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Online Prayer Resolution Course by Mike Banker in 2024.
So tonight, we're gonna talk about rebellion and authority issues. See, everybody has authorities in their life, and many people are also authorities in other people's lives. And so we need to talk about these relationships and sessions. And so we have to have a basic understanding of authority and rebellion. In the Old Testament, the term for rebellion is Mara.
Mike:It means to rebel, to be contemptuous. The Septuagint, the first Greek version of the Bible, translates it to be to reject, not to recognize. And this word Mara, you often see it in the same paragraph or in the same passage with being stubborn or being stiff necked. Now the prophet Samuel told King Saul that his rebellion was same as the sin of witchcraft and idolatry. So, ultimately, this attitude of rebellion is I will be as God.
Mike:A rebellious attitude often leads to sexual sin and occult sin. Extreme rebellion leads to murder, sexual perversion of every kind, mutilating one's body, and even child sacrifice. A rebellious attitude rejects all that is holy and rejects God's creation, our body and the bodies of others. Now rebellion, it starts with an attitude, and then it results in an action. So I wanna give you some examples to make this clear.
Mike:So this little boy, his mother said, okay. Be sure to walk to school. I have to leave for work. And, you know, the school's only a few blocks away. And so, be sure to go to school.
Mike:Well, the mom came home at lunchtime and her son was still at the house. And she said, son, why are you still here? He said, well, I started to walk and there this dog and this dog was barking and chasing me and he wanted to bite me. So I ran in the house and I closed the door. So is this boy rebellious?
Mike:We would say that he's disobedient. He didn't do what his mother asked him to, but he didn't have this attitude of rejecting or not recognizing his mother's authority. And so we would say he's disobedient, but we wouldn't say that he's rebellious. There's a difference. Rebellion involves an attitude, not just disobedience.
Mike:Now here's another example. This boy did something wrong, and his mother said, okay. You go sit in the corner and just stare at the corner for 10 minutes. So he sat down in his chair in the corner and he said in a loud voice, I might be sitting down on the outside but I'm standing up on the inside. Isn't that interesting?
Mike:He obeyed his mom. He went and sat in the corner. But clearly, he has an attitude problem. He has an attitude of rebellion. So he's obedient.
Mike:He's he's obedient, but rebellious. And so rebellion and obedience aren't exactly the same. In order to be rebellious, you have to have this bad attitude, not just a disobedient action. Now, King Saul in 1 Samuel 15 is an example of an act of rebellion by an authority. So Saul was king and he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Mike:He redefined his actions as good. He tried to excuse his actions. And he blamed his actions on others. And he did not repent. So all these things he did, showed rebellion that there was rebellion in his heart.
Mike:Now what had happened here is Saul was told to kill this group of people, every single person, every single animal, and Saul did not do that. And so when Samuel comes, he can hear the animals and he can also see that there's several of these people, including the king, their king still alive. And yet he didn't repent. Instead, he tried to, excuse his actions. He tried to blame others.
Mike:He tried tried to call his actions good. And this is when Saul said Samuel said to Saul, he has turned back from following me. This shows that he's deliberately turned away. Another rendering says, he has cast off God's governing. Now later, Saul shows his rebellion even more clearly.
Mike:He is killing the witches and the false prophets in the land. He's forbidden anyone from consulting with them. But then he himself as the king, as their leader, goes and consults the witch at Endor and asks her to conjure up Samuel's spirit. And so this attitude is, I will be God. That's what Saul shows here is that he knows that God has forbidden this and he does it anyway.
Mike:And so that's why it says that the, rebellion is the same as the sin of witchcraft. It's because of Saul's action with the witch of Endor. Now, sometimes our rebellion is for gain or fame, like Saul. But more often, it's a premeditated decision, a decision that violates our own conscience and it violates the prompting of the Holy Spirit. So we know it's wrong, but we go ahead and we do it anyway.
Mike:James talks about us being tempted by our desires. In other words, the decision to sin comes up from within us, not from the outside. So rebellion is an attitude first and an action second. A disobedient act may or may not have a rebellious attitude. Now, the one under authority might rebel against their authority, But the authority themselves might also rebel against God in how they perform their duties.
