Knots
Pt. 4 - Knot Keeping
We talked about how our relationship status is the number 1 way of categorizing people in our society. We are either a "have knot" or "have no knot". Relationships can either be one of the greatest blessings in your life or they can produce more pain than drugs, bankruptcy or sickness combined. In order for us to survive relationships we must learn to navigate knots.
So in week 1 we talked those with no knots:
1. Get God involved early in the selection process. Otherwise you will then have to ask Him to perfect what He didn't select. We make a mistake and then ask Him to clean up! 2. If you want to have a garden experience, then you can't bring someone into your garden from the swamp. Good seed doesn't turn bad soil into good soil. Soil usually influences seed not vice versa. 3. You need to know who you are and you shouldn't mess with anyone who doesn't know who they are. They will suck the purpose out of you if they don't know who they are!
In week 2, I talked to those with knots. We talked about
1. What wins . . . keeps. We work hard to win someone and then seem to quit doing what we did to win so we don’t keep. Marriage is work . . . period. Perfect marriages are the product of work. 2. Work for the prescribed time frame! We want a quick fix or a change in 1 week. The prescribed time is until death. It will take time. 3. Work early. Make preemptive strikes to protect us instead of just taking measures to protect you. There are few mountain climbers left only mountain viewers that see a mountain and then leave. Therefore, you must deal with your molehills before they become mountains!
Then last week (at least in the 2nd Service) I talked to those with no knots about dating for data. We do in dating what we should be doing in marriage and then we want to punish our spouse because we do in marriage what we should have done in dating which is gather data. It is during dating that we must determine if we can handle a person's heart and therefore their issues. It isn't about whether they can kiss good. It is about are they a person of character and integrity. I also mentioned that we must avoid those who keep us tied in knots emotionally. It isn't normal to be in constant chaos or turmoil. Wear protection . . . peace! If God is not the author of confusion then finish the equation. If chaos is a curse then it comes not from God but the enemy and we expose ourselves to his schemes if we fail to keep peace.
So let's finish this series today on Valentine's Weekend by talking to those who have knots!
Matthew 1:18-24
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” which means “God with us”. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.
I would like to draw your attention this very familiar account. This isn't typically an account you reference when dealing with or addressing relationships. But perhaps we need to reexamine carefully for some subtle truths that could help us keep our knots tied!
You know the story but stop and think about it again. An angel shows up to a virgin teenage girl and says you are going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and her response is "Be it unto me!" That is pretty amazing. But Joseph's experience, at least from the man's perspective, may be just as amazing. Put yourself in his situation. Your fiancée shows up and informs you that she is pregnant and you know you aren't the father. Now don't get it twisted we get a small glimpse into his thought process and emotional state when Matthew tells us he decides to divorce her quietly to save her disgrace. But after a dream he obeys and does as commanded.
1. Feelings Can Cause Knot Failure
You need to read the account carefully. We relegate this to just a Christmas story, sanitized and as if the characters in the account are some kind of robots! You need to reread it and understand that Joseph was hurt. My virgin, clean fiancée who I have probably been betrothed to for some time sits down with me at dinner and announces that she is pregnant and then to top it off she is saying it was the Holy Spirit that did this to her! Where is this person called the Holy Spirit? We gonna have a come to Jesus talk. So . . . now I am supposed to keep you around when you have been used, second hand, leftovers? So Joseph has feelings . . . believe me. However, this account teaches us a couple things about how to deal with feelings!
He trusted God more than his feelings! Some of us are still educated beyond our level of obedience. We know the steps, the things, the efforts that would keep our marriage strong or heal our marriage but we refuse to obey God because our feelings have changed. We have read more relationships books, been to countless counseling sessions, and attended more conferences than necessary and yet we continue to refuse to forgive, go the extra mile, handle carefully, speak softly, simply because we trust and obey our feelings more than we trust or obey God. I want you to hear me carefully. It is OK to have emotions and feelings. God gave them to you. But you can't live emotionally and you certainly can't trust your emotions! Your emotions will lead you astray and into pain. Some of you are allowing your emotions to take you places that God never intended for you to be in the first place! Now you are praying for God to heal your emotions when you should be praying for God to heal your obeyer! Because your emotions weren't supposed to drive in the first place and so now your emotions are destroyed because they were out front! If you would have obeyed your emotions would have been whole right now! Listen it is OK to feel. If you feel you are alive! It's just that you can't let feelings trump or become God! Feelings should be felt but not favored!
