Revelation 9:12-21. Fire, Smoke, and Sulfur.
My youngest daughter, Tess, rebuffed my invitation to talk regularly through video chat. My other children are happily doing it. In fact, it was suggested by one of them so we could more easily stay in touch.
My youngest daughter doesnamprsquot want to stay in touch. She doesnamprsquot want to talk to me until Iamprsquove changed, she says.
She sits in judgment of me unwilling to communicate until she has seen more money from me.
Change for her seems to means money, not the repentance I have made and the testimony I have given her.
I have increased the amount of money I send it her. Itamprsquos the amount I receive as old age pension from the government.
Once money becomes the crux of a relationship, there is little hope of change, I think. T
here is never any end to the demand for more and more, as Iamprsquove seen.
My daughter is like a lion-faced horse with a tail of biting snakes to me (17,19).
She is the result of my life, of my sexual immorality. I need to breathe the ampldquoplagues of fire, smoke, and sulfuramprdquo (18) and continue to reflect on my sins and seek a deeper repentance.
The root of our troubled relationship is in her conception.
I agreed to make her but in my mind she was the path to her mother, to marriage.
Her mother, on the other hand, wanted only her, not me and marriage.
Because Tess was the means to what never took placeampmdashmarriageampmdashmy interest in her was never great.
I stayed in touch through regular visits and phone calls until she came to stay with me for three short months, after which she did not want to talk to me or see me because she obviously sensed my lack of sincere interest in her.
My experience shows me that without living together loving concern doesnamprsquot grow in me.
The difference is immense between my relationship with Tess and the relationships with the children I raised.
My first wifeamprsquos pregnancies with our son and daughter were not planned, they were surprises because my wife was not supposed to be able to conceive.
They both had serious problems in their early childhood but I grew to love them and in living together we formed a relationship that, despite my sins and failures that fractured our relationship for a time, my repentance and our early bond combined with Godamprsquos grace to help us make a better relationship than before.
Itamprsquos only been two years since Tess returned to the States and sheamprsquos in the midst of her teenage years.
I pray there is time yet for me to find a new repentance and, through God, build a relationship of sincerity.
Application: write another letter sharing my feelings and repentance.
Lord, let me not use people out of my selfishness. Give me your grace to love and be humble.
