Rosa Parks decided she was tired of being pushed around by others, and sitting in the back of the bus so she made her unpopular stand. The Dances with Wolves movie about a widow who lost her husband applies to me in many ways. In the movie, Christina’s family and siblings were wiped out by the bad Indians and she went to live with other Indians as the only white woman. When she went to wash her clothes, the Indian women were prejudice, because she was the only white woman and started pushing her around. She stood up to a particular aggressive Indian woman and knocked her down and then they called her “Stands With a Fist.” From that day on, no other women pushed her around. I’ve had several people try to push me around in my life at times. In my past in high school, in college, at work, etc.
Fortunately in life, I had this 5’2” example of my mother who did not take “lip” from other women. When my next door neighbor boy, and I got in a fight and he threw a rock and broke my two front teeth, it was a big cat fight in my neighborhood, between my mother and the neighbor’s mother over my two front teeth. My mother did not wait for my dad to come home, the “apple of her eye was touched” which is my mother’s baby girl.
“O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! She was a vixen when she went to school; "And though she be but little, she is fierce."
You want to soon see the back side of God start hurting Christians. (Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm." 1 Chronicles 16:22). It did not work out so well with Saul (Paul), he got knocked from his horse. When he was persecuting Christians, Jesus said he was persecuting him (Acts 9:4, 22:7). As the body of Christ, we are not to knock our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to pray for their shortcomings, sins and weaknesses. I find that when people say offensive things to me like Job’s friends, like Job, my responsibility it to clothe them in prayer.
Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings Psalm 17:8
Pretty much in my life, I’ve been a peacemaker (blessed are the peacemakers), but there have been times I’ve gotten in disputes with people, especially women. There was one time, my husband’s ex-wife came racing across the soccer field, and started yelling at me because my step-daughter did not tell me that my step-son’s soccer clothes were on the stairs at our house. I’ve not picked up mind-reading skills yet in life, but anyway, it was all I could do, but punch the ex-wife’s lights out so I look at that as a “God thing” I refrained on this occasion. Especially since she got right in my face (my space) and made rude comments about my 8-year old daughter. It’s sort of like you can pick on the mother bear, but don’t touch the momma bear’s cubs. My daughter Sandy calls me “momma bear.”
You want to get on the bad side of any parent, just start criticizing their children or grandchildren. I’ve run into this over and over with singles. I go to many single groups and there is no consideration for the weaker vessel which is women and children. Many single groups don’t have anything for single parent’s children. It’s like the children are in the way. I was married to men that tried to get rid of my children, and exclude them when I was dating them in the past those were bad relationships. Many couples may disappear for a couple of years when they are getting to know each other during that honeymoon stage, but if a man is keeping you from having friends and seeing your family, most likely he has control issues.
Our society used to recognize women and children and would let them eat first and a man would give up his seat for a woman, but common courtesies are becoming more and more not a part of our society. I am blessed that I work at a university and I still find some single men who are in their 20’s and 30’s that open the door for me, so I’ve not lost hope that a few people in our society have manners.
My children kept running into my husband’s ex-wife recently at a baby shower, at a restaurant, at a women’s gym, and I asked the Lord why that was. Was Mike wanting me to pray for his children more? Pray for the ex-wife more? Then I remembered the lesson I learned with the ex-wife. It goes back to letting women push me around (I’m Mary Stands With a Fist).
Right after my husband and I had our new house built, the ex-wife started showing up lying on our coach in the living room under the pretense of visiting with my step-children. She was jealous that my husband moved on with me and she was “pushing my buttons” on purpose. I did not see any where in the Bible when you marry a man, the ex-wife comes with the new husband, and neither did my pastor’s wife. My husband refused to tell her not to come into our house. Sort of like Nabal refused to help David and Abigail had to go against her husband’s wishes, I went against my husband’s wishes. He was a wussy when it came to standing up against his ex-wife (A weak or ineffectual person often used as a general term of abuse).
I wrote her a letter, “Stay out of my house” plain and simple. She wrote me a letter back, “if you were a good Christian woman, you would submit to your husband.” She was an unbeliever, but she was quoting me scripture. The devil is good at quoting scripture. I wrote her another letter back “stay out of my house, or I’ll get a restraining order.” From that day on I got my peace back in my house. Sometimes I would come out in my nightgown and she would be upstairs in the hall talking to her children in the morning. From that day on, she stayed on the porch, the next 15 years.
The Lord said to me “That is how I want you to do with the enemy. I want you to not let the enemy in your house, in your mind, in your finances, on your body, “Satan, get off my property, you are trespassing and since I belong to God, get off God’s property and his finances, I belong to God.” The Lord rebuke you.” Jesus Christ has bought me with a huge price. You are trespassing! My neighbor was trespassing on me as my mother’s child in throwing a rock and breaking my teeth.
for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. 1 Cor. 6:20
I’ve spoken to divorced men since that time that told me that I could have just exercised the divorce decree rights that visitation is not in the other parent’s house, but I did not know my legal rights. Many Christians don’t know their rights/their entitlement in Jesus Christ and his name, and what he has done for them like the elder brother who griped when the Father loved on the prodigal son that he did not realize that everything his father owned was his.
I am not sitting in the back of the bus anymore. I’m not sitting in the back of the bus in my life….devil! You can be the tail and I will be the head in life (Duet. 28:13)! Maybe you have won a few battles in my life, but I know where you are headed. Maybe my husband had a short life, maybe his life was not that short for a man with chronic asthma, but I want you to know that your time is short too! It says I can rejoice because I’m seated in heavenly places with God, but woe to those who dwell in the earth and the sea.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."
Of David. Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. Psalm 144:1
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6-7
God told me I would be a lot happier in life, if I would just exercise my rights as a child of the most high God. It’s time we quit riding in the back of the bus.
Love Can Build a Bridge/Dances With Wolves:
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