As a Christian, we are to love the things God loves, and we are to hate the things God hates. For example, Proverbs 6:16-19 says, God hates a lying tongue and one who bears false witness. Prov 17:15, Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent– the Lord detests them both. Do you hate those things?
Just as there are things God hates, there are things He loves. God loves honesty, mercy, & justice. God sees ones heart motive, and He differentiates one from another based on the condition of one’s heart. These distinctions are based on what one loves and what one hates. In these last 7-10 years I would be gravely affected by how many members in my family, both immediate and extended, who loved evil and hated good.
As often in the book of Psalms, the ‘poor’ characterizes not necessarily one who has no possessions, but one who is without resources to effect his own deliverance (or secure his own life, safety or well-being.) I am such a person. Proverbs 29:7 says, the righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.
I’ve journaled my journey in life for over 45 years. But as I watched my family beginning to fall apart the fear and feelings of desperation to hold my family together would be to no avail. They would reject me, and their schemes were for my ruin. God would use this time of heavy oppression that I was under, to help me find my voice; thus, from whence my articles come from.
I first began with the idea of writing a book about the tragedy that destroyed my family. But when I had no monies to publish the book I went to the next thing. Taking each chapter and turning them into articles, and placing them on a website. I first called it, Signs of Verbal Abuse which was about my own experiences of abuse from primarily my two older brothers. But as the years evolved so did the direction of the story.
The articles began to show a pattern of Biblical times when Israel would fall from God’s graces and the consequences they would reap due to their sin. That is when I began to place other articles that I had journaled regarding the dreams and visions I had from the Lord that revealed the destruction that was coming to certain members, and the affects their sin had on my family as a whole. It was at this point I changed the name of my website from Signs of Verbal Abuse to Dreams, Signs, Wonders.
It is about the tragedy of the destruction of an entire family due to a life time of unrepentant sin of pride, anger, covetousness, and the root of ALL evil; the love of money.¹
¹When Paul describes the love of money as a root of all kinds of evil (I Timothy 6:6-10), it is important to draw a distinction between money itself and the love of it. As a commodity there is nothing wrong with it, but when it becomes the object of overriding desire it leads to evil. There is no suggestion that love of money is the sole or even main cause of evil. Paul’s concern is to point out the spiritual risks involved in money-grabbing; there’s a wandering from the faith.² (This would happen to my brother Jim.)
Paul does want us to see, however, that wherever any kind of evil occurs, money easily gets mixed up with it. For example, 1) illicit sex becomes the business of prostitution; 2) the problem of drug abuse is as strongly empowered by money as it is by addiction; 3) the love of power² is inevitably tied to the deployment of wealth, and so on.
It is this ‘love of power’ which becomes the overriding desire of one brother, and the state of idleness of the other which will lead to the sin that would destroy ‘My Big Fat Greek Family.’ It is significant that Paul speaks of those concerned as having pierced themselves with griefs. The results are seen as self-inflicted; the inevitable result of loving the wrong thing.
