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God told YOU about ME???

R

Ramona

New Member
Female
I'm feeling frustrated today. Two years ago in January we "came out" to my family & our best friends about our belief & desires to live Polygany. We held our heads up & weathered the storm. Our best friends, people that we've raised our children together with, immediately stopped ALL contact. Despite multiple attempts during this time we haven't heard from them since that day. That was crushing. We have decided to not talk about it anymore with my family in order to keep the peace. Agree to disagree type of thing.
Not long ago my mother came to me to ask if we were still wanting another wife. After hearing my "Yes." she proceeded to tell me that God told her that it's wrong & going to end badly for us. That we did not have any right to put our children in that situation! That God wanted HER to tell ME that plural marriage is wrong. Wow. Just WOW. My response: Mother, why do you suppose the my Father in Heaven hasn't imparted this knowledge on us? Are you trying to tell me that Satan has put this in our hearts? That ALL of our scripture searching & prayer & MORE prayer has resulted in us following Satan's plans & not our Father in Heaven?!?!?

I leave tomorrow to go spend this (her birthday) weekend with her & my sisters. I want it to go well. I know it will be brought up & I am anxious.

Any advice &/or thoughts are appreciated.
 
I should mention that we have not yet been blessed with another wife. Just praying & waiting right now.
 
Some people are just going to hate you. Unfortunately, that can often be members of our own family, or our closest friends, just as Jesus warned.

Two years seems like a long time, but in this context it's really not. Some relationships take ye-e-e-a-a-a-r-s to repair and restore (and some just never will recover).

The best defense is a good offense. You are on the right track getting involved with the BF community. Don't try to "fix" relationships that are busted, just stand for what you stand for, and throw yourself into building relationships with your NEW "mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers" that understand you and stand with you. That will take the edge off of the loss of other relationships.

Thank God for the opportunity to have new scriptures come alive (re division, persecution, going outside the camp, etc.) and for the new relationships he's leading you into.

It's all just an abstraction until you actually add someone to your family. Try not to argue over creeds. A lot of what motivates your critics is fear, and without a real poly family in play it's mostly fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of what others will think, and other boogeymen. It takes an actual family surviving and thriving to push people through and past their fears.

Random thoughts on a Thursday night....
 
Ramona thank you for sharing.

It is painful when family are less accepting than strangers.

I hope your weekend is a positive experience.

All the best,

ylop
 
Personally, I wouldn't discard broken relationships so quickly, there is always hope.

Job 14:7 "At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail."

With God, all things are possible.
 
dodidodi said:
Personally, I wouldn't discard broken relationships so quickly, there is always hope.
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I can't figure out what this is a response to unless it's based on a misunderstanding of something I said. I apologize if this clarification is redundant or unnecessary, but I want to be sure I'm getting my point across and not miscommunicating.

Ramona, I am not advising you to discard relationships ever, let alone quickly. What I said was, "Don't try to "fix" relationships that are busted, just stand for what you stand for, and throw yourself into building relationships with your NEW "mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers" that understand you and stand with you. That will take the edge off of the loss of other relationships." I also said, "Two years seems like a long time, but in this context it's really not. Some relationships take ye-e-e-a-a-a-r-s to repair and restore (and some just never will recover)."

What I have in mind is more along the lines of Paul's advice to the Corinthians abut what to do about an unbelieving spouse. If they can handle their relationship with you, then great, but if they can't handle it and they bail, then let them go—we are called to peace. Same logic applies to other relationships.

A lot of our arguments with our closest friends and family come from our deep insecurities about what we're doing. We really want the people closest to us to agree with us that we're on the right track, and it's disturbing when they don't. It puts pressure on us to convince them of how right we are, and our inability to persuade them can cause us to go back and question our own conclusions. The situation can develop into a conflict of wills or a control thing that just isn't going to end well.

If you are doing what God wants you to do you can pretty much guarantee you're going to offend people, and those people will include members of your own family. Jesus promised it. And the correct response is not to try to win an argument, it's to 'repay evil with good'. Try to understand their fear, disappointment, anger, and hurt. Empathize as much as you can. But lovingly and gently but firmly stand for the truth.