The second thing we see is that Joseph cared enough that he didn't want her disgraced. In other words, in spite of his own hurt feelings he cared more about her feelings than his own. Knots are failing simply because we have lost a necessary ability/choice that is crucial for a knot to be sustained. We don't prefer preferring! He preferred her feelings over his own. He preferred her reputation over his own. He preferred her future over his own. We don't prefer anyone else over us. It has become about my preferences, my rights, my wants, my choices, my longings. So then if my preferences, my rights, my wants hurt you, then that is just too bad it is your problem not mine. Oh, don't get me wrong we prefer them while dating. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? I don't care . . . where do you want to go? But now that the knot is tied we demand our rights! So now there is no shared TV remote. No negotiating schedules. No allowances for mistakes. No grace. No covering. My way or the highway. Preference is about covering! Joseph covered her. Covering like an umbrella. Doesn't mean there is no rain. Just means I will keep you from getting wet! We want to uncover and he covered! We must learn to prefer again. He was able to fight through feelings because. . .
He was faithful to the law. Not to love. To law. Our society has elevated love beyond loyalty, faithfulness, and even God. Joseph had issue with Mary's pregnancy but he had an affection not for Mary but for God. What kept Joseph connected to Mary wasn't his affection for Mary it was his affection for God. You have to come to the place where you love God enough that when your partner does something you don't like you stay in place because you love God. You must have an affection for something greater than your spouse so that when your partner does something that makes you want to leave you (and they will) you don't leave. Not out of faithfulness or even love but out of affection for God.
2. Revelation will prevent raveling.
We miss an important aspect of this account. We know Mary had a God encounter but we miss Joseph's encounter! We know Mary was impregnated with a redeemer. What we miss is that Joseph was impregnated with revelation! It was this revelation that kept the knot from raveling! Joseph got divine revelation about Mary! Some of you are struggling to keep your knot because you only have your revelation of your spouse. Or you have your mother's revelation of your spouse. Or your best friend's revelation of your spouse. But what does God say about them? You prayed before you tied the knot and said, "God if they are the one then . . ." but now that they are doing things we don't like we fail to go and consult the revelation that He apparently gave us to begin with! What has God said to you about them?
What is in them is from the Holy Spirit but you may just be the key to opening the door to allow for the birth of that miracle. If Joseph had not had a revelation about Mary and the baby she could have been publicly stoned! Some of you are beating and berating the life out of your spouse because you have no revelation that what is being birthed in them is from God. You married them thinking they were going one way, pursuing one career, headed one direction and now all of sudden out of nowhere they want to go back to school, switch directions, start becoming a different person and you never get a revelation that this might just be part of their God ordained destiny. So now you are fighting in fact trying to abort what God is trying to birth in them. If you are not careful you can kill the destiny in your spouse. You are too old to go back to school! You are putting our dreams at risk! You aren't home enough! And in the process the baby is at risk. Get somewhere and ask God is this from you? I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable and uneasy but I will not fight what you have ordained because I know the baby is worth my nervousness and uneasiness.
3. Shadows Can Cause Slipknots.
Joseph was comfortable in the shadow of his spouse. When you go back over the account of Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection Mary is a constant it seems. She is front in center. But where is Joseph? A couple of fleeting, brief, background mentions. What we discover is that God put Mary with someone who refused to let ego get in the way of her purpose. A God send. Before you tie the knot you better make sure the person you are considering marrying can do more than handle your emotions or struggles. You had better make sure they can handle your destiny. It takes a strong man or woman to walk in your shadow. And if they can't handle your destiny they will delay it, derail it and try to destroy it for their own ego's sake. What do you do when you spouse is asked to step onto a bigger stage than you have ever been elevated to? What do you do when your spouse is promoted? If your ego, your pride, your self esteem is so fragile that you can't handle their shadow you will fight to get out of the shadow and will almost always have to wound the person in the light to do it. See some of you are having problems because you both want the lime light! You are fighting each other for attention because your ego can't handle your spouse's destiny! Grow comfortable in their shadow. What you make happen for others God will make happen for you!
