I just wanted to thank all of you who did take the time to pray for Suzie and ask that you do keep praying for her.  She's recently gone off the deep end, totally forsaking her new life, new apartment, job, church, friends, etc. and suddenly jumped on a plane, leaving her car behind and moved in with a different sister out of state.  She has lived with this particular sister before -- and been repeatedly beat up by her in drunken/drugged rages.  However, said sister offers a new car and a higher paying job and dear Suzie had burned enough bridges here that she was becoming ever more lonely.  It is a sad deal, but my wife and I do believe that she is saved and at the beginning of her "faith walk."  It is now very much up to God, we lift her up in prayer, put her in God's hands and only hope she doesn't choose to suffer for years on end.  Again, thank you and please do pray for her.  Our own specific prayer is that God do just exactly as His word says and soon:  Restore her to a sound mind.  Thanks again.  NMC

[Isaiah 9:6, NKJV]

Concerning our triune God, if you read Isaiah 9:6 you see a prophesy of the coming Messiah in which Isaiah identifies this (at that time) unborn human child to be God Almighty, the Everlasting Father and a number of other Hebrew names for God only ever ascibed to God Most High, the Creator and Father.  Yet at the same time, Isaiah also identifies this (at that time) unborn child as Messiah and Prince of Peace.  Here:

For unto us a Child is born,
      Unto us a Son is given;
      And the government will be upon His shoulder.
      And His name will be called
      Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
      Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
                                                   Isaiah 9:6, NKJV

In this Messianic prophesy, we see what we call "the Trinity" clearly exposed.  The prophesy says plainly that the Everlasting Father, the Messiah and Counselor are all one.

Now the Trinity is not called one of the "mysteries of God" without cause.  Try to explain it clearly and you are immediately confronted with an impossibility -- our finite human minds simply cannot frame the entirety of God's identity into a concise, cognitive package.  Many very good analogies have been used to try:  steam, water and ice all being water; time space and energy all requiring each other to exist, but all being separate, etc.

Ultimately though, these analogies are lacking.  Even when we consider ourselves created in God's own image having mind, body and spirit and simply point out that God can separate Himself into these three distinct parts, we are still left with little more than an understanding of how it could work, but no clearly defined picture of how it does work.

This reality cries out loudly as solid evidence that God is real, the Bible is true and that Christianity is a religious concept revealed by God, rather than invented by men.  After all, how could men invent a God that we still today cannot fully understand?

In short, Jesus is God, the Trinity -- while being a word not actually found in Scripture is a good name for the doctrine describing our triune God and the fact that it is this triune God we follow is in itself strong evidence that we follow the ONLY true God, because He is the only God in all history that we cannot define in human terms.

Thanks to all of you and I would still gladly take more input!

I think I should be clear that "Suzie" is most definitely a Christian.  Some years ago, she stayed with my wife and I once before over a few months.  That was a stormy period also in that we needed to tell her that as long as she was with us, some of her "friends" were just not a welcome part of the life that we were underwriting for her financially.  There was much anger, screaming, indignance and she soon flew the coop so-to-speak, to go and live with family that did not provide her so much challenge or set any positive expectations on her.  However, she did come to the Lord before leaving back then and while she chose the hard road -- the habitual sin road repeatedly since then, I can also say with much confidence that I have absolutely seen the Lord begin changing and developing, sanctifying and moulding Suzie. 

The problem is -- and please know that I do not say this lightly -- Suzie's entire family is under an intergenerational demonic oppression.  Her parents were the first generation of her family to leave Mormonism.  Kudos.  What they left TO, however,  was their own sort of hybrid version of Israel-centric Mormonism where they continue rejecting most of Christianity -- both people and doctrine, but also now reject Mormonism and generally call themselves Christians while seeing most of the rest of what we'd call Christianity as a false church.  It's a pretty confusing, sad deal that you'd have to be closely associated with the family to understand fully, but leave it to say that the mother and father have essentially built their own pseudo-Christian cult with all the characteristics of a cult:  A highly anti-social, fear the world, it's us or them, "this family is all you've got -- to disagree is to betray us" mentality; tons of truly brutal verbal abuse as well as significant physical abuse and an in-house pecking order which is entirely based upon who can scream the loudest and longest or who is strong enough to use force. 

Coming from that, Suzie came to our relatively quiet, peaceful home and it was like opening the gates of hell on our household.  When things were calm, it was generally only because she was silently seething in her bedroom with ruminating thoughts of how awful we were for helping her, but not helping her in every detail the way she would prefer.  Keep in mind that this is a 26 year old woman required to pay no rent, utilities, food -- anything.  Just be nice, come to church and sort of regroup after years of family insanity.  It was a big deal that since being saved she has come to reject her parent's theology and now trust the same God-man Jesus the rest of us do.  She has come miles spiritually, but in other ways, she has also matured into a very cynical, hard, dishonest and deeply skewed young woman. 

In the way of prayer, yes, PLEASE pray for this child!  Pray specifically that she realizes the need to break the continuous contact and emotional ties between her and her family.  I have come to realize that the demonic element in Suzie's life is directly based upon her not actually wanting deliverance from the birth family God has begun to deliver her from.  She goes back and forth between believing that God will use her to save them and believing that there's really not so much wrong with them anyway.  They are almost her total social experience and absolutely her only close emotional ties with other human beings -- her best friends, confidants, counselors.  Pray specifically that she stays in church and that the Lord brings her strong, positive Christian friendships and counselors who are not deceived by her or about her, but can speak effectively into her life the things of God.  Pray specifically that the Lord protects her.  She has a serious mouth on her and she is not living in a neighborhood or lifestyle where her highly combative nature is beneficial to her health.  She's about 98 pounds of attitude living in "the hood" without the sense to realize that there are people all around her who will gladly leave her in a dumpster if she's too offensive.  Aside from that physical concern, she also has a host of self-destructive tendencies with bosses, co-workers, the mailman -- pretty much anyone she runs into AND she tends to flirt with drugs besides.