YOU don't have to give up on (or "discard") anybody, but there will inevitably be those that give up on you. Know that God has a way of restoring the things that following him has cost us, whether that is by healing broken relationships or by giving us new ones to replace the old. And when there's healing, in a lot of cases it will take a lot longer than you think it will, and in some cases it will be after you think you have lost a specific relationship permanently that it will later be restored to you (funny how the death and resurrection motif shows up so often in the Christian life...).
 
That's the thing about the internet and forums like this, without further dialog it is so easy to misunderstand the personality of another and the thought behind there brief statement in a rather hostile world (in general). But, with the help of the Holy Spirit and a humble spirit any relationship, internet or close and personal, can benefit and should be the goal to promote love. Relationships are one of the greatest gifts and well worth the effort.

God Bless You.
 
andrew said:
dodidodi said:
If you are doing what God wants you to do you can pretty much guarantee you're going to offend people, and those people will include members of your own family. Jesus promised it. And the correct response is not to try to win an argument, it's to 'repay evil with good'. Try to understand their fear, disappointment, anger, and hurt. Empathize as much as you can. But lovingly and gently but firmly stand for the truth.
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Quoted for truth!

We've had remarkably good responses from people we've "come out" to. We've only got one friend (who was the last one we actually told) that is taking it pretty negatively. We can see that she and her husband will either have to come to a place of acceptance or they will probably end up either breaking off contact with us or forcing us to do so. It's only been a few days though, and it's obvious that her response though comes from wounding in her own life.

I can't imagine though Ramona that the rejection felt with a friend can even begin to compare with what you are feeling coming from your mom. That's got to be a whole different level of feeling judged, and is a much more important relationship to try and reconcile!
 
It can be very difficult when family take such a harsh stance against these big ticket issues... but I don't think that anyone on this forum is exactly convinced that your mom really did hear from God on this matter, Ramona.
That being said, my mother has often blind-sided me with what God was supposedly telling her about things she said He wanted me to do. It is an exceptionally unpleasant experience when ANYONE tries to use God's authority to blackmail you into making a decision, especially when that person happens to be a parent or a pastor, or some other authoritative figure.

Beyond that, it isn't a safe thing to do, telling people, "God said", when God didn't have anything to do with it. I wouldn't want any of my loved ones getting into trouble for misrepresenting Him. Whenever my mother is trying to pass off her feelings, thoughts, or opinions as what "God said", I ask her very specific questions about the exact words He used, etc. Often times she will eventually admit that God didn't really tell her, but she just really thinks this or that is right/a good idea/what God would want.
That isn't to say that she never hears from God, but I am unwilling to allow ANYONE to just slap a "God said" label on something that He is not involved with.

Perhaps if your mother gets to a point where she realizes she is attempting to deceive you by passing off her ideas as God's will, she will have to ask herself why she is so willing to lie about God in order to get you away from pm, and furthermore if her emotions have convinced her to deceive you about what God says about pm, then perhaps she needs to ask herself if she is also lying to herself about what God says on the subject.

Such conversations are never easy, but I have a very low tolerance for people lying to me about what "God said".
 
I came to the understanding years ago that people can hear from God and yet hear something that He never said. I did not understand how it worked, but I knew that they were hearing through filters of some kind. As you might imagine, this was not well received.
Then came that day that Ali was going through some teaching by Mark Virkler with some ladies and learned that people can have idols between themselves and God. What He tells them comes through that filter.


Eze 14:4

Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the LORD will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols;
 
You are welcome.
It is a bit of a game-changer. :)
 
I found that really helpful too Steve, makes a lot of sense. If someone is convinced so fully of something they will themselves twist anything they hear to be consistent with their prior beliefs - this passage shows that God clearly and knowingly allows this.

Like the dwarves in Aslan's country in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, convinced they were locked in a tiny stable eating scraps when they were really in the sunshine eating a banquet...
 
We are probably saying the same thing, Samuel, but I would state this way:
If you have an idol in your life, you will not have any indication of the message being changed as it comes through your idol(s). You do not control that part, you only control whether or not you have an idol.
Ultimately you are responsible for the message being changed, but you have to take responsibility for the idol's position in your life first and foremost. Prophetic people have a lot more responsibility than most of them realize.

p.s. I feel that this is why we have seen so many poly marriage failures where people believed that they were led by God. I believe that the idol of having more than one wife is all too common and I claim no immunity for myself.
 
