When our couples were gathering for orientation before our regular meetings began, I?told them I’d help them become real people and authentic Christians with an ability to truly love. They could become a stronger spiritual influence in their children’s lives without interruption if they’d learn to recognize their own flesh issues that created barriers to their relationships. They could become spiritual leaders in their families and in their realm of influence outside the home. With that, they commited and we began meeting weekly on Friday nights in each other’s homes.
My ministry was to lead people to reconcile their hearts to the lordship of Christ. Our meetings didn’t consist of any marriage counseling, addressing children’s behavior problems, or otherwise addressing anyone’s personal challenges with other people. We didn’t do a Bible study, although I brought many Scriptures as I taught them the Lord’s relational principles and goals for His work in our lives, and encouraged them to check out everything I?was teaching them. I told the couples that if they allowed the Lord to work, I?could help them with their family relational dynamics toward true spiritual growth and change.
If I didn’t use any of the typical approaches to discipleship, then how was the work accomplished? Foremost the Holy Spirit accomplished it in teachable hearts. But I cooperated with Him by challenging them corporately through general teachings, and privately with gentle correction only in the context of how they related with me. I felt that I only had a right to speak into their lives at such a personal level when it was about how they were relating to me. And it stood to reveal much more of their true relational baggage as well, and not just what they wanted me to know about the dynamics of their marriage relationship from their one-sided viewpoint. This way, their problems were never about their spouse or their children, but about them. They learned to carry the burden of truth-telling and change, keeping it placed squarely where it belonged—on themselves first. It was given to them to receive and ask the Lord to help them see the truth and make needed changes in their relating patterns with me and with their family. The commitment I asked from them was to stay the course through the rough spots of putting down fleshly pride when it would rise up and take hold, and not bolt from their commitment. I asked them to take truth to heart and act upon it.
The couples season went on for nearly two years (Summer 2006-Spring 2008) and was pretty amazing in the miracles of freedom and true spiritual growth that resulted. I saw first hand what true discipleship of adults consists of—the same thing it consists of with our young children who we are training in right relating practices. Of the couples who stayed the course with us, they got right with each other for the first time in their married lives. All relationships within each family became properly aligned and holy, starting from the top and working its way down. Parents learned how to train their children like never before. Parents had wisdom to address parenting challenges, turning around the negative dynamics going on in their homes. Children received training in the Lord as did the parents. And all beginning with the willingness of both parents to enter the school and stay the course of truth-telling 101.
Part 6—Barbie Poling’s Experiences with Marilyn during This Season
Because Marilyn was involved in our lives by being concerned with what concerned us, she could see the issues that were being brought up in us by the Holy Spirit. She addressed these issues in a general way in the group, helping us to identify the flesh and the many ways it manifests, and how we need to put it down and become truly loving, being led by the Holy Spirit. She would sometimes ask one of us to give testimony of something the Lord was bringing us to understand about ourselves, knowing that another in the group needed to have the same revelation.
There came a time when Marilyn needed to address an unloving thing that my husband had done to Jim and Marilyn. She asked me if I thought my husband would bolt if she confronted him. I didn’t think he would, because he had made a commitment not to. Up until that time he had been attending the group, making a show of sounding as though he was dealing with his pride. It sounded very spiritual. When Marilyn and Jim gently pointed to his unloving behavior toward them, he quickly made a surface apology, but at home he became upset that they had misunderstood him. It took him about 4 days to wrestle with what they had said, in which he got mad at Jim and Marilyn, blamed me, started questioning himself, and then finally came to a more full realization of his self-centered behavior, and decided that he needed to go and humbly apologize for real. That was a turning point for him. He began to take our process much more seriously after that, and I was able to point out to him those same unloving behaviors that he was directing toward me.
There is just too much to testify to in Marilyn’s last paragraph here! Through Marilyn’s ministry to us our family was completely changed. As I put down my flesh and started telling the truth to my husband, He began to repent and change. As the layers of self-centered relating fell off of us, they quickly fell off our children too. I had been losing the hearts of my oldest two teenagers, but with the Lord’s direction and revelation I was able to win them back, more solidly than ever before. Eventually my husband had put down enough of his fleshly behavior to begin repairing his relationship with the kids. It took quite a bit of work on his part because he had really shoved their hearts away with his anger and derision.
We feel like we are totally different people. The things that bound us in damaging ways of relating are gone from our lives, and we are free to Love each other with Christlike love. Now we are able to bring ministry of Jesus’ work of reconciliation to others outside of our family with a measure of wisdom, knowing that we have walked this road before them, and we are learning to show them the way.
These posts are beautiful. I read and am amazed. Thank you for sharing so openly your journey, Marilyn. And thank you Barbie for shedding even more light on being willing to listen, humble yourself and change.
Marilyn, even though I never got to know you or even wrote to you, I did receive your journals. And when they stopped, I never thought to ask why. I looked at you like a rock star or something to be consumed and I’ve NEVER seen (until this moment) how unloving that was. Please forgive me for taking and not giving. Thank you for returning to share once again after all this time and re-awakening the truth in my life. God, in His compassion, is working miracles here that I never dreamed could happen and He has used you and Barbie mightily in my life.