Mike:Both of these are possible. Rebellion against God is often subconscious. It's a subconscious attitude, an attitude that God doesn't care about me and he will not do what's right for me. When I tell God what I want or when I want it or how I want it to be done and He doesn't follow my plan, I become frustrated. With each frustration or each disappointment, I take one more step away from trusting God and trusting his authority in my life until I just ignore God entirely.
Mike:So it's step by step, little by little, and finally, it's this attitude of rebellion, a rebellious attitude towards God. It doesn't usually happen, with one incident. Usually, it's this step by step away from God until we ignore him completely. We stop trusting him at all. Now you can't tell if a person's rebellious just by looking at them.
Mike:You have to know their heart. So I was downtown Minneapolis and I was walking to this, it's called New Union. It was a coffee bar of Christians. And outside this bar, there was a man, a big man with leather vest and muscular, and tattoos all over his body standing next to his Harley, and his hair was, in a Mohawk. So if you saw him, you say, oh, he's rebellious.
Mike:But as I'm walking by, I overhear him talking about John Piper's sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis. So I stopped and I said, So are you a Christian? He said, Oh, yeah. I said, So are you rebellious? He said, No.
Mike:I've never even had a parking ticket. I said, so why do you, dress like this? He said, well, because then people notice me. So here's an example then of, a man who looks rebellious, but he's not. He doesn't have that attitude of casting off God's governing.
Mike:That's not, what's going on there. Another example, this woman came for a session and and she was goth. She is part of the goth group. Okay? If you don't know who goth are, they wear black clothes and they put thick white makeup on, so the skin is very, very white.
Mike:And they listen to what they call death music. So I asked her, I said, are you goth? She said, no. I'm Christian. I said, so why do you dress this way?
Mike:And she said, well, when I was a teenager in high school, nobody accepted me because I was fat. But the goth group accepted me. So I put on the makeup and I wear the black clothes, so that I could be part of that group. So the Christian group rejected her and the goth group accepted her. Isn't that interesting?
Mike:Shouldn't be that way, should it? And I said, so do you let listen to deaf music? She said, no. I listen to Christian music. I don't like deaf music.
Mike:So, again, if you saw her you'd say she's rebellious. But if you hear her story you find out that's not true. She doesn't have an attitude of casting off God's governance. She hasn't turned her back from following God. She doesn't have this attitude even though she looks like she does.
Mike:So you have to know a person's heart. You can't just go by the way they look. So if you're doing sessions with somebody and you're talking about an authority relationship, You have to look for this attitude, not just for the action. The action might be disobedient and it could be rebellious, but it may not be rebellious at all. A one relationship that involves authority is marriage.
Mike:It talks about wives submitting to their husbands. So let's talk about that. So what are the husband and wife's responsibility in a marriage? Well, it says that men are supposed to love their wives like their own body. So, women, if you're listening, when should a man love their wife?
Mike:They will they should always love their wife even when it's hard. Okay? So in scripture, here's the full verse. So husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
Mike:For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the Church. So, men, you're supposed to love your wife like your own body or like Christ loved the Church. So maybe the hardest job in the world is to be a husband. That's difficult. That's difficult.
Mike:Now wives, you can make it really difficult for them to love you like their own body by being irresponsible or untrustworthy or dangerous, and by not submitting. It says, wives, respect your husband, which means submit to your husband. So when should wives submit to their husband? Only when it's easy? No.
Mike:Even when it's hard. That respect is because of their position. It has nothing to do with their actions. It has to do with their position. And to be honest, the reason why you're supposed to submit to your husband is because God has asked you to.
Mike:It's not because he's smarter or the smarter one should be in control. God has established an order, and he's asked wives to submit themselves to their husband out of obedience to the Lord. So maybe the hardest job in the world is to be a wife. Maybe it's even harder than being a husband. Now, husbands, you can make it really difficult for your wife to respect you.
Mike:You can make it difficult for them to submit to you by being irresponsible, untrustworthy, or dangerous. Now, men, God will not praise a husband who glories in his power. God is not going to ask you, why didn't you keep your boot on your wife's neck? God is not going to praise you for glorying in your power over your wife. God made you the head of the house because he holds you more responsible for their well-being.
