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Somebody smart once said the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Yesterday I ran into an addict, so many years into addiction, it’s a miracle she is still alive. So after telling me her latest tale of woe, her latest justification for continuing to use, she says, “but I’ve been praying.”
She has been too, for years, the problem being she, like a good many others, doesn’t understand that prayer is not just wishful thinking, it is actually two way communication. You ask for what you need, God tells you how to get it. Sometimes He points out that it’s not really what you want and sometime He flat out says “No,” but for the most part he says, Yes! Here, let me spit in my hand, rub mud in your eye, and you go down to the river and wash it off.
Do it, it’s yours for the asking.
We people tend to pray, unwilling to do anything different, unwilling to change course, unwilling to try new things, unwilling to give anything up, unwilling to even listen for a response to our prayers.
“I wish to keep doing exactly what I have been doing but just get different results this time.” That’s us people in a nutshell.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
I have been praying for a tidal wave and an asteroid shower of gargantuan proportions.
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Ha! That’s actually a good analogy when we apply it on a personal level, too. If we really want to shift things up in our own lives, there are going to have to be some falling rocks and big waves. Maybe not literally, but it sure feels that way and it looks like that.
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Having a daughter that was addicted to meth twice I know a bit about this. She was the definition of insanity starting at the age of 8 years old when she became addicted to lying it was so habitual with her I always required proof when she told me something because she lied about everything. Even when you gave her undeniable proof you knew she was lying she would keep right up with that lie. Then at 18 right after her first daughter was born she started taking meth and I helped her to get free of it for her to turn right around a few months later and start taking it again knowing full well what it would do to her. At the height of her addiction she got down to 65 lbs and she stands 5′ 6″ I could feel every bone in her body.
We ended up arguing about the fact it was killing her and she said it was to hard to stop. I told her she had to get out of my house it was in the middle of winter. She reminded me it was very cold and I told her she was an adult and if she wanted to slowly kill herself I couldn’t stop her, but I would not watch her do it or enable her to do it any longer. Throwing her out was the hardest thing I had ever done and I did not see or hear from her for three years. One day she showed up on my doorstep with my second granddaughter. She actually thanked me for throwing her out because it shocked her into reality. I spent many nights crying in those three years wondering where she was and if she was okay.
The problem with her and many others with addictions is it often doesn’t matter how broken the becomes it is the mind that needs to be broken. It is like those on that show my 600 lb life those people became that way because of addiction to food and they really could careless how big they get so long as they get the food they want. A dear friend of mine was like that and his wake up call was when he stood up one day and his weight broke his leg. It finally broke his mind in that he finally realized he had a serious problem. It is the same with diabetics and sweets and carbs some never learn though not even after losing one or both legs. I am an insulin dependent diabetic and I also take an injection once a week to help my insulin work better. I have a sweet tooth, but I also like my legs so even though I do cheat here and there I am extremely careful about it.
I tell people God is a gentleman and He will not force anything on you. If you really want to change then you are required to work with him. He will never force that change of mind on you and so if you will not take His direction He will allow you to self destruct because you have free will.
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Amen! I also tell people God is a gentleman. That’s an old fashioned concept these days, people don’t always understand what it means, but He does honor our freewill, He lets us make our own choices.
Good job on kicking the kid out. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It is excruciatingly painful, but it can really save their lives. I know of so many who are being enabled, who are being given money, partly because those who love them are unwilling to make the sacrifice and suffer themselves. We really accommodate addicts here where I live and it doesn’t help them, in fact it often makes it worse, and we have really high overdose rates to show for it.
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In contemporary culture, the term ‘gentleman’ has largely been co-opted by Male Feminists, and the Red Pills have made it somewhat of a dirty word. Basically today a ‘gentleman’ is somebody who submits to women.
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Oh gosh, it’s all so sad! I’d love to tell people, men especially, if you want perfect a role model, an example of what a real gentleman is all about, look to Jesus! He is the epitome of perfect masculinity. The problem being half the people identify Him as some kind of socialist hippy in sandals, and the other half use Him more like an angel of vengeance, like “just wait until your Father comes home” and judges the Earth!
Even without those distortions and perversions already imbedded deep in people’s minds, it’s still a complicated paradox. I think Jordan Peterson gives the best description when he speaks of how weak men are not good men, good men are dangerous men who have that under control. So Jesus can call forth a legion of angels at any time, but He doesn’t. To really upset the apple cart, Jesus doesn’t submit to women at all…. He lays down His very life for us! The bar is much higher then mere submission. He lays down His life for men too, I’m just saying submission is the easy part, “we’re submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ,” just by being civilized and somewhat kind.
