FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN
FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN
Sunday, February 1, 2015, the Year of Our Lord
Carolyn Sissom with passages from Love Is a Choice
Do you remember when you first fell in love with your mate? Life took on a whole new glow and excitement. Every fiber and being of our soul was alive and wanted to be with the beloved.
Do you remember when you were born again? And that same joy and delight filled your being with a fresh sense of love, acceptance, forgiveness and being loved by One who was willing to die for you.
Do you remember when you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the “joy unspeakable and full of Glory” filled your life?
I fell in love with the birth of each baby, watching the girl’s grow, each new home, and then the call and commission came for ministry. I fell in love with the fire in my belly of ministry. After seven years as pastor of a church, the Lord spoke to me and told me I had fallen out of love with my ministry. That could not have been a good thing. Yet, through His great grace, He stirred the fires of passion again and I fell in love with the ministry and pastorate at a second church in Texas.
As we make the journey of life, we may have short-seasons of falling in and out of love with the object of our love. On the first bad day, we don’t abandon our beloved, our children, our homes, our jobs, our ministries and certainly not our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For Jesus will never abandon us.
Because Jesus Christ is God, his love is unchangeable. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Mal. 3:6: “”For I am the Lord, I change not…”
Paul speaks in 11 Corinthians 6 of how he has suffered for the gospel and fulfilled the law of love. Verse 6, “by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned.”
“Feigned love is hate disguised. Love was so prevalent, and so strongly characterized the early church, that he who had it not was tempted to simulate it.” (Lipscombe, p.225)
“Love is primary, but if it is not sincere, it is not real love but only pretense. The whole of the believer’s conduct should be bathed in love. If he fails to love his brother, doubt is cast on his professed love for God.” (Expos. Comm., p.132)
The term codependency is feigned love which is an addiction to people, behaviors or things. Codependency robs marriages, families, and lives of the joy and happiness of healthy, happy, relationships.
Codependency is the fallacy of trying to control interior feelings by controlling people, things, and events on the outside. To the codependent, control or the lack of it is central to every aspect of life.
The codependent may be addicted to another person or persons. In this interpersonal codependency, the codependent has become so elaborately enmeshed in the other person that the sense of self---personal identity---is severely restricted, crowded out by that other person’s identity and problems.
Additionally codependents can be like vacuum cleaners gone wild, drawing to themselves not just another person, but also chemicals (alcohol or drugs, primarily) or things---money, food, sexuality, work. They struggle relentlessly to fill the great emotional vacuum within themselves. It has been described as walking around feeling like the hole in the center of the doughnut with something missing on the inside.
Satan copy cats love through co-dependency. “Adults from dysfunctional families end up with dysfunctional adult relationships.”
What is a healthy family? (From Love is a Choice)
- Sane, balanced parents, No depression, no mental illness, no extreme frustration with either life in general or some element of it. If depression was part of their past, they’ve dealt with it adequately.
- Non-addicted parents. In addition to the obvious—alcoholism or drug use—problem areas include such obsessive compulsions as workaholism, rageaholism, compulsive spending, eating disorders.
- Mature parents. Self-sufficient, able to deal with life.
- Parents with a positive, comfortable self-image.
- Parents who can relate appropriately to God. In the best case scenario, God is central to the family structure.
- Parents are committed to maintaining a happy marriage.
Usually people with a low level of codependency come from such families and build healthy families of their own.
A CODEPENDENT FAMILY:
- One or both parents are mentally unbalanced, preoccupied, frustrated, and unrealistic in their world view. If only one parent suffers thus, the other will be preoccupied with the ill mate.
- Parents addicted to alcohol, drugs, and work; consumed by rage or hungers; compulsive about things healthy people are casual about.
- Immature parents; especially parents who lean upon the children for nurturance, ego-bolstering, advice, and help.
- Parents in an uncomfortable relationship with God; one or both may be atheists (no relationship at all) or agnostics. Or they may be intensely religious but strongly behavior directed (if you act exactly right and look exactly right and think exactly right, God will accept you), extremely rigid in their theology (the only right way to relate to God is this way), and just adamant that the children follow exactly in the parents; theological footsteps. (Religious spirit)
The concept of dependency and codependency is no longer limited to alcohol. It takes in the full chemical spectrum. It further includes obsessive compulsion, a thing or a behavior carried to excess. Eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), sex addition, rage-aholism, work-aholism, the compulsion to spend and spend, an extremely rigid and legalistic approach to living, the compulsion to wash one’s hands fifty-five times a day. These disorders affect the family and close associates---who may suffer as severely as the dependent or more so.
The codependent suffers an unclear or faulty self-image and therefore tends to be come absorbed into other people.” This can be a spiritual trap for ministers. We have to know when we are ministering by the Spirit of the Lord or if we have become entrapped in a co-dependent relationship with a problematic person. This is why ministry must be by the Spirit and not through the emotions or intellect of the soul. As ministers we must always recognize our limitations and vulnerability when a relationship becomes problematic.
As a pastor, there have been a few times I have excused myself from ministering to individuals because I knew I was no longer effective as a minister. Either they were unwilling to receive; do the hard work to be healed; or worst case scenario, they became belligerent and on more than one occasion even threatening.
