When Garbage becomes Baggage

 In this post I want us to look at society widely to get the message God is speaking.

How does a doctor contract HIV or get addicted to drugs with all the information and knowledge he possesses? How does a marriage counselor allow their marriage to break? How does a preacher who has seen God at work lapse into immorality yet continue ministering? How does a person who swore never to take a sip of alcohol become an alcoholic? How does someone who swore to make sure that his marriage will never be like his/ her parents’ end up replicating the same thing when he gets married?

These are some issues I want us to examine.

The first point I want us to note is that the spiritual determines everything else. And since the spiritual is for the most time invisible and consciously inexplicable, we will mostly assume that it does not exist. But assuming or even behaving as if it does not exist does not annul its influence or reduce its power and influence.

In our existence we make spiritual investments but are shocked when we receive the returns from those investments. We sow seeds but complain when we reap their harvest. We purchase abodes but seek an escape route when we are required to live there. And it becomes worse because we start fighting the things we spent our all to get. It is like trying to bomb a house you had spent all your investments to build. We spend half of our lives building a fortress and then spend the other half trying to destroy it as living in it becomes unbearable.

There are two areas this is most profound; marriage and lifestyle. It goes without say that these are the areas that define who we are as well as give us our identity.

I want us to look at a few areas garbage becomes baggage, baggage that can destroy the best that we are capable of and change the course of our life, a course that we traced with the greatest care.

The first area involves spiritual covenants of the past. And these are not covenants that look like such. Many times they happen when someone is looking to improve their lot or stature in life. They get involved in partnerships with people with a deviant spirituality, simply meaning people who are in the devil’s team. As a partner one is bound to everything the partner swears to since he accesses the resources he has. One thus enters the covenant by default. That is the basis of 2 Corinthians 6:14.

But there are parents who enter such covenants simply for the benefits. They therefore bond their posterity to the enemy of souls to get positions or money. They respond to the offer he gave to Christ during His temptations with a resounding yes.

We know that the devil is not a fool to show the implications of those covenants in the long run. Like insurance and legal agreements, there is a lot of small print that only the posterity will battle with.

Let me give an example. A couple is unable to get a child and approach a medium. It is sad to say but today many pastors are mediums. Of course they are asked for this or the other animal or amount of money. But then they are required to pledge their daughters (or eldest daughters). Others will require that the medium (and this is where many pastors fall) sleep with the woman to ‘unlock’ the womb. Due to the desperation and of course because they had not sought God’s will in it, they invite demons to take over their posterity. Any child born will automatically become the property of the evil one by the covenant the parents signed. They are therefore branded with his brand. And I have not talked of families involved in witchcraft that do that as a way of increasing their potency.

Imagine that girl getting married properly. The reality is that this girl is satan’s bride because she has his seal, many times long before she was born. The legal husband will therefore be an imposter in the spiritual covenant. The devil will therefore have permission to invade her space at will as she legally belongs to him. She will be practically unmarriageable, however good her husband may be. That is unless that marriage exalts the evil one. She will always be looking for ways to run away from her marriage. That is until she of her own volition seeks for a higher covenant to nullify that earlier one. And it goes without say she can’t nullify a covenant she does not know exists.

We need to note that the only reason the devil allowed her to get married in the first place is to bring in another generation of his subjects as well as snare the partner if he has a solid spiritual seed like Saul did to David when he offered Michal to him.

And it is the same way with some vices like drunkenness, violence in the marriage, adultery and the rest. Some of the unexplainable things we do are so because some were bonded into evil by their forebears.

But there are other covenants we make. Sex is such a covenant. Let us look at the scriptures. Why is it that if one was caught having sex with a virgin he had to marry her with no option of divorce yet when caught with one pledged or married they were to be stoned to death? Simply because sex is such a powerful spiritual covenant that it has no capacity of being annulled in this lifetime.

Premarital sex is not any different. And for those who ‘innocently’ pursue sexual gratification outside marriage you should know that that is a sure way of killing your marriage. Again someone who was involved in sex before marriage made a covenant that has a detrimental effect on their marriage unless they also seek for a divine annulment of those covenants.

The second involves inheritance. Why is it that children of drunkards normally become drunkards? Why is it that women who became pregnant before getting married have their girls repeating the same? Why do girls of single mothers normally become single mothers? Why is it that getting out of that is the exception given that they detest that life and desire to never repeat it?

The simple reason is that apart or aside from covenants that may be involved there is a spiritual trend that has been set. Their spiritual DNA becomes infused with that error and therefore changes its structure. A woman who left her husband for whatever reason introduces rebellion and independence in her makeup, the same makeup that all her children will inherit.

