Relationship Series, #3
Neurosis In The Marriage
This morning I
would like to continue our series on relationships. Last week as you know we
touched on the cancer of isolation in a relationship. A couple years ago, we
had seen how that isolation or “dis-association” was the next to the last stage
in the neurotic condition which brother Branham had spoke of in the message Christ Revealed in His Own Word. If you will remember, he had said,
19 And to see this nervous age that we're living
in... And last week's tapes, I think, will reveal to you the great hideous
things that we're going to speak on one of these days when we can get a place
sufficient, of the opening of those last plagues to be poured out upon the
earth--those Vials, rather, pouring out of the Vials, and the Seven Thunders...
And those hideous sights that's coming upon the earth... Now, before we
go any further, I want you to notice how Brother Branham speaks of the nervous
age we live in, then he tells us this nervousness is because we are about to
approach the opening of the vials which are the plagues to be poured out upon
mankind. He goes on to further define this nervous condition. He says, 20
Men now and people today are in such
a neurotic condition, the whole world. And then a few sentences
later he defines further this neurotic condition as follows, … It's come to a place where the whole nation,
the whole world, not only this nation, but everywhere, mentally gone.
So we see that neurosis is a mental
condition that develops to where the people don’t act right. They become
controlled by impulses rather than rational behavior, and I would like to prove today, that this neurotic condition is
also what tears away at the marriage until the marriage dies a slow death.
He said, It's come to a place where the
whole nation, the whole world, not only this nation, but everywhere, mentally
gone… Just as neurosis develops to the condition of dis-association,
and then from there, it comes to it’s final stage or complete expression, which
is called conversion, so to does the
marriage that is falling apart come to it’s final stage of isolation before the
bid “D” divorce, takes place.
Now, in order
to understand more deeply how to keep a marriage relationship healthy and full
of life, we need to know what things causes it to fall apart. I believe the
same stages that we saw in the development of neurosis also apply in the death
of a marriage, and the death of family.
You will remember, the seven stages of neurosis are as follows. #1) Anxiety,
compulsion, obsession, phobia, depression, disassociation and finally conversion which means at this point you are totally a neurotic.
During our study we found how each attribute is linked to
the previous attribute as though these are not just individual attributes which
make up the behavioral condition of the neurotic, but rather they are stages in
the full development of neurosis.
We found
scriptural evidence for these six characteristics of neurosis prophesied for
the end-time hour. In our study we have found anxiety was the main condition
that is manifested in the end-time, and all these other characteristics come
forth as a result of anxiety. Now, anxiety
is spoken of in the scriptures mostly in reference to the cares
of this life. Satan took advantage of the curse placed upon man
by God after the fall in the garden. This fall resulted in man having to sweat
and toil for a living and since the ground was cursed, man does not always know
what will his labors will produce, and it is this uncertainty that leads to
anxiety. Therefore, anxiety is a
condition which actually comes forth as a reflection of man’s lack of faith, or
lack of trust in God, and therefore he tries to take his own life into his own
hands.
In [Proverbs 16: 9] we read, “A
mans heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth His footsteps” and
therefore our labor and toil and everything else is in the hands of God. That
is why we Paul said in [Romans 8:31]
“If God be for us who can be against us.”
But it is Satan’s purpose to gain control of our minds, and he does this by
bringing you under his influence, thus into bondage to himself.
[John 8: 34] Jesus said, “he that
committeth sin is the servant of sin.” And we know that sin is
unbelief. Therefore, “he that disbelieves is the servant of his
unbelief.” Now, just think about that for a moment, because we will
come back to this later on this morning. “he that disbelieves is the servant of his
unbelief.”
In [2 Peter 2: 19] we read, for
of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
Therefore, when we are overcome by a certain influence, we thus become in
bondage to that influence. And if that influence is our lack of faith and
trust, in other words, our unbelief, then we come into bondage of that
unbelief. This bondage then, is a
result of an influence that begins with anxiety. The Devil has laid out a snare
or trap for every one in the whole world. And that snare or trap is in the
guise of the economy. He knows that people have to make a living. He has known
that since the curse that was placed upon man for his disobedience in the
garden. In fact he was responsible for
that curse being placed upon man. And so then we see that he took advantage of
that situation and he has manipulated man into a wrong focus again.
