July 4, 2016mkayfriend

Strange Bedfellows

messy bed - colour change and lighting

Like most moms, I am trying to get use to the Summer schedule with my daughter being home full time.  I hadn’t been out for a run since last Wednesday so I decided today needed to be a long one!  As usual, I was listening to the Holy Spirit to dictate my route. As I headed toward my house He gently said, “Just because you are near home doesn’t mean I want you to go inside and make yourself comfortable.”  I was only half way through my run and still had a long way to go.  Home was not where I belonged at that moment.

I am sure it must have been like that for Jesus during His years of ministry.  Home could no longer be comfortable.  In fact home would have been the very place that derailed His ministry!

Mark 6:4 (NLT)

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his hometown and among his relatives and by his own family.”
As we believers allow the Holy Spirit to grow us up in the Lord, we find that behaviors and rituals from our childhood are no longer profitable or useful in our constantly elevating walk with Christ.  We are being transformed and the old, unhealthy aspects of our upbringing must be removed as we are moving from glory to glory.
Some good examples would be having grown up in a home with passive-aggressive anger tendencies or lack of affection and kind words.  Maybe you grew up under a heavy religious spirit or addiction. The goal would be to receive healing and then not repeat this behavior with our own children.  We all grow up in some level of dysfunction because no one is the perfect parent.
Some of us live near our hometown and family, yet others move far away.  One thing seems to be a common denominator between the two……..When you go home, you don’t feel like the spiritual giant that God is transforming you into.  Why?  The old things have now become strange bedfellows.  Oxford Dictionaries:

bedfellow

Pronunciation: /ˈbedˌfelō/

noun

1A person who shares a bed with another.

Example sentences
1.1A person or thing allied or closely connected with another: the treaty will make strange bedfellows of a number of enemies

Sometimes when we enter back in to that familiar place, we fall into our old role.  We feel like the old person we use to be because we allow friends and family to put the old stigma and attributes that we once walked in right back on us.  Don’t come into agreement with that.  They are old, now strange bedfellows that you are no longer partnering with.
Summertime brings with it lots of family celebrations.  It can be a struggle to enter into the family zone and still maintain who you have become in Christ.  Many people actually feel stifled in the old, familiar environment.  For others, their gifts of the spirit seem lackluster and they are unable to preform the same level of miracles, signs and wonders in that old place.
Mark 6:1-6 (NLT)

6 Soon afterwards he left that section of the country and returned with his disciples to Nazareth, his hometown. 2-3 The next Sabbath he went to the synagogue to teach, and the people were astonished at his wisdom and his miracles because he was just a local man like themselves.

“He’s no better than we are,” they said. “He’s just a carpenter, Mary’s boy, and a brother of James and Joseph, Judas and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us.” And they were offended!

4 Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his hometown and among his relatives and by his own family.” 5 And because of their unbelief he couldn’t do any mighty miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he could hardly accept the fact that they wouldn’t believe in him.

Then he went out among the villages, teaching.

The way I see it is Jesus was showing us that we need to understand if it happened to Him, it’s definitely gonna happen to us.

If you are the only one from the old place running after God, it will feel like you hopped into the wrong bed when you’re mingling with people who aren’t in the same place spiritually, even if they are blood relatives.  I have noticed that most people need a few days of turn around time to get their footing back as they return to their own, new territory after a family event.

So how can we avoid all of this?  I believe there are three key factors that will help you enter the family zone and maintain your identity.

  1.  Understand familiar spirits.  Sometime we have a propensity to fall back into things and we need to understand it in order to be victorious over it.  I have provided a link here to a great, short article on how familiar spirits come into play under the new covenant.  Please take a minute to read: https://weltonacademy.com/blogs/jonathanwelton/the-generational-curse-myth
  2. Focus on the good.  Before entering in to the familiar, think on nothing but lovely, uplifting attributes for each person in the family.  During any event, stay so focused on those that you are sincerely complimenting and lifting up others around you with your words and serving others.  This will help to keep you in the secret place with God.
  3.   Operate in nothing but the love of Christ.  I think that 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 lays out the instructions.
    So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

    Love never gives up.
    Love cares more for others than for self.
    Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
    Love doesn’t strut,
    Doesn’t have a swelled head,
    Doesn’t force itself on others,
    Isn’t always “me first,”
    Doesn’t fly off the handle,
    Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
    Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
    Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
    Puts up with anything,
    Trusts God always,
    Always looks for the best,
    Never looks back,
    But keeps going to the end.

    Do you have tips that help you navigate old, familiar places?  Please share!

    Be Blessed

 

 

 

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