changing airplanes without stopping at the terminal. To follow the latter path leaves a trail of destruction for any children, your loved ones, and society at large.

NEXT WEEK'S FEATURE ARTICLE: "Goals for Marriage"