Ramona,
I hope that you do not mind me "piggy-backing" this teaching on your thread, I felt that it helped to explain what you experienced with your mother.
This is personal with me because my sister informed my mother that she had been told by God that poly is a sin. My mother went into eternity not accepting my marriage with Deborah due, in part, to the pressure of my sister's "Word from God".
 
Yes, we are saying the same thing in different ways. But the more different ways you try to explain something or hear it described the better you understand it. It sinks in more each time. Thanks.

One issue is that when a Christian has monogamy as an idol, so much that they believe they hear that confirmed by God, how do you persuade them otherwise? If you tell them they have an idol they'll take that as an insult and further confirmation you've gone completely heretical if you're calling fundamental Christian doctrines "idols"...
 
FH, I have been praying for the "scales to be removed from their eyes" just as the scales fell from Saul's eyes and he believed in Christ. Acts 19:8
 
FollowingHim said:
One issue is that when a Christian has monogamy as an idol, so much that they believe they hear that confirmed by God, how do you persuade them otherwise? If you tell them they have an idol they'll take that as an insult and further confirmation you've gone completely heretical if you're calling fundamental Christian doctrines "idols"...
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I prefer to keep it impersonal and refer to the history of our culture. It's more effective (because your listener is less defensive) to discuss pros and cons as abstractions or as 'what other people think' and look at how and why legally-enforced monogamy became the norm in our culture. Then your listener can be eased indirectly into deciding whether a scriptural ethic or a cultural ethic is more important to them.

Note: Many people can't tell the difference between "scriptural" and "cultural", which complicates things and requires some educating of the listener.

Bottom line: Accuse the other person of idolatry (whether it's an appropriate observation or not) and you're not likely to get very far. Show the other person how they've been misled by dogma handed down from people who made mistakes a long time ago, and you give them the opportunity to agree with you that they've been lied to before you put their back up.
 
One of the concepts I have been meditating a lot on lately is the notion of seed and harvest. What seed gets planted in an individual and thus brings up a harvest according to it's kind... Sowing with mixed seed (Scriptural and Cultural) will create a mixed harvest of looking at Scriptural concepts through cultural goggles and vice versa. It seems as though the heart can be geared toward doing the right thing, but there can be a muddling of exactly what that may be.
Having lived among several cultures, and having my cultural notions put through the wringer, I've experienced this first hand. It can be quite a confusing and difficult exercise in attempting to separate the sacred from the interpretation.
 
Sirs,

"If someone is convinced so fully of something they will themselves twist anything they hear to be consistent with their prior beliefs - this passage shows that God clearly and knowingly allows this."

God allows a lot of things, including poly. but if we twist things to conform with our personal beliefs rather than His truth, that's quite different, right? So it's no excuse. Free will but two (2) choices only: obey or disobey. If we are not on His side then we are on someone else's side.

"This is personal with me because my sister informed my mother that she had been told by God that poly is a sin. My mother went into eternity not accepting my marriage with Deborah due, in part, to the pressure of my sister's "Word from God"."

So sorry for that. I have made peace with my mother but not sure how she would react knowing her son has gone overboard with this "religion" thing and open to having 2 wives :O. Even with the "young ones will prophecy" and "old men will dream" thingies, if I got those right, I'd still go with "test every spirit."

For the "God told me" crowd...

What if God told me to strangle the living daylights out of unbelievers? Well, that would be too laborious. Maybe get myself a machine gun to mow them down? The more, the merrier. Or much better, how about if God told me to gas the "God told me" folks?

I know, I'm in danger of being called out for graphic violence but the point is, for those people who think that God told them something, there is still scripture to serve as our guide. I've read from a lot of better-equipped people (with the armor and sword of God) that God does not contradict Himself and saying that somebody can't marry for reasons not specified in the Bible seems to run parallel with "prohibit to marry." So, If we are not on His side then we are on someone else's side.

"Having lived among several cultures, and having my cultural notions put through the wringer, I've experienced this first hand. It can be quite a confusing and difficult exercise in attempting to separate the sacred from the interpretation."

Difficult indeed. Plenty of years in deceit versus 3.5 years in seeking God's truth. Can't still shake the old feeling. But,still, that's no excuse. Not particularly for me, anyway.
 
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