Therefore, we
see the influence that Satan has upon the people. He has blinded them by
material prosperity. In [Rev 3: 17] we see that the predominant spirit of this
age is that man is so consumed with his material possessions that he is blind
to his spiritual condition. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and
increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
In [Luke 21: 26] we read Men's
hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are
coming on the earth: Now, is it
the looking that causes the heart to fail? No! But it is the fear which brings
about this heart condition. Why? Because fear has a penalty. It stops you in
your forward movement as it stopped Joseph for a while in taking Mary to be his
wife.
If we
examine Luke 21: 34 we read, And take heed to yourselves, lest at any
time your hearts be overcharged with excessive over indulgence, and cares of
this life, [so] that day come upon you unawares. 35 For as a snare (a
trap) shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole
earth. (The what are we told to do?) He says, 36 Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be
accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to
stand before the Son of man.
Satan used the
economy and life style as a trap to not only catch you off guard, but he uses
it to give you another focus, a wrong focus just like he did with Eve back in
the garden. This then, because it is of his design, brings you under his
influence. And once under his influence he then step by step brings you under
his full control. He did it to Eve, he
got her to step out from the protection of the Word and once he did death set
in. The
day you eat thereof, is the day you die. We see then, how the cares of this life begins to turn our focus
from a Christ Centered one to the place of
coming under a wrong influence all because of our anxiety concerning the things which MIGHT happen concerning
the cares of this life.
Notice, in
Luke 21, Jesus warns us of what is to happen, but tells us to keep focused, He
says, 36 Watch ye therefore, and pray
always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things.
People today
are beginning to see the judgments coming, whether it be Y2K, the next
depression, the nation going broke, the new world order, etc. They see these things
coming, but in focusing on them they are completely missing the Lord Who has
come down from heaven with a shout. And so we see the condition of the church
is looking at the “what ifs”, and
they are missing their deliverance from those things. And so to this happens in Marriage. People begin to look outside
the marriage for those things they are not getting fulfilled in the marriage.
In his book, His Needs, Her Needs, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. contends
that meeting each others needs is the key to making your marriage happy and
affair-proof. Dr. Harley, writes: “Once a spouse lacks fulfillment of any
basic need, it creates a thirst that must be quenched. If changes do not take
place within the marriage to care for that need, the individual will face the
powerful temptation to fill it outside of marriage.”
Notice how he
speaks of these innate needs for fulfillment that create a thirst if not
attended to. Did not brother Branham speak the same things to us when he said,
“God
places a thirst in man, and man tries to quench that thirst on his own?”
In the book of
Luke we see Jesus warning us that people will be focused on the very trap and
delusion, instead of the way out of it.
When he says, Watch ye therefore, and pray
always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things, He is
telling us that by watching, which actually means to be without sleep, or don’t
be found sleeping, and actually means that you should to be observant. Then after
you have paid close attention to what it is that is coming, then you need to
pray about it. Pray about what you are observing, and you will find the way of
escape. And that way of escape, is to be standing in the presence of the
Son of Man.
Now, sometimes,
Satan will make those cares of life more real to you than the promises of God
will appear to be. Yet Jesus commanded us to “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and ALL the things you have need of
will be added unto you.” Therefore, instead of looking
at the trap, we should be looking for a way to avoid the trap. And so we found
that by having a wrong focus to begin with leads us only further into a wrong
direction. By having a wrong focus we find ourselves becoming anxious over
things, which we should not be. And when we focus all of our energies on these
things, and we find ourselves getting caught up into finding our own way out of
the dilemma. At this point we enter into COMPULSION which is irrational
behavior, we then become obsessed by them and this becomes possession. Devil
possession.
[1
Peter 2: 19] tells us that “whatsoever
we are overcome by we also become in bondage to as well.”
Now once this
obsession takes over our being, we enter into the fourth characteristic of neurosis is Phobias or fear. And Fear has a penalty according to [ 1 John 4: 18] There is no fear in love; but
perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment (punishment). He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
In [Hebrews 2: 15] we see that through
fear we are made subject to bondage.
We found out that this fear and bondage has the effect of stopping any
progressive movement in the things of God.
Joseph stopped in his tracks concerning Mary. He feared to take Mary to
be his wife, and so God had to send His Angel to help Joseph overcome his fear.
Next we found that fear leads to Depression which manifests in the fact
that you don’t want to eat any more, and you begin to sleep. This sleeping
shows that you are not focused on watching and praying, but you have closed
your eyes to hope at this point.
