Minister: Rev’d Sam Oye
Text: Exodus 25:8-9 (NLT)
Hebrews 8:5
Topic: Breaking Negative Patterns in Relationships and Marriage part 3
Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you. -(Exodus 25:8-9)
A pattern is a predictable or repeatable way of doing things. It is a predictable or repeatable way of acting, thinking, talking, and reacting. The Bible recounts of Abraham being faced with a situation and the scripture said he lied and under the same circumstance, Isaac also lied. It is a pattern in this family that once anyone is under pressure, they resort to lying. It was a pattern in David’s family to have affairs, it is reflected in David, with Amnon, with Absalom, with Solomon. We have to be conscious of the fact that a pattern is a way of reacting under the same circumstance. It is not how you wish to react; it is what you have seen be how your parents reacted. This means you identify a pattern based on repeated reactions or responses to the same or similar circumstance. Patterns override wishes or preferences; it accounts for why children manifest the same action they condemn in their parents. I need you to ask yourself this question, what did you see growing up?
So, a pattern is how you behave, how you talk, how you act, and how you think. It is how you react as an adult who was a child that observed and interacted with adults who muddled that negative way of behaving before you. You have become so dysfunctional that a dysfunctional way of living becomes your functional way of doing things. The disorder has become the functional environment where you find your existence and in a functional setting, you must create dysfunction because normal is dysfunction, and function is abnormal to you. Please note that you are not living out your size, you are living out your mind, your thoughts, your thinking pattern; what is stored in your subliminal. The things you saw growing up that have gone to your conscious and subconscious. The subconscious rules the conscious.
This perhaps accounts for why in the text we read, God gave specific instructions about the pattern to be followed by Moses in building the Tabernacle lest Moses builds this Tabernacle based on his knowledge in Egypt. God exposed Moses to a new pattern. To be different, one needs a reference to what looks different. Exposure is critical to altering existing patterns in our lives because the patterns you have seen are stronger than the desires you have.
Kinds of Negative Patterns in Relationships and Marriage.
Building on from last week where we discussed Self-Centeredness, we will start with
- Criticism and Contempt: 2 Samuel 6:16,20. But as the Ark of the Lord entered the City of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked down from her window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was filled with contempt for him. You have to be aware that if you are not living out Christianity in your marriage, you are not a good Christian. The difficult moments in your union should help grow in you, certain fruits of the spirit. Micah in this text was filled with contempt for David which accounts for the severe criticism she made in Verse 20- When David returned home to bless his own family, Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet him. She said in disgust, “How distinguished the king of Israel looked today, shamelessly exposing himself to the servant girls as any vulgar person might do!” Historians are of the view that Micah’s contempt for David is symptomatic of what Saul’s wife must have been which is why there’s hardly any reference to her in the scriptures.