Mike:You are responsible for their well-being. And that's so God may ask you, why didn't you care for that family that I gave you? Why didn't you care for that wife or those kids that I gave you that I entrusted to you? But he is not going to ask you whether you kept your boot on your wife's neck. And God does not delight in a husband that uses his position to maximize his own comfort and leisure.
Mike:God expects you to care for that family and care for them well. Now, sometimes the husband rebels against God's authority and he is so irresponsible irresponsible and so untrustworthy or so dangerous that we can say he has stopped being a husband and this marriage certificate is meaningless. Sometimes though, the wife stops being a wife. So it's hard to be a wife. It's hard to be a husband.
Mike:But a marriage can become meaningful again. If both the wife and the husband are willing to reconcile, to accept the responsibilities again and stop their harmful behaviors towards each other, then the relationship can become meaningful again. But sometimes the wife or the husband both are unwilling to reconcile, are unwilling to stop their harmful behaviors. Okay. So to just to add a little bit more clarity about the husband wife relationship.
Mike:So, is the husband always supposed to obey? Is the wife always supposed to obey the husband? Always? Doesn't matter what he asks her to do? He she's always supposed to obey?
Mike:Okay. So here's a real example. This man was an elder in the church and he came home and he suggested to his wife that they join a wife swapping club. So what should the wife say? Should she say, oh, okay, if that's what you wanna do.
Mike:You're my husband, so I guess I have to do it even though I don't want to. Is that what she should say? No. Absolutely not. If he asks her to sin, then the answer should be no.
Mike:In the Bible, there's an example of Ananias and Sapphira. They had promised to give all the money from the sale of their land to the church. But they only gave part of it, but they said it was all of it. And so Peter condemned them. He said, Why did you lie to the Holy Spirit?
Mike:And Ananias fell dead. And then a short time later, Saphira, his wife came in and she said the same thing and she fell dead too. Was it wise of her to agree with her husband to conspire to lie to the church like this? It was not. And it cost her her life.
Mike:She died as a result. And so, if your husband asks you to sin, the answer is no. But if it's not sin, the answer is yes, he is the head of the house. So let's go on and talk about husband and wife relationships a little bit more. Is after, let's talk about husband and wife temptations.
Mike:Okay, after the fall, God told Adam and Eve that their life wasn't gonna be easy anymore. He said that, Adam, you will sweat when you work And there's going to be thorns and thistles. So life is not going to be easy anymore. Eve, life isn't going to be easy for you anymore either. You will have greater pain in childbirth and you will be ruled by your husband.
Mike:So Adam was not happy with this and neither was Eve. These were not good things. And, this was the consequence of their rebellion against God. Now sometimes sometimes the sons of Adam, they want to escape that curse. They don't wanna sweat.
Mike:They don't want thorns and thistles. So they try to avoid responsibility. Sometimes, the daughters of Eve, they want to escape the curse. How did they do that? By ruling over their husbands.
Mike:But God made the husband the head of the family. So he holds the man responsible for the well-being of the family. And he has asked Eve to respect Adam, to submit to him. So maybe the hardest job in the world is to be a husband. Maybe there is only one job harder and that is to be a wife.
Mike:Being disrespectful, irresponsible, untrustworthy, or dangerous makes both roles more difficult. What about husband and wife decision making? Husbands, if you make major decisions without knowing what your wife thinks, how can you say that you love her like your own body? If you always do it your way and never her way, can you say you love her like your own body? Another example here is a husband, whenever he makes a major decision, he consults with his mom.
Mike:He doesn't talk to his wife. But see, when they married he was supposed to leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife. They're supposed to grow closer and his relationship with his mother and father is supposed to change. He's supposed to be closer to his wife now. He's only related to his parents by blood, but his wife is his own body.
Mike:Now, wives, if you constantly pressure your husband to do things your way or belittle him, can you say that you respect him, that you submit to him? On the other hand, if you never voice your own opinion and just agree with him without telling him your thoughts and feelings, how can he know the needs of his wife and family? Yeah. Sometimes it's very hard to be a wife. For example, when I was a young man I, was at the store and I saw this stereo, beautiful stereo, that was on sale.
