CHRISTIAN PARENTS of ESTRANGED ADULT CHILDREN Community Group
Estrangement makes it difficult to talk about with family, friends, neighbors and church members. Christians are NOT immune to broken families. Talk about your experiences with those who know how you feel and get positive support through your Christian faith...."In these last days difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self...disobedient to parents,...
I was just hoping to slide by these holidays without any confrontation with the ECs. We didn't approach any of them but now ES1 seems to want to pick a fight with us, again. We aren't responding and hope this will pass until at least after the holidays. He tends to be obnoxiously persistent though so now I'm really stressing again.
On top of that, ES2 recently started connecting with us because of a new gf. We've been very warm and accepting of them/her but are seeing signs now that they may be living together. He knows that wouldn't be ok with us, as per the Bible's clear admonition against fornication. He wants our blessing in spite of barely speaking to us for the past few years. It looked like a great open door until we had this realization that there are several signs they are living together (they are both professing Christians). Ugh. We can never get just plain old good news!
Just venting my stress in hopes it will relieve it a little! I really hate being blindsided by our EC's bad choices. I don't feel like I'll ever be unruffled by it.
On top of that, ES2 recently started connecting with us because of a new gf. We've been very warm and accepting of them/her but are seeing signs now that they may be living together. He knows that wouldn't be ok with us, as per the Bible's clear admonition against fornication. He wants our blessing in spite of barely speaking to us for the past few years. It looked like a great open door until we had this realization that there are several signs they are living together (they are both professing Christians). Ugh. We can never get just plain old good news!
Just venting my stress in hopes it will relieve it a little! I really hate being blindsided by our EC's bad choices. I don't feel like I'll ever be unruffled by it.
As far as your ES and his gf, our adult children estranged or not are making their own decisions. Their choices are not often God honoring ones. The Lord will show you how to respond to him with love even though you do not in agreement with his lifestyle. Our EC sure keep us in prayer.
I shared the above to be clear that I feel the same as you do about the lifestyle of living with someone out of wedlock and to show that as long as they are not saved, married or not they still sin. And most of all have seen the devastation it brings, when children are born and get abandoned when the relationship ends, which is why it is sinful....it harms the ones who practice it and it harms the innocent child born into it and the whole family suffers when that GC is withheld from his or her Grandparents by the parent who has custody.
Now let me take you back to when I was yet a sinner and unsaved....God felt the same about me as I felt about my son living with girls he was not married to and having children with them, even though my sin was not the same exact sin, my sins still hurt and disappointed the Father just as my son's sins hurt me.
But the Father did not withhold His love from me, nor did He ever withhold Himself from me if I wanted to fellowship with Him while I was yet a sinner, for if He had how would I have ever come to know His great love for me? How would He have been able to woo my heart with His love and His Holy Spirit so that I would want to become His child and live for Him if He had met me with disapproval over my sin and withheld His love until I lived right? He did not in anyway ever receive me into His house (the church I grew up in) with anything less than joy that He could fellowship with me even in my sinful state, for if He had, I would not have wanted to come back again I am sure!
In a child's life we are to represent God to them or else how they see us is how they see God. If I react to my prodigal's lifestyle in any negative way, I am lying to my child about the Father, for the Father is never anything but love and good and all of that unconditionally. I have made these mistakes with my children and misrepresented the Father to them by withholding my love, my fellowship and my approval of them as individuals when they did not live up to my standards. And so I lived as a hypocrite before them and lost their hearts and their respect. I preached righteousness to them, yet I lived unrighteously by my own judgment of them and their lifestyle and they saw the injustice of my words and actions to them, and as a result they got angry at me and at God for in their eyes what I am, so is God!
I have come to see recently that so much of the individual issues of our Estrangements with our sons began with DH and I and how we responded to our ES. I can no longer blame it all entirely upon them!! I must share the responsibility and as the parent I feel God holds me to a higher standard and so I am changing myself regardless of where my child's heart is right now with God.
Right now my prodigal is the furthest away from us both in miles and in his heart and that is our fault! We drove him away with our disapproval and hypocrisy!! While he lived with a girl out of wedlock, I looked down my nose and "disapproved" while carrying a load of sins of my own sticking out all over the place...he wanted no part of me or my God!