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You are right most people no longer know what a gentleman is and it is really a sad thing. He does honor our freewill. Having said that I feel He does nudge us from time to time.
That was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life she is my only living daughter I lost my youngest to SIDs in 1985 and I did not want to lose her too. That one act and the three years that followed aged me a lot. I knew though having an alcoholic mother that the more you enable them the worse it gets. I never gave her money, but did provide her a place to stay and I just couldn’t watch it anymore I had to let go and pray for her. I told her my suffering meant nothing it was her suffering that hurt so much, but as long as she was unwillingly to try nothing I did was going to help anyway.
I am from Illinois originally and it is one of the meth capitals of this country because all the components for meth are fairly easy to get including anhydrous ammonia which is a fertilizer. It is a very dangerous substance. People here in Texas think I am joking when I say there are rolling meth labs there in the back of cars and trucks. Where I lived out in the country I had the ATF come through my yard twice executing a raid on a house close to ours. That is scary and something I don’t want to experience ever again. Here in Texas it is mostly opioids that come across the border.
States like Illinois enable addicts because it keeps them out of the way and compliant in the fact they make no noise and often die quietly in a back alley somewhere.
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I was born in Illinois and moved to Missouri as a teenager. I haven’t been back there since the 1980s, but when I left the area was so Conservative that they were debating over repealing the ‘Blue Laws’ which prohibited selling liquor on Sundays. Local politicians who didn’t have the approval of the Elders of the Baptist or Presbyterian Church were considered potentially ‘soft’ on social issues. The Sheriffs main concern was with moonshining and gambling. The local men would get together and drive drug-dealers out of town when they’d show up. But what the Clintons did to Arkansas, they did to the whole country later on: from what I’ve heard from heard from people back there, the whole Midwest now is one big wasteland of Meth and the larger towns are just ghettoes.
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The part of Illinois was by the 1970’s as blue as blue can be. I was born there in 1962 and left in 2006. The town I lived in has always been a relatively beautiful town, but it is at it’s core not a nice place to live. It is governed by old money and they do not like change so it is stuck about 30 years in the past. The meth started in the 90’s there and has only gotten worse over the years. I was back there in 2013 and 2016 to see family and I could not wait to leave again because I hate it there so much. They always called my hometown Little Chicago because the Chicago Syndicate used it for decades to do business and most of the businesses were owned by them.
Those people told you the truth Illinois is dying of meth and violence. Part of it is because anhydrous ammonia is so easy to get being it is sitting in big tanks in fields where it is used as fertilizer. My sister lives in what is considered a nice neighborhood and had a meth lab explode in the sewer across the street from her. People are now leaving there in droves for better places and I don’t blame them I wish I had left a lot sooner than I did. Believe you are not missing anything by not going back there.
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What you wrote above reminds me of a scripture passage I read this morning from a devotional booklet titled “The Upper Room.” It’s not about prayer specifically but instructions for Christian living found in Ephesians 4:17-28: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+4%3A17-28&version=NIV That devotional is available online at: https://www.upperroom.org/devotionals/en-2022-05-06
I published a blog post yesterday titled, “Let Us Pray,” and about half way down in the post there is a section that answers the question, “What is the purpose of prayer?” The answer comes from GotQuestions.org and there is a list of what prayer is not included in the answer, and your comment on “wishing thinking” could be added to that list… 🙂 https://sarasmusings.wordpress.com/2022/05/05/let-us-pray/
What you wrote near the end is so true of all of us especially when we are feeling desperate. You wrote, “We people tend to pray, unwilling to do anything different, unwilling to change course, unwilling to try new things, unwilling to give anything up, unwilling to even listen for a response to our prayers.” Desperation tends to keep us frozen in place. Perhaps we should start by asking God to “Change me.” 🙂
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Oh, I like that! We should totally start our prayers by asking God to “change me.”
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“Here, let me spit in my hand, rub mud in your eye,
and you go down to the river and wash it off.”
Yes, God, often asks WE, His Sheep, His Ekklesia, to do some strange things.
———-
Reminds me of a couple of decades ago…
When a Christian friend came by and told me
About two New Churches being built in the far side of town.
I was exited and asked, “What denominations are they?”
He answered, I don’t know the denominations.
But, one calls themself, The Mudites.
And, the other calls themself, The Spitites.
The Spitites believe it was His Spit that healed the man.
The Mudites believe it had to be the mud, that healed.
And, WE, His Sheep, His Ekklesia, keep doing the same thing…
Over, and over again, expecting a different result.
———-
How has the thousands of denominations worked out?
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Ha! Very cute, the Mudites and the Spitites. I have never heard that one before.
We Christians can just be the worst when it comes to doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
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Sobering lesson not just for addicts
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