Mike:Discounted 25%. And so I so I thought, oh, it's a beautiful stereo and I bought it. And I imagine dancing in the living room with my wife. But when I brought it home we didn't dance in the living room. My wife was not impressed.
Mike:Her question was is how are we gonna pay for food this month? That was a really good question, by the way. So I had to buy food on credit because I paid for the stereo with cash for several months. It took me months to pay off this stereo that I had bought. And so I didn't ask her before I bought it.
Mike:I just bought it. And that was not a loving thing to do to my wife. So as a husband, I need to, talk to her about these big decisions. I need to know her thoughts and feelings, not just my own. Now, wives, when you disagree with your husband, you need to express your view in a respectful manner.
Mike:Okay. So this husband, he's gonna buy these stocks and bonds. And the wife says, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. That is not respectful. That is not a respectful attitude towards your husband.
Mike:So when you disagree, you need to express your view in a respectful manner. And husbands, you need to listen. And you need to ask her questions so that you understand fully. Now wives, what if he still plans to go his own way? Well, you should appeal again in a respectful manner.
Mike:And husbands, you need to listen to her appeal and try to understand. Now, wives, what if he still insists on going his own way? Then let him go his own way. He is the head and it is his decision and you are not responsible though you may suffer from his choice. So maybe the hardest job in the world is to be a wife.
Mike:When he makes this decision, you can pray to God and say, thank you, God, that I'm not responsible for this bad decision. Amen. So the implication here then from all this that I just shared is that the wife and the husband need to extend forgiveness and receive forgiveness through prayer in their own personal sessions. The wife and the husband each need to accept responsibility for their role in the in the problem. And then after forgiveness is finished, they need to they may need to meet together to work on other issues such as communication as part of the reconciliation process.
Mike:Another authority relationship is parents and children. In the Old Testament, it says children are to honor their parents. Now, when I lived and worked in China, everybody in China knows that children should honor their parents. Why? Because Confucius said that.
Mike:It is a very important law and a rebellious or a disobedient son was to be stoned. Now the assumption, though, for the stoning stoning the son was that the parent was righteous. Another example of this principle is when the Pharisees, brought the adulteress woman in front of Jesus, they could not cast the first stone because they were not righteous in this in this issue. So here's an example. This woman, when she was a little girl, her parents didn't want her.
Mike:They had a one child policy so the parents wanted a little boy but they got a little girl instead. So every day from the time she was very little her mother would say, we didn't we don't want you, and the father would say the same thing. Later they would say is the only way that we will accept you is if you get into a good college and you get a good job and you provide for our old age. And so this child was a very, very good student because her acceptance was at stake. She studied hard and she was a top student year after year after year.
Mike:And when the time came to take the college entrance test, she studied hard every day for for months before the tests. And she didn't take care of herself. She didn't eat well. She didn't exercise. She just studied and studied and studied because her life depended on it.
Mike:So the day came for the college entrance test and she went. And she went to take the test and she couldn't. She broke down. She had an emotional breakdown and so she failed the test. She went back home and she was in the corner of her bedroom in a ball sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.
Mike:And when her mother found out that she failed the college entrance test, she started to kick her daughter again and again and again. And at that moment that child cursed her mother. So here's my question for you. Should we stone that girl to death for cursing her parents? No.
Mike:Because these parents were not righteous. It would be wrong for us to stone that child to death for them because those parents were definitely not righteous. Now, in this parent child relationship there's distortion that comes in. Distortion because the parents aren't trustworthy or the parents are being irresponsible or the parents are dangerous, sometimes these parents they sin through commission. They sin by physically or verbally abusing their child.
Mike:But sometimes their sin is through omission, something that without, they didn't express love, they didn't affirm the child, they didn't care for the child. So the parents can sin by commission or by omission. And the child reflects the parent's attitude and behavior. If it receives false messages that he or she is not worth love and attention, if they're if they don't receive respect or honor from the parents, they think they don't deserve it. So here's an example.