The death of
hope is a terrible thing, because the life goes out of the person or marriage
at that point. PROVERBS 13:12 ¶
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but [when] the desire cometh, [it
is] a tree of life. And what is hope deferred? It is hope that has been
laid aside, put off. You see, Paul
taught us in ROMANS 5:5 that “hope
maketh not ashamed;” Hope makes us to be not confused and
confounded.
But when
people give up hope, they become depressed and quit eating. They shut off the
Spiritual Food In Due Season. They quit eating from Gods Word and from His
Message, and when this happens you become weak and sickly. ¶ Hope deferred maketh the
heart sick.” And we see the same
things in a marriage. Our isolation
from one another comes about because of so many idle excuses. We use our jobs,
or our schedule, or we allow the children or their schedules to cut into our
time together to eat as a family, and to eat the spiritual Food in Due season,
and pretty soon we have become isolated one from the other in the things we eat.
In the Magazine Psychology Today, Dr. Philip
Zimbardo, professor at Stanford University, said, “I know of no more potent killer than isolation. There is no more
destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you
from me and us from them. Isolation has
been shown to be the central agent in the development of depression,
paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide and mass murder.” “The devil’s strategy
for our times is to trivialize human existence and to isolate us from one
another while creating the delusion that reasons are time pressures, work demands,
or economic anxieties.”
Isolation is
not forced upon any married couple. We delude ourselves by the atmosphere we
have set up in our homes. We create the delusion that we have time pressures,
and work demands, and economic anxieties that lead us to believe that we have
excuses for our lack of interest in eating together. Every day we face choices
that we must make and it is these choices we make that will either bring us
into further blessings in our relationship, or will lead us into depression and
eventual isolation.
We said the
last stage of neurosis that occurs before the person is a full blown neurotic
is Disassociation. This means that
you begin to cut off fellowship with the believers. First you cut off eating
from the tree of Life and then you cut off all association with it. And this
means with those who are eating it themselves. In the marriage we see the same
thing. Isolation begins and this leads to separate eating schedules and finally
separate ways.
I believe that
eating together as a family is a very important thing. If you look at the
families which have become isolated from each other, the isolation begins when
the individual members of that family pay more attention to their own schedule
than they do to the family schedule. When the children grow older and begin to
take on more responsibilities, is when most families begin to drift apart. Why?
They stop eating together.
We often talk
about how close the early church was.
We can read in the scriptures and see for ourselves how the early church did
everything together. In the Book of Acts we find the key to the closeness that
is so lost in the churches today.
Here we see
that there are four important elements that are involved here. Doctrine is the
number one element, because how can two walk together lest they be agreed. Next
we find that this doctrine brings us into fellowship which is a word
koinonia {koy-nohn-ee'-ah}which means
fellowship, association, community…the
sharing and participating togethe to
the point of intimacy.
E-22
022 If I knocked at your door, and you would let me in and say,
"Brother Branham, come into my house. You're--you're just welcome here.
I'll be glad for you to visit with me." Oh, I would appreciate that. And
then I'd just feel at home. I'd go right in and if I want to take off my shoes
and lay across the bed, I would do so. If I wanted to go into the refrigerator,
and make me a great big sandwich, and eat it, I'd feel welcome. I'd just go
ahead and make myself at home. But when Jesus comes in, He isn't welcome. I
want to ask you something. You say to me, "Brother Branham, I've already
let Jesus in my heart a long time ago." Well, I sure appreciate that.
That's very nice. But did you just let Him in as a fire escape? Did you let Him
in to save you from hell? Or did you let Him in to have full control in your
heart, to be welcome?
That's the way Jesus wants to do in your heart. He wants
to feel at home. But we got Him closed off to a lot of things. "Now,
Jesus, I'll tell You what, I'll let You in my door. I don't want to go to hell.
I want to be saved at the end of the life. You can come in the door, but now,
don't You go to meddling around." When you get in the human heart, let's
think this; that over on the right hand side there's a little closet, a little
door. That's a hard one, that most people don't want anyone meddling with, and
that's called, over that door, "The door of my private life."
"Now, Jesus, I'll let You in. But don't You go to meddling with my private
life. If I have to stop my card party, if I have to give up the--the pool room
bunch that I run with, if I have to be called old fashion, because I don't
smoke cigarettes with the rest of the women, if I have to burn up my shorts and
can't wear them like the rest of the women, You stay right there, don't meddle
with me." That's the way lots of Christians accept Jesus. He wouldn't be
welcome in your heart.
