Section (2) of Ch.9. (The Power of a Parent’s Blessing)

SEED ALWAYS BEARS FRUIT AFTER ITS OWN KIND

 Suppose a young woman named Mary grows up with a hypercritical father, whom she judges. She then vows to never marry a critical man like her father. Meanwhile a young man named Tom grows up with an undisciplined, obese mother, whom he judges. He then vows to never marry an overweight woman like his mother.

 These two young people meet and marry. Tom is very accepting and kind—nothing like Mary's father. Mary has a beautiful figure, unlike Tom's mother, and is also a wonderful cook. In an attempt to bless her husband, Mary cooks wonderful meals every evening. However, the food she cooks is a little too rich for her, and she gains a couple of pounds. Because Tom is yet bound in his heart to his mother, without realizing it he views Mary through the image of his mother. Her small weight gain greatly alarms him, and he gently confronts his wife about her figure. Mary, who is still bound in her heart to her dad, hears Tom's words through the image of her father. Being deeply wounded by Tom's criticism, Mary reacts with a very emotional response. A serious argument then ensues as Tom continues to express his deep concern about Mary's weight.

 Being under the additional emotional pressure of her husband's criticism, Mary begins snacking a little between meals and gains another couple of pounds. Tom, of course, is now even more alarmed and confronts Mary again, resulting in another highly emotional argument. If Tom and Mary never identify and repent of the way their hearts are still bound to their parents through judgment and bitterness, their marriage will soon consist of a very disappointed and critical husband and a very wounded and overweight wife.

 My family once lived next to a woman who was about to divorce her third husband. When I asked her what her experience had been with her three husbands, she proceeded to tell me that they all had manifested the same types of addictions and serious dysfunction that her father had dealt with. I asked her if these three men were like that before she married them. She acknowledged that the first one had some of those characteristics, but that neither of the others had behaved that way at all before they married her.

 I asked this woman to what she attributed marrying three different men who all demonstrated the same negative character qualities she had despised in her father. My neighbor replied by saying, "I guess I just don't know how to pick them." As I heard her story, I wanted to ask, "Did you ever think you might be the one carrying the seed? It doesn't much matter what field you plant it in. Until you recognize and deal with it in your life, that seed of judgment and bitterness toward your father will yield the same fruit every time." I realized that she, unfortunately, was not yet ready to hear that word.

YOU'RE JUST LIKE MY MOTHER!

 Let me give you one more example of a couple for whom I prayed several years ago. A man I'll call Jim decided to cut himself off from his mother and managed to reproduce in his wife the very qualities he hated in his mom. Jim's wife came to me for help first, saying she loved Jim deeply but was considering divorce because circumstances in the marriage had made her life intolerable. She said Jim refused to take any type of responsibility at home. Now the bank was about to repossess their house, not because they didn't have enough money to pay the mortgage but because Jim "never got around" to making the payment.

 Jim knew it was his job to pay the bills, keep the yard, maintain the cars, shovel the walks in the winter, and so on, but he never really did any of those things. Consequently Jim's wife had begrudgingly taken over all of those responsibilities and was extremely weary and frustrated.
 I met Jim the following week. Initially I asked him how his marriage was going. He replied, "Oh, we have our ups and downs like everyone else, but we really love each other and have a good, stable marriage. I can't really complain about anything." There was quite a disparity between his and his wife's perception of the marriage. Jim was shocked when I told him that his wife was considering divorce.

 I confronted Jim about the irresponsibility his wife reported. He acknowledged that he just seemed to "space out" all the time. At first I began to work with Jim on time management and goal setting, but try as I might, he still never fulfilled his responsibilities around the house. I began to understand his wife's frustration.

 I then realized that there was a much deeper root. After we prayed together to ask the Lord to reveal the root of this problem, I felt led to ask Jim several questions about his mother, and the answers began to come. Jim was the younger of two children. His mother clearly favored his older sister and conveyed a message to him that he couldn't do anything right.

 Jim's mother wanted to spare him the embarrassment of making any mistakes, so she constantly redid everything he attempted so that it would be "right." When she asked Jim to set the table for dinner, she always came behind him and reset it after him because it was never to her satisfaction. She also instilled in him the belief that making a mistake was a terrible thing that should be avoided at all costs.

 Every time Jim's mom would redo one of his tasks and criticize him for the job he had done, it deeply wounded his heart. It was a form of cursing his identity and was very painful emotionally. It taught Jim from a very early age that he couldn't do anything to please his mother, so the best way to avoid being
hurt and criticized was to not do anything at all for her. After that point he was scolded for not completing the task he had been given, but to Jim that was far less painful than being chastised for doing it "wrong." Besides, his mom would come and do it the way she wanted anyway, so the task would still be accomplished.

When Jim married, what kind of woman do you think he looked for? You are right-someone who was the exact opposite of his mother. He found a wonderful Christian girl who loved Jim just the way he was and never criticized him as his mom used to do. Of course, Jim's wife did not meet his mother's expectations, and she constantly told him he could have done much better. Jim's mother never blessed their marriage or accepted Jim's wife.

