GEMINI: THE DEEDS OF HER FLESH CHAPTER 1

           

gemini

The deeds of her flesh

““…What shall it profit a man (woman), if he (she) shall gain the whole world (fool people with outward, religious phoniness), and lose his (her) own soul?” (Mark 8:36 KJV). “…EXCEPT YE REPENT, ye shall all likewise PERISH…” (Luke 13:3 KJV).

“... Now the DEEDS OF THE FLESH ARE EVIDENT, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these...” (Galatians 5:19-21 NASB).

“...I FOREWARN YOU, just as I have forewarned you, that those who PRACTICE such things WILL NOT inherit the kingdom of God...” (Galatians 5:19-21 NASB).

*

Gemini had been a two-faced Christian or phony for years. Susan Taylor, whether she knew it or not, made her realize what a counterfeit she really was, especially as a so-called Christian leader.

Her doctor’s brother, Simon, had been blowing her other cell phone up. She had a cell phone that was part of a family package through Verizon and she had a TracFone phone.

Gemini was an exceptionally beautiful woman and she had no problem attracting her lovers. Over the years, she also had no problem walking away from her affairs either. Simon was different and he fell hard for her. He wanted something more.

She lived in the Baltimore suburbs of Maryland and Simon lived in Lexington Park, Maryland. She never told any details about her personal life. She and Brad had a family doctor, but her secret doctor was in Lexington Park too, Dr. David Toliver.

Dr. Toliver had her fake name and P. O. box address, but if he gave it to Simon, they would both know she had not been honest with them. All she had to do is throw the TracFone away and move on with her life, but she knew Dr. Toliver probably told Simon she was at his clinic and he was looking for her.

His cell phone messages were NOW angry and threatening. Even though she’d told him it was over he wanted her to tell him face to face and not over a text, but she was afraid to see him.

Simon had a little buck wild, gangster, bad boy about him and he thought she was single. If he found out she wasn’t he was the type who would act a fool about it.

Simon was NOT raised in the church and had a LOW opinion of the Christian too. He thought Christian made-up their knowledge of God, because he couldn't be known. Based on his perspective, he would hate her for her hypocrisy.

She’d changed and unfortunately, Simon was caught up in her new transformation. She’d used him to satisfy her fleshly appetite.

Gemini was intentionally having affairs and had drifted away from the biblical principles she grown up with. Susan Taylor made her realize she needed to repent and let the Holy Spirit work on her heart.

She thought she could EARN her way into the kingdom by going, faithfully, to church every Sunday. She thought going to church, made her righteous, but didn’t think having ongoing adulterous affairs would made her unrighteous.

She thought her church attendance made up for and covered over her adulterous activities. For years Gemini had attended church, sung in the choir, praised and worshipped God, and taught bible classes, while having one affair after another.

She said she loved her husband, but she cheated on him over and over again. She wasn’t showing love for him, for God, for her family, or anyone, but herself.

She had FOOLED everybody, but God. She went to church and DID all the religious things, but her heart was FAR from God. Susan Taylor talked about the time she was sick and missed many Sundays away from church, yet she sustained her intimate relationship with God.

Most of her life, as a so-called Christian, Gemini had placed more importance on maintaining an image than actually having a relationship with God. She was with the group “once saved always saved,” and she also believed she couldn’t lose her salvation.

She still believed that she couldn’t “lose” her salvation, but she could certainly choose to walk away from it. When you choose to walk away from your faith, like she did. Gemini realized she hadn’t “lost” it, but she had willfully turned her back on it, divorced it, and left it behind.

She was DOING all the religious things Christians DO, but she had NO conviction about her multiply adulterous affairs. She didn’t even have any remorse about it. Her sinful heart had hardened her conscious and it made her slip deeper and deeper into her adulterous ways.

In church, Gemini claimed to have fellowship with God, but she didn’t, because she continued to walk in the darkness of her sinful and adulterous ways.

Then there was the problem with Brad. How could she claim to be a righteous woman and yet betray him the way she had. She claimed she loved Brad, but did she? I have betrayed him over and over again; how is that love? Real Christians LOVED one another and whether she wanted to admit it or not; she had NOT demonstrated “real” love for Brad.

Christians are NOT perfect and make many mistakes, but they don’t make a practice or lifestyle of them, like she had. She continually had adulterous affairs and became comfortable with the practice. She told herself it wasn’t hurting anyone and she was being discreet.

Gemini  couldn’t deny she was living the opposite of what was in God’s Word. Adultery WAS a “deed” of the flesh and it was obvious or evident that Gemini had continued to PRACTICE committing adultery over and over and over again.

I kept my adultery from Brad, so he wouldn’t be hurt, but I didn’t mind God “knowing” and “seeing” was I was doing.

Gemini had departed from her faith, because when the Holy Spirit lived in you; Susan Taylor said you wouldn’t make a practice of sinning and she had. I disobeyed God, in his face and while he watched.

Her husband told their children, one day, that people who obeyed God have the indwelling Holy Spirit within them and that’s how they know he’s in them. He also said that people who continually practice doing what is sinful,  is of the devil. “....righteous deeds and unrighteous deeds are the way you can tell the children of God from the children of the devil...read 1 John 3:7-10...”

Gemini also thought about her prayer life. She only prayed publicly or with someone else, but NOT much privately. She didn’t hunger or thirst for God like Brad or Susan Taylor did. She wasn’t as interested in saving souls as she was about impressing people with “her” biblical knowledge or self-righteousness.

Gemini was usually more interested in glorying herself whether than God. Most of her life she cared about making herself look godly and had no problem stealing the spotlight from God.