How many times have you heard someone swear that they will not be like their father or mother yet they become exactly that?

I remember a young man who swore never to drink as he had seen his father waste his life as he never took any salary he earned home as he would drink it all in one night. That young man was also saved and very involved in church.

A few years later I was told that not long after he got married he became just like his father. He took up a lifestyle he had loathed all his life.

Swearing is not enough to alter one’s spiritual DNA. Even hating it is not enough to make the slightest dent on it.

I know many girls raised by single mothers who swore to keep their marriage yet somehow opting out for no reason but ‘boredom’ or something like it because they did not have a valid reason to leave. You see the seed of rebellion is not removed by reason. It is a spiritual seed that can only be dealt with spiritually. Your makeup does not include marriage and therefore cannot accommodate it.

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever: (Deuteronomy 23: 2, 3)

Even getting married to the best of men can not alter that makeup. And that is why the Bible appears too harsh on the single mother and her children, knowing that the two tribes were the product of single mothers.

And I believe it is the reason Paul advised young widows to marry. This is so that they do not develop an altered spiritual DNA that could negatively impact their children even if it was not by choice.

So, before you finally break up with that monster people call your husband, look at these things. Could you be reproducing your mother or are you listening to friends who carry the rebellious virus? Is the man really the problem or do you have baggage that the presence of a husband is confronting just by his presence? Is he irresponsible or are you impossible to live with however much he changes for you.

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house. (Proverbs 21:9)

Have you reconciled with the parties that abused you or are you counting on your husband to cure all that abuse, abuse he knows nothing about? Are you pouring all the baggage of your past on a hapless man yet feeling frustrated that he does not help you carry it? Are you comparing your husband with the man your mother deserted, a man whose only information you have about is the only one you were fed by your bitter mother?

But that DNA also gets to the sons, only that it manifests differently. The man lacks identity and spiritual muscle or spine. He will therefore become very insecure and many times unable to make or maintain positions as he grew up as the punching bag on behalf of all men. In marriage he will therefore become subject to his wife or unable to be faithful depending on the kind of trash he was fed by his mother.

But there is a spiritual solution if one is willing to go the whole hog. And I will start with one person who was at the extreme end of the moral spectrum.

Rahab was a prostitute in condemned Jericho. But she joined mainstream Israel when she committed treason against her city by connecting to the God of Israel. Simply speaking someone doubly disqualified was able to reverse her fate by taking a conscious decision against all that she was for the sake of a God she had only read about in the news.

But she first acknowledged her lostness and need for rescue.

Her spiritual DNA, which was rotten enough for condemned Jericho, was changed when she made a conscious choice to join her faith to the God of Israel.

We must first agree that we carry anti marriage genes in our spiritual heritage, genes that make marriage a pipe dream in our experience. Struggling to rectify issues without dealing with their spiritual sources is tantamount to covering the anthill as the solution to the destruction termites are causing.

Why am I focusing on marriage than other issues? Someone may be asking.

Marriage is the foundation, even the bedrock of society. Dealing with marriage will many times effectively deal with other vices as vices are many times products of a defective family life. Much insecurity is the result of a messy family environment. Many who pursue identity through acquisitions and achievements had issues that made them insecure that they had to look for a way to counter it. From mammon worship to drug and sex addiction you will find that most have their source in a disjointed family unit.

As an example I am sure you know that quite a number of street children come from very well to do families. They run away from all that affluence to eat from the dumps because the family unit is sick. They therefore are seeking peace away from the only place it should be because it is absent there. I therefore hope you understand why I put so much emphasis on marriage.

I also know that the antichrist will ride on the lack of the family unit to appear to offer the security the family should offer and therefore would want the believers to be caught in his web by making our families as God would have them be.

In closing I want to ask this. Why does God hate divorce? Does He not understand that there are unreasonable spouses out there, spouses that seek to frustrate us at every turn? Is it that He does not care for our satisfaction in marriage? Doesn’t He care when we get stuck in a marriage that lacks adequate bonding? Why does He say that nobody should put asunder what He has joined in marriage? Why can’t I just opt out for my peace of mind?

Does God love me enough to issue such absolute commands concerning marriage? Is John 3:16 still valid if it constrains me to His absolutes? Is His love as absolute as His commandments?

Do I trust God enough to agree with His decrees? Do I trust Him enough to hold to His word? Do I trust Him enough to walk according to His revelation?

Am I His follower for who He is or for what He does for me? Does His salvation require anything more from me except receiving?

Do I know what His word says? Do I seek His word? Do I crave to know His word and obey it? Am I pledged to His word to know and keep it like Ezra was?