Cyber Truths By E-mail
17. The Pianist & Marriages (November 25, 2005)
Sue brought home a DVD from the library
that we watched with great emotion — The Pianist. The
movie is an extraordinary true story of one Jewish man's
survival in German-occupied Warsaw from 1939-1945. What he
endured to stay alive caused us to question our own depth of
perseverance. Roman Polanski, who produced and directed the
movie, said of the book from which the screenplay was drawn,
"I have never read a piece so moving that I felt I had to
bring it to the screen." We agree...
We encourage you to get the movie, not only
for what it conveys on the screen, but to prepare yourself for
the chastisement coming upon this nation. As other prophetic
voices have warned, "It will be a time when the true
followers of Jesus as well as the Jewish people will face a
holocaust that makes Europe look small in scope."
An interesting note: At the end of the
movie, just as Warsaw was being overtaken from the Germans by
the Russians, Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Jewish survivor, meets a
German officer who saves his life. After watching the movie, we
got the book, The Pianist, from the library. The epilogue went
into great depth about the German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who
was himself opposed to the atrocities done to the Jewish
people. The epilogue revealed how many other Jews Hosenfeld had
saved at risk to his own life during the war.
Excerpts from Hosenfeld's diary that he
kept throughout the war are included. As you read his comments
about Germany, you may think, as we did, that the Founding
Fathers of this nation had been sounding the same warning:
" ...people [are] moving away from
Christianity. Humanity seems doomed to do more evil than
good... The denial of God's commandments leads to all the other
immoral manifestations of greed — unjust self-enrichment,
hatred, deceit, sexual license... God allows all this to
happen, lets these forces have power and allows so many
innocent people to perish to show mankind that without Him we
are only animals in conflict... We will not listen to the
divine commandment: 'Love one another'. Very well, then, says
God, try the devil's commandment, the opposite: 'Hate one
another'... God allows evil to come about because mankind has
espoused it, and now we are beginning to feel the burden of our
own evil."
Our Founding Fathers voiced similar
insight. The same thing that happened in Germany at the hands
of the Nazis is happening to the United States, because this
nation is doing away with trusting God and the foundations of
the Bible. These Dark Days of Chastisement will far surpass
what the victims of Katrina are going through.
Please, we write this so that you may learn
to walk totally repentant before our Lord.
• Scrutinize your life for any pet
sins that are violations of God's commands. Heed the conviction
of His Spirit so you'll be a clean vessel available for our
Lord's purposes!
• Read His Word for application,
making sure that you understand what is required of you to live
righteously.
• He is the God Who does not change.
We have been pondering the warnings of Jeremiah lately as we've
grieved with God over the stubborn hearts of His people.
Consider reading his prophetic warning as a family before you
celebrate His first coming next month. It's a sober heart
preparation!
Marriage
We are finishing up the Lifebyte that we
mentioned in our last e-mail: Obedient Trust Versus Reasoning
– The Hebraic Foundations Confront Evangelicalism.
It should be on our website within the next
few days. In it we address the demonic inroads that Hellenism
has insidiously made in Evangelicalism, especially among the
men.
We know the struggle that many marriages
are going through as you seek to see the love and character of
Jesus manifested in your midst. As we've shared before, in our
experience only about 1 in every 200 marriages walk
victoriously together in all that our Lord desires for them.
And as we've shared before, He wants every wife to experience
His love through her husband.
We think we can help some of you get
started on the process via this e-mail. We want to share with
you our own very personal testimony of the healing power of
Jesus in our lives. Sue and I arrived in Israel in 1993 on the
verge of divorce. We had expended ourselves so much in ministry
over the years that we neglected our marriage. (All praise to
our Lord: It isn't that way anymore! Our ministry now flows out
of what Jesus has done in our marriage to draw our hearts
together in Him.)
In our Father's mercy and Divine timing, He
had us stay in Israel with two trusted friends, Bert and Exie
Schlossberg. They made clear they wouldn't help us save our
marriage. But they would help each of us get right with Jesus
in love-grounded obedient trust. Only our Lord could transform
each of our hearts so that HE could transform our marriage. (On
the flight to Israel, I [Mike] put my wedding ring back on,
pleading with Jesus to save our marriage.)
We didn't understand it at the time, but it
became clearer through several events as we were writing this
next Lifebyte:
In order for us to move ahead, Jesus needed
to heal our past.
The revelation of that which Jesus wanted
to heal in Sue began shortly before we left the retreat center.
We were estranged in the months before our departure from the
retreat center, and one day in prayer the Holy Spirit whispered
to me, "Sue suffers from feeling 'expendable.' Ask her how
her parents got divorced."
She shared with me: "My mother had
decided she didn't want to be married, so when I was eight she
left my sister and me and moved to another town. I vaguely
recall my grandmother coming down from New Hampshire to take
care of us but I don't recall for how long she was there.
My mother finally told my father she'd come
back to raise us but she didn't want to be married any longer.