 Consequently Jim harbored bitterness toward his mother for all the cursing and criticism. Unbeknownst to Jim, this created patterns of expectancy in his heart that kept him tied to his mother deep inside. Without realizing it, he began to expect his wife to treat him the way his mother did. He expected her—and all women for that matter—to eventually criticize and reject him, even though his wife had never treated him that way. This was wreaking havoc in Jim's marriage because over time Jim began to force his wife into the same role his mother had played.
It was the unconscious fear of being criticized that caused Jim to default on all his domestic responsibilities. As a result, 

he had given his wife only three bad options:

  1. Do nothing and watch everything around them deteriorate
  2. Continue to nag Jim and try to get him to perform, usually with little success and great frustration
  3. Give up and do it herself

 Initially she waited for Jim to do what he promised. Yet eventually, in frustration, she began to criticize and nag him just as his mother had done. This made Jim even more determined to avoid doing anything for fear that he would do it wrong and be further criticized. Eventually, much to Jim's relief, his wife chose the third option to just do things herself.

 He thought everything was great, but she was frustrated beyond belief. Jim had forced his wife to be his mother instead of his spouse, inadvertently reproducing in his wife the same pattern of criticism and cursing his identity that he hated in his mother.

 Until Jim could truly forgive his mother for constantly cursing his identity and then receive the Lord's blessing and impartation of his true identity and destiny, he would not be free to become one with his wife and be a proper husband to her. Once we identified Jim's root issue—the tie to his mother— Jim was able to break free from the judgment of his mom and the fear of failure. Much to his wife's delight, Jim was finally able to become the responsible husband God had created him to be. Many couples just like Jim and his wife have found tremendous healing when they realized that the root cause of their marital diffculties was that one or both of them were still tied to a parent who had not imparted his or her blessing.

REFUSAL TO RELEASE CURSES THE IDENTITY OF MARRIED CHILDREN

 Another potential way parents can curse the identity of their married children is to not allow them to emotionally leave home. It is sometimes very diffcult for parents to release their married children and allow them to be joined to a spouse. Even though they have blessed their child's marriage and received the marriage partner, they still want to make decisions for their married child. When this occurs, it is very important for the married child to set boundaries on what input he is willing to receive from his parents. He must also make sure his marriage partner is his first relational priority, not his parents.

 Recently a father told me about an encounter he had with his married daughter. She called home one night crying and upset about an argument she'd had with her husband. They both had said some unkind things that they didn't mean, and now the daughter wanted to come home. This wise father told his daughter, "Honey, you are home. I will always love you, and you will always be my daughter, but your home is no longer here. It is now there with your husband.

 " How diffcult that must have been for a loving father to say to his hurting daughter! However, this wise father clearly understood his role to listen and comfort, but then to direct his daughter to the Lord and back to her husband to continue becoming "one flesh" with him.

FAMILY PARTNERSHIP STRATEGY FOR SELECTING A MARRIAGE PARTNER

 I have spoken with many parents who were distraught over the person their son or daughter had married. I have also spoken to many people whose marriage has been very diffcult or even ended in divorce, and often they tell me their parents did not approve of their choice of spouse. Only after some life experience—often around age forty—do they see the wisdom in their parents' caution. This is why is it so important for parents to be involved in the process of selecting their adult child's marriage partner.

 As the old expression goes, love is blind. It can also be deaf, dumb, and stupid. When the blinders come on, the child in love may fail to notice negative character traits, generational patterns of sin, or family history that may affect a future marriage. For this reason that young person needs another set of "eyes" that are clear of any romantic attachment. The primary people God has placed in the lives of children to help them see more objectively are their parents.

 I am not suggesting that we return to the arranged marriages common in biblical Hebrew culture. However, I believe there is a way for parents to be involved in their child's marriage selection process that is neither as restrictive as an arranged marriage nor as permissive as our current dating system in which the parents have very little input. I believe a more appropriate strategy would be a partnership in which both the parents and the children seek God together to discern who He is sending to be the child's spouse.

 Using the powerful principle of agreement, this strategy prepares the child to function in agreement within marriage. Most of us who have been married for some time have made the mistake of making a decision our spouse did not support. In almost every case in my own life I wish I had listened to my wife. We discovered early in our marriage the principle of agreement. If only one of us thought we should do a particular thing, we found it was better not to act. Jan and I discovered that when we were in agreement about a decision, most of the time that was the will of God.

 It is wise to teach children this principle of agreement when we are preparing them to be released into manhood or womanhood. During the time of instruction we can explain that we can best discern the will of God regarding their future spouse when all of us—both parents and kids—are in agreement. If only one of us thinks someone is the marriage partner sent from God but the other does not, there is a good chance that this is not God's plan. However, when parents and a child are in agreement about the person, the will of God likely will be found in this agreement.

 When a family has walked this way, it is very easy for the parents to tell the adult child at marriage to apply the same principle of agreement in his relationship with his spouse.
There is also very little chance the parents will not bless the marriage.

In order to properly implement this partnership strategy, one must recognize the five principles upon which it is based:

1. The purpose of marriage is not to make one "happy" but to        
  empower an individual to fulfill a destiny in Christ that he or she    
  can better fulfill married than single.

2. God knows better than we do whom our son or daughter should 
  marry, and He will bring His choice of a marriage partner into our 
  child's life at just the right time.

3. Our child's heart and body do not belong to him to give away as he 
  wills; they belong to God and are to be reserved in purity until 
  marriage.

4. The will of God in a marriage partner is best discerned in 
   agreement between the parents and child.

5, Both parents and child trust that God will use both parties to reveal 
   His will despite their respective weaknesses and faults. This 
   engenders mutual respect, honor, and trust in God.

 When parents walk alongside their children in selecting a marriage partner, there is a much greater chance that the child will experience a successful marriage and fulfill with his spouse the purpose God has for his life.