Gemini was so good at being a so-called Christian she was prideful and arrogant about it. Her Christian leadership was about her and her religious accomplishments over the years. She had willfully stolen God’s spotlight, taken credit for his works, stripped his glory from him by clothing herself with it, and bragged about her “own” supernatural prowess, which was really entertainment and trickery.

She was literally hijacking the Christian faith without having a relationship with the Living God. As far as she’d climbed in the religious ranks; she, herself, was a lost soul.

She told others how blessed she was as she paraded all her material wealth and accumulations in front of them, but she was the poorest of all. She had the love of a truly Godly man and family, yet her heart was with her adulteries and she’d treasured each one.

Gemini was examining herself now and she felt convicted about her life. She had been the epitome of Susan Taylor’s two-faced Christian. Her heart was broken and she was contrite over the things she’d done. I am ashamed of how I treated God and what I did without regard for his holy ways.

Not only was she having affairs with other men, but she would drink, smoke pot, dress sleazy, party, and get involved with unorthodox sexual encounters. She was good at it for a long time, but now it made her sick to think about what she’d done and how low she’d gone to do it!

Gemini had done MOST of those things with Simon. Simon had no scruples and no restraints! She usually didn’t allow herself to get emotionally involved, but Simon got to her and she truly enjoyed him. However, when she got pregnant, she decided to cut things off with him and heartlessly walked away. But on one of his last messages she said “...you better call me back, Gemmy. I know about Brad Patterson and your children and you know I’m crazy as hell...”

Gemini had no idea what she was going to do about Simon. She felt like she was losing control of her life. She was losing clients too. Since she’d decided to truly accept Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to empower her to get her life right, her counseling perspectives and methods changed too!

Gemini had a more secular and scientific approach to the emotional condition of Christians in her church. She hadn’t considered their faith much at all as a coping method to their life’s problems. She was WRONG.

Gemini had discounted biblical principles, in her counseling sessions. Biblical principles are what contained the answers for God’s people and how they can overcome their issues.

Psychology doesn’t help clients discover absolute truth, but it was designed to help them use their OWN human reasonings, observations, and understandings. Psychological theories change all the time. The bible has been around for years and its unchanging truths have never failed

Gemini’s sinful lifestyle had affected everything she did in the Christian community. She had even done a disservice to her clients by using strictly psychology and NOT biblical truths.

She’d only used psychological terms that dealt with a person’s human nature and their own human effort to overcome their problems.

She’d been totally remiss about providing them with a deeper understanding of their indwelling spiritual nature could empower them to do. She’d never told one client how God had supplied them with, his indwelling strength and wisdom, to help them process them and overcome their issues and concerns.

God was their healer, emotionally, mentally, financially, and spiritually, but Gemini had not rallied for God’s role as their OWN personal, indwelling and WONDERFUL counselor.

Gemini, however, had changed. Her sinful and adulterous lifestyle had a domino effect into many areas of her life and she’d been blind to it.

She needed to be counseled, herself, with the scriptures and the help of the Holy Spirit. She was seeing the results and she felt whole for the first time in her life. She felt more authentic in her role as wife, mother, Christian leader. Her clients needed God too and she hadn’t given him to them properly

She was genuinely experiencing how the indwelling and powerful Holy Spirit was enabling her to change. She felt convicted about Brad and Simon, every day now and she still didn’t know what or how to make these situations right. She needed to come clean with Brad and Simon too.

In the meantime, Gemini’s counseling service became an evangelizing tool for other  two-faced Christians. She was trying to help them, like Susan Taylor, had helped her by showing them their deeper need for salvation and biblical healing.

Gemini understood that she couldn’t impose or force her, newly established, values or beliefs onto a two-faced “Christian.” She could, however, open the door to scripture in order to lead them to God’s truth and hope they will find God for themselves.

During their sessions, Susan Taylor, shared many scriptures with her. She thought: “... who was counseling who...” One of Susan’s scripture talked about sexual immorality. Gemini had often talked about sexual immorality with clients, their struggles with it, their proclivities for it, the problem with lust, and the appetite of the sinful nature.

She would usually tell them to pray about it and “flee” from it, but she offered no practical solution to HOW to abstain from sexual immorality. She didn’t know herself.

What she’d done for her clients was to help them understand what sexual immorality was, allowed them to express their feelings about it, and become aware of their deepest needs. She INFORMED them, she gave them psychological ENLIGHTENMENT, and she EDUCATED them about sexual immorality, but it didn’t HEAL the problem.

Gemini was good at what she did and she thought she’d helped a lot of people over the course of her career, but she hadn’t truly HEALED them. Neither did she usher them to the one who COULD.

She could present ALL the psychological theories and methods to Christians she could think of, but for God’s people, there is ONLY “one” healer.

Susan Taylor’s witness helped Gemini to understand she WAS NOT “in” Christ like she thought she was. And her spiritual influence, in the counseling sessions with Christians, was meaningless! She felt she had served no spiritual purpose until she truly accepted Christ as her Savior.

She didn’t even know enough about God and his power to personally help herself. All that she knew and understood about sexual immorality hadn’t and didn’t change her, heal her, or stop her.

Her deepest problem was the condition of her  OWN “lost” soul. It took the indwelling and powerful Holy Spirit to truly transform and HEAL her of sexual immorality.

Gemini had a purpose for counseling now and that was to help other so-called Christians like herself, but it was proving to be a lot harder than she thought. Some lifestyles of sin had become STRONGHOLDS for people and they were practically resistant to change.

 Two-faced Christians had TAKEN OVER the church nationally and internationally!

A DEEPER walk with God was NO LONGER popular in the NEW Christian community!

The DEEDS OF THE FLESH will KILL the covenant relationship with God, STEAL you away from him, and DESTROY YOU and THEN, the “deeds of the flesh” will attempt to USE you, directly or inadvertently, to DO the same to others!

What have I done?