The codependent lacks a sense of self and personal boundaries – I am me” Instead the codependent thinks I’m not sure who I am. Codependents become confusingly enmeshed with others who are close and entangle their identities with their loved ones.
Because codependents’ love tanks have been running on empty, they cannot understand and recognize the fundamental human function, “true love.” Codependents will erroneously confuse infatuation, mutual love hunger, physical attraction, or simple affection as love.
Codependents tend so strongly to compulsivity and addiction that they bring these addictive qualities to their personal relationships as well. They easily become helplessly obsessed with the other person, unable to let go. (“I Can’t Stop Loving you”).
Is there such a thing as pure, unsullied romance? There certainly is, and it’s nothing like the sorry version of love and romance that codependency offers. Remember “love is not jealous, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.”
True love gives liberty. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty.
“You made me love you. I didn’t wanna’ do it; I didn’t wanna’ do it. You made me feel blue, and all the time I guess you knew it...”
“In contrast the “I can’t live without you baby”; a healthy person knows they could live without the love of their life, but because they love them deeply, they choose not to. This freedom of choice makes a relationship all the richer and more beautiful. Love is a choice.”
“The committed Christian possesses the opportunity to reach for the stars, for our God specializes in one-on-one. For many reasons, but the least of which being that God knows the person intimately even before birth, God Himself validates the Christian’s identity. Also, the Christian can draw as heavily as necessary upon the identify of God and Jesus Christ and indeed is encouraged to do so. What a complete and limitless resource is the supreme Identity!
The Christian’s self, completeness, and value all exist within; they do not depend upon outside relationships with others. The person is secure within. When that Christian enters with another into a relationship as a spouse, close friend, or family members, each will give and receive, but not out of necessity. When the relationship is broken through death or other involuntary separation, life goes on. Grief, of course! Sadness, certainly. Pain, undoubtedly; but a not a loss of self.
Love is not jealous. Generally, codependent relationships exhibit a fair degree of jealousy. Though born of insecurity, it stretches far beyond the common uncertainties of life to reach, at times, true clinical paranoia.
In contrast genuine commitment gives latitude for comfortable trust. There may sadly be reason for doubt in a relationship, even a healthy one. A trusting partner, while not blind and stupid, is slow to suspect and quick to believe.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.”
As ministers of the gospel and in any Christian fellowship, we have to be alert to the traps. In terms of emotional effort, this can totally drain a minister for days. Satan sends these situations and people to distract us from productive and effective Kingdom work.
These can be overbearing relationships that take every hour of our day. There are just so many hours in a day, and just so much available energy. The codependent squanders huge blocks of time and energy dealing with one person and that one person’s problems. When one thing absorbs so much of the codependent’s focus, precious little time and energy remain to be focused on other wedges of life.
All of the wedges of life should be given proper attention. When this balance gets out of balance, that is a red flag that satan has set a trap for us.
If one parent is totally absorbed with the other parent’s alcohol or dug compulsion, a child in the family no matter how loved only receives a small wedge of the parent’s pie.
Commonly in malignant codependent relationships, the first to go are friendships. Church relationships flounder. Codependents look around the church and figure no one cares about them and their problems. The problem relationship crowds out the healthy relationships and activities that would bring balance and richness to life. This is especially true in troubled marriages.
A person with only one consuming relationship for support is going to crash if that support is removed (at least they feel that way). A person with several solid relationships will suffer, but not fall.
What are the elements of support in your life? Are there persons close to you (not dependent children) for support should your major source of stability fail?
In a dysfunctional home, control is the name of the game. Perhaps a perfectionist, critical, legalistic, domineering, rigid parent created a climate of over control. Or a parent mixed in substance abuse caused chaos; nobody could control anything because no one knows what to expect next.
I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is calling us to come near unto Him that we may fall happily in love again. When we are filled with the healthy love of Jesus, then we are able to love others in a happy and healthy way.
Let each one of do a check list to measure how healthy we are against the Love of God.
- Codependents are drive by one or more compulsions.
- They are bound and often tormented by the way things were in the dysfunctional family of origin.
- Their self-esteem and frequently maturity is very low.
- A codependent is certain his or her happiness hinges on others.
- A codependent feels inordinately responsible for others.
- The codependent’s relationship with a spouse or someone else is marred by a damaging unstable lack of balance between dependence and independence.
- The codependent is a master of denial and repression.
- The codependent worries about things he or she can’t change and may well try to change them.
- A codependent’s life is punctuated by extremes.
- A codependent is constantly looking for the something this is missing or lacking in life.
“… Love suffers long, is kind, envies not, vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails. Prophecies shall fail, tongues shall cease, knowledge shall vanish away, but when that which is perfect is come that that which is in part shall be done away… Now abides Faith, Hope and Love and the greatest of these is Love.”
God’s Love will never fail!
Church let us all fall in love again with Father God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, our mates, our families, our ministries, our church fellowships. When the church falls in love, we will bring in the lost and hurting people. Until we fall in love, we have nothing to offer, but more hurt and pain. We become the blind leading the blind.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
This text was taken from King James Bible. I entered into the labors of Love is a Choice by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those from whom I gleaned.