Mike:There's a 5 year old boy that was raised by his grandparents. The grandparents left the little boy with his parents for a day. The parents went to a park and they sold their son to a man who didn't have a son and divided the money. It took the police 18 months to recover the boy and return him to his grandparents. The parents were imprisoned and fined.
Mike:But the father declared, I am his father. I can do whatever I want to him. See, that's a great example of I am God, isn't it? Talk about a rebellious father. The grandparents are his real parents because they're the ones that assume the responsibility.
Mike:The birth parents only contributed an egg and sperm. They are not his parents. A father is the one who accepts the father's responsibility. The mother is the one who accepts the mother's responsibility. In this case, his birth parents, they sinned against him greatly.
Mike:And parents are not to use their authority in this way, in this such an unfair, unjust way that the children seem to have no other choice but to rebel in response. If the children do rebel in response, they also are guilty. But the parents are provokers. They become part of the greater circle that needs to be accused. We have even dealt with people who have, in response to the parents' attitude and behavior, rebelled even in the womb, even in the womb.
Mike:Now, of course, the only way to know this is God has to reveal it. What makes this type of rebellion difficult to recognize is that often it is a response against injustice and a way of protecting oneself. And so I want to ask you a question for a moment. We you've all been children. You all had parents or somebody that was a parent to you.
Mike:So how do you provoke a child's anger? It warns us as parents not to provoke their anger. So what kinds of things provoke a child's anger? Well, we have to be careful not to habitually provoke a child's anger. And the way we can do that is through constantly criticizing their mistakes constantly criticizing their mistakes.
Mike:We can also provoke their anger by teasing them or by comparing them to others. Oh, did you see Amy got straight a's on her report card? What's wrong with you? How come you don't? See, this is coveting somebody else's child.
Mike:This is your sin when you do this to your child. You provoke their anger. Another way to provoke their anger is to ignore their needs or their feelings or their thoughts. Provoke their anger by belittling them with words, especially in front of others. You can degrade them with harsh or excessive or inappropriate, beatings.
Mike:You can cause them to lose heart or provoke their anger by showing favor to someone else, someone else's kid, or one of your own, one of your other children, you can provoke their anger by threatening them with violence instead of protecting them. You can provoke their anger by judging their person instead of their behavior. You can provoke their anger by ignoring their hopes, their desires, and dreams when you make decisions for their lives. And in China, there's a saying, And what it means is that, to criticize is love and to to beat is closeness. This is a very common saying.
Mike:Everybody in China knows this saying, but it is a lie. So one Chinese woman, I said, so did your parents love you? No. So they didn't, criticize you enough? They didn't beat you enough?
Mike:No. That's not the problem. That's not love. She didn't feel love because this beating and criticizing is not love. From our mouth, we should bless them with our words and actions.
Mike:We should celebrate their existence, not just point out their weaknesses. We should treat them with dignity and respect. Now, some people have this idea that progress stops. Progress stops when you stop criticizing them. But there's another thing that can happen if you never encourage them, you never affirm this.
Mike:They can lose heart and they may even end their own life. So, parents, God holds you responsible not to provoke your children to anger, not to cause them to lose heart. There is a limit on your power and God will judge you if you ignore that limit. Now when a parent violates the trust of a child there's often deep and long lasting effects as this case shows. So in this example, Philip is a husband and a father and he's in his late twenties.
Mike:And he had a father who was a strong disciplinarian and did not show affection. He tended to humiliate his children. Now when Philip was just 7 years old, he was in the hospital with scarlet fever for 2 weeks. When the day the day came for him to be discharged, he was dressed and packed and waiting for his parents. He waited many hours and the nurses assured him that his parents were just delayed.
Mike:But at the end of the day, the hospital phoned his parents and they learned that his parents had forgotten to pick him up. So how did Philip feel? He felt betrayed. He felt unloved, unwanted, worthless. And these feelings affected his life even when he was an adult.
Mike:So we have to take our responsibilities as parents seriously. And if we're doing sessions with someone we have to recognize that there may have been hurts from their parents that need to be resolved. They may have also hurt their own children and that needs to be resolved. There are no perfect parents, and so everybody has a list of some sort related to their parents. So what does this imply?
