Living Without the Madman
Miracle Monday!
Last week we mentioned cherishing your prayer as we lead our 4 day Love Married Life Intensive. Well… faithful, faithful God!
We enter these intensives knowing the diversity of the couple's backgrounds and the planned schedule for the week but how these ingredients will come together and the outcome is always amazing. We prepare and plan but ultimately it is living surrendered as you trust God to orchestrate and heal the broken hearted.
So today - It’s Miracle Monday, the beginning of yet another week and I’m still basking in the victories won. Thank you, everyone, for your part in helping us fight for marriages and families.
Allowing space for change is essential when you experience a healed and transformed heart. Everything in your world may feel familiar yet you know you’re not the same. When you choose CHANGE, your future is really a reconditioned or improved version of the past. But when you experience TRANSFORMATION there is an assertion of our actions that are now aligned with Truth that begins to co-labor with God. Hope is ignited and your future can be described and realized as you live free from the constraints of the past.
This profound transformation is seen in the life of the Gadarene Madman as told in (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-37). Upon meeting Jesus, he falls at His feet, and worships Him, and cries out, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that you do not torment me” (Mark 5:6). Jesus mercifully drives out the demons and restores this man completely. He is no longer the Gadarene madman, but we now see him free “sitting and clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). Those who had herded the swine saw what happened, and they went into the village and reported all of this to the people, and they came and saw, and “were afraid.” They then beg Jesus to leave.
This “madman” played a very key role in the community of the Gadarenes. Jesus has in fact, just annihilated the social order of the village. The entire village functioned by placing their demons on the madman. If he no longer functions in this way, there is no way left of establishing and maintaining cohesion amongst the people. The “glue” of the community is gone. The community cannot function without the madman to blame and to bear the hurts, dysfunctions, wounds etc. of everybody else.
Sadly this happens in our families today. Everyone in a family unit learns to adapt and even be dependent upon the patterns of abuse, not just the one with the identified substance problem. If he (or she) stopped partaking, the entire rest of the family would likely go under a type of withdrawal. In the text of the Gadarene, we see the entire community relating to one another by projecting their own “demons” unto him and living in a relationship of hatred against him.
Not everyone will immediately celebrate you living transformed. What is needed is all that Jesus came to bring, which is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we move from living in fear and blaming others to living confidently in our true identity found in God. Living rooted in love and learning to live as one who connects and never divides brings love in humility and grace to all who meet you.
This now free Gadarene wanted to travel with Jesus, “but Jesus sent him home, saying, “No, go back to your family, and tell them everything God has done for you.” So he went all through the town proclaiming the great things Jesus had done for him (vs. 38, 39).
I pray for great wisdom as you continue to speak of the great things Jesus has done in your life. And I also pray for healing for your entire clan as you leave the fear dance of codependency and learn to walk in love.
Together in Hope, BOB