I guess I hid all that from my memory because I pretty much
thought how self-sacrificing my mother was to work such long
hours to support us and to do without so we could have what we
needed.
In fact, not until I was an adult did I
discover from my father that he'd wanted desperately for the
marriage to succeed but my mother refused to stay home to take
care of us. She was determined to exert her independence and
work, not realizing that her choice would cost my sister and me
the relationship we needed with our father. That legacy of
independence created a void in me of being able to later bond
with my husband in the way our Lord called for. I wasn't able
to sense the permanent nature of our marriage covenant because
that hadn't been the experience with my parents. I operated on
the lie that I was expendable and non-essential to anyone's
life."
Our first night in Israel at Bert and
Exie's, Sue was in the dining room after dinner talking with
Exie while I was on the recliner napping. Exie was sharing with
Sue about a teaching she'd heard from Derek Prince. Exie told
Sue that many women are imprisoned by "Soulish
Dominion." Soulish Dominion causes a person to never
experience genuine love and acceptance. She is driven by the
demonic prod: I have to earn acceptance by what I do.
[Mike] As soon as I heard the words leave
Exie's mouth I awoke, exclaiming, "That's it!" I knew
in my spirit that a loving Father was showing us wounds that
only Jesus could heal.
Before moving to Israel, Bert had been a
pastor who met with clergy of other churches in our area at the
retreat center each month. I [Mike] considered him the most
caring of them all, and also a close friend. We were joined in
the Spirit. I still remember the day when I was working far
from the lodge in one of the pastures repairing a fence. The
Holy Spirit told me, "Bert is on his way out to see you.
Go up to the lodge and put some coffee on." Just as the
pot finished perking, Bert drove in the driveway.
On another occasion Sue and I were in tears
praying about what to do with our son, who was having
difficulty at the Christian school he attended. As we prayed
and cried, there was a knock on the door. It was Bert! He
sensed the Holy Spirit directing him to come see us — and
we lived well out of his way. His visit resulted in us
home-schooling our son, which we did for the next five years.
I realize that it was our Lord who had
brought me to Bert in Israel. Bert was older, and a tool in
God's hands to make me confront the barriers I had to loving
Sue. Often as he and I walked the neighborhood after dinner
he'd ask the same painful question" "Why can't you
love Sue the way Jesus calls for you to?" Every time I
bought up a rationale to justify my resistance, Bert would
quickly stop me with, "But Mike...." This went on for
almost three weeks until I came to realize that Jesus is the
only One who could enable me to love Sue.
On December 31, 1993, Sue and I were
walking through Jerusalem talking. She told me something.
"Before we left the retreat center one of the staff
members took me aside and said, 'Inside of Mike is a little boy
that has never been healed.'"
In my spirit I knew God had her speak those
words to me, and that I really needed Jesus to heal me. Vivid,
painful thoughts of my childhood raced through my mind.That
night we and the Schlossbergs sat around talking about
different things. Exie asked me some pointed questions, and I
remember that my response was such anger toward God that I
literally saw red. She then said, "Only you and God can
deal with this."
I went up to our room. As I closed the door
I could feel His presence in the room. It wasn't with audible
words, but I KNEW He'd been waiting for years for me to bring
before Him issues that went all the way back to my youth. He
wasn't upset that I was angry with Him, but grieved that I
hadn't addressed Him about it years earlier. I guess I'd always
thought it was "unspiritual" to be angry with God!
When I humbled my heart to listen to Him,
my bitter anger was gone, but I knew there was still something
more that needed healing. Sue came up to the room. I discovered
I was madly in love with her! My heart was so attached to her
it was actually hurting. She was startled and distrusting, to
say the least. That was okay. In the months that followed my
love enveloped her.
The next morning as we went downstairs,
Bert and Exie were in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Exie
looked at me and said emphatically, "Mike, inside you is a
little boy who has never been healed!" [Sue had never
mentioned anything to her about that topic.]
I began to cry. Bert brought out some oil
and anointed both of us.
From that day on our marriage moved forward
into the love we now experience today. It was a week later that
our Father began to show us the Hebraic Foundations of the
earliest Church. As our marriage deepened in love and
forgiveness, our understanding of these truths did likewise.
Friends, whether you are married or not,
some of you need a healing ONLY JESUS CAN DO! If He could
reveal the roots of bondage to us as we sought Him with earnest
hearts, He can do it with anyone who turns to Him in trust.
It's your heart's pursuit for Jesus and your trusting reliance
on Him that makes it happen. If all you want is out of your
problem without complete trust in Him, it won't. This we know.
Consider the emotional undergirding of
these two passages:
"God allowed this to happen so that
you would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27).
"And without trust it is impossible to
please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that
he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him" (Hebrews 11:6).
No counseling technique can ever replace
what only the power of Jesus can. He wants to be the Lord of
your heart as well as your life, even the Lord of your past
hurts. His stripes have given Him the power to heal if you
really want Him to.
He healed us to the utmost.....
Mike & Sue Dowgiewicz |