Mike:Okay. Well, children are eventually responsible for what they do regardless of what their parents did to them. You see, adults are responsible for everything. That's what it means to be an adult. You're responsible for your life now.
Mike:The children are still learning. So eventually that child grows up, they become an adult, and they become responsible for what they do. So children must hold their parents responsible. So this person, as a child, was wronged by his parents. He needs to acknowledge they're wrong.
Mike:He needs to, with what they said or did that was wrong, and acknowledge it by accusing them before their heavenly father in prayer, And then trusting God for justice, forgiving them in prayer. Now, if they don't go through this process, then they're agreeing with the behavior of their parents. And they may accept this pattern for themselves as future parents. So it's important to go through this sifting process, separating out those things that were wrong, that you suffered. Accuse and forgive your parents for those things so that you don't repeat them.
Mike:If you have repeated them already then you need to confess and ask for forgiveness for doing that. Now, for many people it's difficult to accuse their parents in prayer for their wrongs. It seems disrespectful. But I have a question for you. When God says honor your parents, does he mean just honor them with your face?
Mike:Or does he mean to honor them with your heart? If you're going to honor them with your heart then you need to forgive them for the wrongs they did. And only then will you be able to honor them from the heart. And only then will you be able to see clearly the good that they have done. Now our parents are made in God's image just like we are, just like we are.
Mike:So they deserve our respect, not our pity. We need to hold them accountable both for the good things and the bad things they've done. We're not saying that they're good people. We're not saying they're evil people. They're just people.
Mike:And sometimes they do bad things. There are no perfect parents. And so accuse them for their wrong and forgive them for their wrong. And then you'll be able to honor them from the heart, not just with your face. Okay.
Mike:If you don't think this is true, would you dare to go up to your dad and say, oh, I dad, I know how hard your child hood was and I can see how much it affects your life and I just pity you. Is that what he wants? Is that what he deserves? He is made in God's image. He may have had a horrible childhood but he's an adult now.
Mike:He's responsible for everything. Both the good and the bad. Now, a rebellious attitude towards, parents and others can be expressed in many different ways. One way to show a rebellious attitude is to ignore what they say, what the authority says, what your parents say. A more subtle subtle disobedience would be doing things my way or causing dissension or thumbing my nose at them.
Mike:There's different ways that we can express rebellion. Now there's situations where rebellion occurs between a husband and a wife or between parents and a child, or between an employee and employer, or even between a citizen and a government. In all these situations, there can be abuse on the part of the one which results in a response of anger, disrespect, or distrust, rejection, and even rebellion by the other. There's 2 parts to this then. 1 is rejecting and rebelling against the offending authority.
Mike:You have to deal with that. But there's a second thing that often happens that you transfer that rejection, you transfer that rebellion to other authorities whether they deserve it or not. So, for example, this man, he had a bad attitude towards all his bosses. And that was even before they did him any wrong. He was judging his boss based on someone else's behavior.
Mike:He was transferring his distrust and that was unfair. So when you're working with authority issues you have to deal with the original offending authority. But often you have to deal with this transferring of that rejection and rebellion to all authorities or to other authorities. Now, when we are wronged by an authority there are godly options for dealing with disappointment, or injustice, or abuse, and betrayal. But causing dissension, backbiting, slandering, rebellion are not options for God's children.
Mike:So how do we resolve the effects of rebellion and transfer? Okay. So first, we have to deal with the original offending authority. And so we need to understand the issue clearly. So we have to talk.
Mike:When we've talked long enough, they need to accuse and forgive that authority. And then they need to confess and ask for forgiveness. So here's an example. This wife, she'd been married for 35 years, And she fought with her husband every night. And sometimes they would even fight with knives and cleavers.
Mike:Three times she was in the hospital with lacerations. And when she came for a session, she told us this. So we listened to her. That's step 1, understand the issue clearly. Okay.
Mike:So then, we knew enough that she could pray. So she prayed, and she accused her husband. And her strongs her words were very strong, and I didn't know these Chinese words. I needed a translator for these things. But her words are very strong and it went on for quite a long time, very emotional.
