Marriage Under Fire - Part I
This past Monday, I was privileged to speak at the RISE Christian Police Conference in Haymarket, VA.
Here is Part 1 to my talk. Check back this weekend for Part 2.
Marriage
Under Fire
February
2, 1998, Officer Katie Conway was patrolling one of Cincinnati’s toughest
neighborhoods. As she approached an
intersection, 41-year-old Daniel Williams – a frequent flier with police with 17
prior arrests and a history of mental illness, stepped out in front of her
patrol car carrying a boom box.
Katie
instinctively mashed on the break in order to avoid hitting him. Mr. Williams quickly made his way to the driver’s
side window and proceeded to smash Officer Conway in the face with the boom
box, then produced a weapon and fired four times into her leg and hip area.
Katie
was dazed and confused and profusely bleeding.
Mr. Williams took advantage of the situation and pushed her slumped body
to the passenger side and jumped behind the wheel. Even though Katie’s body wanted to fade out,
she could hear her trainer’s authoritative voice say, “Call on the radio, let them know where you are. Get your gun out! Get
your gun out! Get your gun out!”
Katie’s
body was laying on her holster, yet she
somehow managed to get her gun and shoot Mr. Williams twice in the head…miraculously
through the same hole. However, now that
Mr. Williams was slumped over the wheel, the car left the roadway and careened
into a wall.
With
eight entrance and exit wounds in her body, Katie calmly put in a call to
dispatch and advised them of the situation.
Help was on the way.
Later
as she recalled the harrowing incident,
she said, “Someone was going to die that
night and it wasn’t going to be me”.
So
what does this story have to do with marriage?
I believe there are some incredible principals that we can apply to what
each of us experience today within our own situations.
1. There is a real enemy who will come against
your marriage.
Statistics
show that LE divorce rate is anywhere from 65-80%
Husbands
are walking away in alarming numbers
“I just don’t love you anymore” is becoming
the all-too-familiar mantra.
The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers
state that 56% of divorce cases involved one partner having an obsessive
interest in pornographic websites.
LE
Marriages are buckling under pressure and we have been duped into believing
that it is our spouse who is the problem.
So, we begin to sabotage the very thing God put together.
Within our academies, new recruits are being
taught how to stay alive and all the ins and outs of community policing, and
rightly so, but we are failing our families by neglecting to teach them how to
stay together.
We
are putting more emphasis on holding the blue line than honoring the marriage
covenant.
So
who is our enemy?
Is
it the cute store clerk at the local convenience store where you stop to get
your coffee?
Is
it the good looking guy in the next cubicle?
Is
it the de-moralizing fantasy on the television or computer screen?
Could
it be the abuse and over consumption of alcohol, or the secretive addiction to
a narcotic in order to try and deaden the mental pain that some are dealing
with?
No. ... behind all those different outward masks
there is something much darker, and he has a name.
He
is the evil one…
The
father of lies…
The
great deceiver…
The
man of lawlessness.
It is he
who is behind all the junk we are seeing within our marriage struggles today.
The
Bible tells us:
” The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have
life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10 (NIV)
“Be
self-controlled and alert. Your enemy
the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8
In
Officer Conway’s case, her enemy was a mentally deranged man with a gun and a
boom box. But even behind that man’s
actions, there was something much more sinister; something darker and unseen. The very same goes for our marriages.
It
is he who plants these seeds of
discord.
It
is he who tells you and me that we
would be better off with someone else.
It
is he who stirs up the throes of
frustration, resentment and hopelessness.
We
must recognize what’s happening. We have
an enemy who would like nothing more than for our marriage to suffer and die while
he takes the wheel and drives us into oblivion.
2. We may come
under fire, but we will refuse to go down
Officer
Katie Conway was seriously wounded that night, but she refused to let it take
her.
You
and I are in a battle for our marriages.
We are going to take on serious wounds.
Some
may be physical as we deal with the stress and the frustrations of a broken
union. These things can take a toll on
our health.
But
most will revolve around what I like to call a M.E.S. …Mental, Emotional
and Spiritual. These are some of the
hardest to heal from.
We
will have dark times in our lives, but we have a choice. We can either lay down and die, or we can
fight and see it to another day.
If
you have your Bible, turn with me to the book of Ephesians.
I
believe it is fitting that the Apostle Paul was addressing the Ephesians. He knew exactly what areas the enemy would
target...things such as unity within the body of believers, lusts of the flesh,
anger, unwholesome talk, bitterness and rage, sexual immorality, drunkenness,
submission of husbands and wives to one another, obedience of children and
finally ending it with Chapter 6 - spiritual armor of God. In this chapter, we are given an arsenal of
weaponry in order to defeat the enemy, but sadly, we often ignore, neglect or
simply refuse to pick it up.
This
book could have been directly written to law enforcement, as there are key
verses which point us to some of the very same situations we are finding
ourselves in today. Paul also gives us
timely solutions to help us fight on just as Katie did.
She
heard the voice of her instructor, but you and I can hear the voice of God.
Turn
with me to Chapter 4, verses 1 – 3...
Paul writes, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of
the calling you have received. Be
completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in
love. Make every effort to keep the
unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
A.
Live up to your calling
We
know that law enforcement is a called profession. God ordained it in Romans, chapter 13, but
you and I if we are believers in Christ are called to an even higher calling
than an earthly job.
We
are called into salvation, an eternal covenant with a holy God; a royal
position that was paid by Jesus’ blood on the cross.
Because
of that calling, and for those of us who have answered that call, Paul says we
are to live in such a way that we are different from the crowd around us.
If
you think about some of the guys and gals you work with or even those you deal
with on the streets, who do their lives reflect? God or themselves?
Who
do their marriages reflect? God or
themselves?
Paul
says that we are to be humble and gentle.
Now, that’s not always the first quality we see in an officer. You people must be at times aggressive, in
charge, and a voice of authority.
Humbleness and gentleness often get pushed to the background. But so it goes with all of us. Husbands, wives, we often get on the
defensive. Pride has a way of worming
itself in there and we take on an “I” problem.
In
our marriages especially, it’s rarely our fault when things go bad. It’s hardly ever that we humble ourselves and
say, “You know what...I was in the wrong,
or I failed to do this or that. I’m
sorry.” Instead we say, “Well...I tried everything to make it
work. I tried to make him or her happy.”
Yet
the Bible reminds us that our character should be one of patience...bearing
with one another in love, or as I’ve heard it said before, “bearing with the
bears”. We are to be peace makers
because of the calling we have on our lives.
-----------
Yes, friend, marriage is tough. We do come under fire every day, yet we can be victorious with the tools that God has given.
Check back this weekend for Part 2 of this encouraging talk and how we can defeat the enemy.
Blessings,
Kristi
Comments
Post a Comment