"Don't You interrupt any of my... I drink a little
sociable beer. And I don't want You to bother with that, only I--I'll let You
in because I don't want to go to hell." Now, is that the way you accepted
Jesus? Jesus don't want to come in like that. When He's knocking at your heart
when He comes in He wants to be your Lord. "Lord" is
"rulership." He comes into your heart, knowing that He made that heart
for Himself. All the rest of the body you can have, but the heart is the
control tower; and He wants to come to this heart, so He can lead you, be a
Lord. You want Him as your Saviour but not your Lord. So many people say, "Oh, I want Him as my Saviour; I've
accepted Him as my Saviour." That's good, but have you accepted Him as
your Lord, to be ruler over you, to rule you, to guide you, to walk into that
door of your private life and clean the closet out? Take His own Blood and
paint it on the walls...
Access into fellowship. That is what
marriage and relationships are all about.
Access into fellowship. That is what the Church is all about. Access
into sharing. Access into love. Access to one another, as a family of God. But
what have we done? We have let our jobs, or our schedules, or our other
associations cut in on the fellowship of the saints. We have become a reclusive
world and we wonder why we starve for affection and someone to love us.
I will have to say that when I came to
Cincinnati I was looking forward to what I had always heard was Southern
Hospitality. And yet I find that the hospitality in the north is far superior
to what I have found in the South. In Minnesota, we did not need to have an
appointment to stop by someone’s home. We just dropped in and whatever they
were doing was put aside and we just enjoyed the fellowship. We couldn’t get
enough of each other.
But here, it’s different. You need an
appointment to be friends, and that isn’t what Christianity is all about. It’s
about sharing. It’s about caring. It’s about preferring your brother. It’s
about being able to share one another’s tooth brush. And as brother Vayle said,
“whatever
Y2K brings, it’s because we have a need of it.”
We hide behind phone message recorders
so we can screen our calls. Are we so busy that we can’t answer our phones.
Those things are supposed to be used for when you are away from home. But God
knows what we are lacking, and so “whatever
Y2K brings, it’s because we have a need of it.” The early church had all things in common.
They were not each man for himself. They were not each family for themselves.
They had all things in common and that is what we are headed for.
Now this is a terrible condition to be
in, but this is the same atmosphere we find the majority of marriages in today.
Married yet lonely. Married yet isolated.
Married, yet separated from the fellowship of sharing a life together..
It is a known fact
among marriage counselor’s today that nearly 85% of all marriage dissolution’s
occurs because of money problems.
Therefore, the cares of this life begins the whole down hill spiral. The people
get so caught up in the cares of this life, that it just takes over the
marriage. This brings about compulsive behavior, which in turn, leads to
possessive behavior, which brings about fear which in turn brings forth
depression and finally disassociation. And then at this point death has taken
it’s toll.
In GENESIS 2:18 ¶ And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an
help meet for him. GENESIS
2:21 ¶ And the LORD God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and
closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken
from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23
And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they
shall be one flesh.
Now this word
cleave means to stick together, to cling, stick, stay close, cleave, keep
close, stick to, stick with, follow closely, join to, overtake, catch So we see it was God Himself that
said, it is not good for man to dwell alone, therefore, I will institute
marriage for the purpose of having someone by his side always.
But what
causes this isolation, this separation, this exclusion or alienation that takes
place in marriages today? When you are
excluded you have a feeling of distance, a lack of closeness, and very little
intimacy. You can share the same ship,
but have no fellowship. You can sleep in the same bed, eat at the same
table, parent the same children, and still be alone, and isolated, alienated
and cut off. The sad thing is that
people don’t marry thinking they will be lonely. It’s just the opposite. People
marry to fill that void of loneliness. They marry to share their lives
together. But what has happened to bring about this void called alienation or
isolation?
Man was not created to live alone.
After all, if God Himself longed for companionship and fellowship, how much
more mere man? So to desire for your
lonely heart to be fulfilled with companionship is not an unnatural thing. But
as I said before, if God planned it that way, and He made us to crave
companionship, and He gave us a means to fulfill this craving, then would He
not also give us a way to keep that fulfillment?
HEBREWS 10:24-25
And let us consider one another to
provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves
together, as the manner of some [is]; but exhorting [one another]: and so much
the more, as ye see the day approaching.