Mike:And when she finished accusing I said, you have to decide whether to forgive him or not. But why would you forgive him? And I told her, if you both trust God enough to believe that he will do justice for you and that it will be satisfying, then forgive him. So she prayed. And she said, accused him of all the things related to the fighting.
Mike:And she said, and, God, if I were you, I would just chop him up into little pieces. And so I stopped her prayer and I said, you don't get to decide how justice is done. God does. He's the judge. So she prayed again and she said, if I were you God, I would chop him up into little pieces.
Mike:But then she paused and she said, but I am not you. I am not God. And so I let you decide how his sin is paid. And so that was step 3. She forgave him.
Mike:I forgive him. Immediately after she forgave him, she was struck by her own sin. She confessed that she had never respected her husband even one day in 35 years of marriage. And step 5, she asked God to and she also confessed, of course, fighting with knives and cleavers. And then she asked God to forgive her.
Mike:So this was the original offending, offense. And now in this case, she didn't transfer this distrust from her husband to others. And so we didn't have to deal with the unjust transfer. The rest of that story is that after this prayer, a week later, she went to her husband and she apologized for never respecting his authority, never submitting to it. And she asked him to forgive her.
Mike:This is a step towards reconciliation. And, he forgave her. And not only did he forgive her, a week after that, he became a believer. Maybe he thought something like this. Well, if my wife can change, there really must be a god.
Mike:So he became a believer. But, oftentimes, we have to deal with the unjust transfer, not just the original offending authority. And so how do we do that? Well, the hurting one needs to acknowledge the pattern, how how it was transferred, how it damaged other relationships with other authorities, and, and confess it and ask for forgiveness. And then take a stand saying that this is not the right response to authorities.
Mike:So reject the pattern and ask God to break the power of that pattern. And then I ask God's help to judge and discern the behaviors of each person separately and ask God to help, you find new and more healthy ways of dealing with abuse and injustice. So when these the hurting one's done with this prayer, then the safe helper, one of the safe helpers, would add a witnessing prayer to their prayer. Now sometimes there's very strong emotions involved, and so you need to ask God to bind them up, put them under the control of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes these memories these memories are very powerful.
Mike:And you just don't want to think about these things again. Well, God doesn't generally give amnesia. Instead, you ask him to put the memories under the control of the Holy Spirit so that they only come up if God has some good purpose. Sometimes, after the forgiveness is done, they may wanna ask God to restore that family relationship that they prayed about. Or in some cases, they may ask god to break it completely That the person who wronged them, hasn't changed, refuses to even acknowledge there's any problem, and is still abusive.
Mike:And so they may ask God to break that tie with that family member. It it does happen. Sometimes there's words of power or lies or worthiness related to how they were treated by their this authority in their life. And so then you have to deal with those separately. Sometimes, like we said before, rebellion can involve extreme forms of rebellion can include, witchcraft or occult issues.
Mike:And so in that case then, you would have to deal with that too. Okay. So that's it on authority and rebellion relationships. If a wife has been wronged by her husband, if she if he's been untrustworthy or dangerous or unreliable, that she would need to accuse him and forgive him for those things. If she rebelled in response, then she would have to confess that and ask God's forgiveness.
Mike:And then, of course, after that, there would be a decision on whether to reconcile or not. And we'll talk about reconciliation in more detail in at another time. If a parent if a child has been wronged by a parent, then that child needs to accuse that parent. Or if it's sick been wronged by both parents, needs to accuse both parents for each one but for their part and, decide whether they trust God enough to believe he'll do justice for them. And if they do, they should forgive that parent.
Mike:And and then if they have rebelled against that parent or if they wronged that parent somehow, they need to confess those wrongs, those sins, and then ask God to forgive them. So this is the same pattern repeated again and again in all of these, relationships. But again, remember that rebellion rebellion involves this attitude, this bad attitude, attitude of turning your back on your authority, not listening to that authority anymore. And, yeah. So it's not just disobedience.
Mike:It involves the sinful attitude, an attitude like Saul had towards God. Alright. Thanks for listening, and I hope this helps you to be more effective as safe helpers in your sessions. And, yeah. Good night.