Know that she does attend church sporadically and that she does ultimately want God, but she has rejected leadership and counsel and is very much on her own in that pursuit.

Thank you all for your kind words and please do put her on every prayer chain you have access to.  Do not hesitate to email any questions, comments or advice.  I am no longer able to speak into this girl's life, but I do have access to her and she is of course still very much our concern in prayer.

Thanks!

Needing More Christ

I'm not a woman, but a Christian man hoping for some insight.

My wife's little sister "Suzie" is 26 and just moved out after living with us for 13 months -- 11 of which were rent free.  We invited her from out-of-country (she was an American living abroad with family) to come and live with us for a while to try and get her feet under her in the way of a little more independence in Christ.  She comes from an abusive, heavily codependent background and at 26 she had never lived apart from either parents or sisters -- all of whom treat her very poorly.

Basically every day she was with us was filled with angst, anger, blatant disrespect of my wife, our home and me also.  Screaming, arguing about "her rights" in our home, sullen, rude, venomous and every free waking hour of the day curled up in bed watching television -- occasionally poking her head out of her room and asking us to keep the kids quiet for her -- this should quickly paint a relatively accurate picture.

So, now she's gone and praise God for it.  We finally had enough and told her to leave; we allowed her better than a month to get her finances together, find an apartment and now she's gone and a heavy, dark spirit has lifted off our home, the air is fresher, wife kids and I laugh and have joy again -- life is good without Suzie -- dramatically better than with her.

Problem is she has no one in this town.  All of her other family is either out-of-state or out-of-country.  While she was here, we pushed and pushed for her to get involved with the church, find friends, cultivate relationships, but she chose to watch tv instead.  Obviously she has some significant emotional problems. 

However, now she's in a crummy apartment across town with no life outside of her job.  She calls my wife wanting to go get coffee and my wife just really just doesn't want to be around her at this point -- the girl has just treated her, her husband and home like @%#$! for over a year.  So my wife starts trying to explain it to her as sweetly as possible, "You know, Suzie, you really weren't very nice when you were here and..."  But Suzie cuts her off and just starts screaming like a lunatic and hangs up on her -- the last thing being said:  "Fine! You call ME when you want to go for coffee!"

Now you need to understand, my wife is probably NEVER going to call her.  That girl has burnt her bridges with her sister and I wouldn't be in favor of my wife exposing herself to even another 10 minutes of abuse from this angry, twisted young spoiled brat of a woman, BUT at the same time, I feel bad for her and while it rarely shows in her behaviors and attitudes, I know that contact with us has and likely would continue to help her somewhat.  I don't want her to live a miserable, lonely life all embittered and messed up.

Your thoughts?  Opinions?  Advice?  Prayers?

Thanks.

NMC

Rook, Airlam, Gary, Brother Jerry -- thank you all for your thoughtful and sincere comments.  I am very blessed in that I do have a wife who I am honest with and we are both well aware of each other's issues.  I have learned that it is important for us to be accountable outside our marriages as well, but I suspect that nothing can replace the value of an honest relationship with your spouse.  Some years ago I saw a pastor friend of mine have his marriage just fall apart over porn, but ultimately it fell apart over dishonesty, hiding, sneaking; by the time the brother came clean with his wife, she was only reasonably unable to trust him and felt terribly betrayed.  Thankfully I'm not really at risk there, but porn itself remains insidious and does much to tear down the mind and spirit even when it is not immediately ripping a marriage apart.  Porn though is much more a symptom of my overall issue than the issue itself.  Truth be told, a favorite Christian blog could easily do similar harm if it began eating up too much time.  The primary issue I have is that I've allowed my computer to just generally take over my life, sitting at it far longer than what is necessary to do my job.  While all the advice in this thread has been pretty good and Brother Jerry provides a very good start for fighting spiritual warfare, probably the most immediately poignant advice is Airlam's:  Just do the work you have to do and then shut it down.  I did that for the first time in quite a while today and found myself face-to-face laughing with a silly four year old who was very glad to have me not working.  Thank you all.

Hello.  I'm a 39 year old married man.  I am a serious Evangelical Christian.  I am relatively well studied, fairly argumentative, but I think (hope) also pretty fair minded.  Some years ago we (wife, kids and I) were members of a church we were being well fed at spiritually.  Things happened and we left, moved far away and life has never really been the same since.  Going back is out of the question.

One of the things I had at this church were friends -- decent, sincere and close friendships with a handful of Christian brothers that provided counsel, accountability, mentorship and just friendship.  I don't have that now and I'm suffering for it.  What's more is that my family is suffering for it also.  I've become both spiritually and physically lethargic.  I work online and in a home office and spend 12-16 hours a day sometimes in front of my computer.  Pornography has become an issue.  So has serious overeating and a tendency to avoid social situations.  I have sometimes spent up to two weeks or more never leaving my home.  My temper is short; I snap at my wife and kids regularly.  I have no relationships at this point outside my own immediate family and three of the four of them are under eight years old.  I do go to church sometimes, but it is not a place I'm fed at and it is also not a place that is particularly welcoming -- though to hear them talk, you'd think so!

I'm looking for friends and mentors that might speak to some of these issues candidly.  Whether you come with Scripture or life experience or maybe you're even in a similar boat, I'd like to start some friendships by email.  The obvious answer to my problems is to stand up, walk out the door and do differently, but for those of you who understand the nature of addiction, you know how difficult such simple things can be.  So I'm starting where I currently am:  Online. 

I await your replies.  Please email:  needing_more_christ@yahoo.com

In Christ,

d