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Train Up A Child
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Train Up A Child
Amy is the daughter of a Baptist minister. She grew up surrounded by the love of her family and church. She is a Christian. As she talked, you had no trouble visualizing her growing up in a minister’s home. She is sweet, blond, and petite and has a look of fresh innocence about her. She looks much younger than her thirty years.
What is hard to visualize is the miraculous story that she told. Like many young people, when she went to college, she wandered away from her faith. She began experimenting with very dangerous things.
She had to take classes in feminine studies. There she met members of Wicca. While she herself never practiced witchcraft, her friends were active witches. She spent much time surrounded by witchcraft.
She began a lifestyle of bulimia, drinking, and hanging out in bars. Much to the dismay of her parents, she accepted jobs tending bars in the most dangerous areas of her city. She walked inner city streets at night and became friends with gang members.
She married twice and was twice divorced. Each marriage lasted less than a year. Her former husbands were practicing members of the life she was involved in. While she is not an alcoholic, she enjoyed drinking and took risks when she drank. Her bulimia became very serious.
Her bulimia took on the typical pattern of starve, binge, and finally purge. She developed the medical symptoms that went along with this problem. By the end, she had lost the ability eat normally and to sleep. She could not keep down any food because it all wanted to come right back up.
As her bulimia and lifestyle grew worse, she had trouble keeping a job. She simply could not make herself go to work. She lost job after job as she became more and more irresponsible.
She was desperate. She decided that her entire problem was a lost love from high school. She believed that she was supposed to be with this man and that finally would make her happy.
He was married. She did not care. She rationalized that they were supposed to be together and that justified anything she did. She pursued him relentlessly. Finally, he gave in and left his wife. He spent a short time with Amy and realized the error of his ways. He left her and went back to his wife. He told her that she needed serious help.
The night he left her, her bulimia was at its worse. She was deathly ill. Her sister called and offered her hope.
Her sister knew how much trouble she was in. Her sister is a Christian, married, and had two children under the age of two. Instead of admitting that she wanted to help Amy, she asked for Amy’s help. She told Amy that her husband was traveling and she was lonely. She said she needed a friend and help with the children. She asked Amy to move in and help.
Amy knew that to move to her sisters house meant a return to the lifestyle of her childhood. She knew her sister would expect her to go to church and to live in a manner that was appropriate for her sister’s two precious children to be around.
She also knew that she had to do something. She remembered what it felt like to be loved and holy. She said yes to her sister.
That night, God miraculously healed her bulimia. Food stayed down. She slept through the entire night without waking up. God healed her before she ever even started developing a relationship with Him. The act of saying yes to her sister was an act of surrender and God took that small offering and healed her. She has had no reoccurrence of her bulimia in seven years.
She was in church the very next Sunday. She met her Christian husband of 3 ½ years while he was running the sound for the church.
The very same Sunday that Amy met her future husband, Satan made another attempt to steal Amy back. That lost love from high school called her and said that he could not live without her. He offered to leave his wife and marry her. She knew she was at a crossroads. She also remembered the pain of her past. Amy chose life over death and told this man no.
Her husband is a Christian and has a very close personal walk with God. He also has an understanding of the road she has walked. He himself has his own story of miracles. He is a recovering alcoholic and has been alcohol free for almost nine years.
He is active in Alcoholic Anonymous and he helped Amy to find Overeaters Anonymous. While her eating disorder was lifted the night she surrendered to God, her emotional reaction to life is still that of an addict. She says that Overeaters Anonymous helps her to live sanely.
Today Amy has an ongoing relationship with God. She talks about Him as if He is her very close friend. She and her husband have recently moved to a new city. She told me about the churches she has visited and made suggestions for where I could worship on Sunday.
She said that she knows the prayers of her family protected her while she was living such a desperate lifestyle. She shuddered when she discussed the parts of town that she walked around in at night and the things she was involved with. God’s protection was the only thing that could have kept her safe. She says she is living proof of Proverbs 22:6 and that her parents claimed that promise on her behalf.
Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
KJV
Amy has a job where many people depend on her. She has the confidence and ability to perform that job. With the help of God, her employers are able to depend on her. They see no sign of the Amy that could not keep a job.
Amy remembers who she was without God. She freely talks about it. She never wants to go back to that person. She is willing to go to any lengths to maintain the relationship she has found. She wants me to tell her story.
Praise God for Amy’s parents. They are certainly not perfect. Her mother struggles with compulsive overeating. Her father can be controlling. They may not be perfect but they pointed Amy to the One who is. They faithfully prayed for Amy. They love Amy unconditionally.
Praise God for Amy’s sister. Because she is in love with the creator of perfect love, she knew how to help love Amy back to life.
Praise God for sending Amy a Christian husband that could understand the demons that drove her. Praise God for giving Amy another chance at a marriage ordained by God. He is a God of second, third, and fiftieth chances.
Praise God for making Amy perfect in His sight. He has no memory of her past.
Hebrews 8:12
For I will forgive their wickedness
And will remember their sins no more."
(from New International Version)
He is her rock and will give her his strength. He will make her way perfect and her feet like the feet of a deer. His will be her shield from temptation and make her able to stand on new heights.
2 Samuel 22:31-37
As for God, his way is perfect;
The word of the LORD is flawless.
He is a shield
For all who take refuge in him.
For who is God besides the LORD?
And who is the Rock except our God?
It is God who arms me with strength
And makes my way perfect.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
He enables me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands for battle;
My arms can bend a bow of bronze.
You give me your shield of victory;
You stoop down to make me great.
You broaden the path beneath me,
So that my ankles do not turn.
(from New International Version)
Take a moment and pray for Amy and her husband. Pray for their marriage and their continued recovery from addiction. Addicts only have recovery one day at a time and they will have to continue leaning on God for the rest of their lives to stay free of their addictions.
Pray for Amy to be able to fully forgive both herself and all of the others that had anything to do with what happened to her.
Mark 11:25
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
(from New International Version)
Pray that she will be granted the grace to love deeply. Pray that she will be able to love God, herself, and her neighbors. Loving the Lord God completely and loving our neighbor as ourselves is important for all of us. It is a life and death matter for Amy.
Mark 12:30-31
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
(from New International Version)
Finally, look at your own life. Are there things that are getting between you and your relationship with God? What are the strongholds on your life? Ask God to help show them to you.
Do you struggle with additions? Do you work too much? Are you so busy that you do not have time for God? Do the demons pride, fear, depression, or control rule your life? Confess this to our loving Heavenly Father.
Ask God to help you learn to wage war against these strongholds in our lives. Use the heavenly weapons to fight these strongholds.
Ask Him to help you take captive every thought that is not from Him. Thank Him for his promise to demolish all of the strongholds in our lives. Claim that promise on behalf of Amy and yourself.
2 Corinthians 10:3-6
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
(from New International Version)
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