Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
    and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendor.

• Isaiah 61:1-3

For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
    you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
    the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor.

• Isaiah 9:4

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

• 2 Corinthians 10:4

The Boilerplate

My wife took a Bible Study in 2011.  (There was a note in the study guide that identified September 2 and that the study was being held on Friday mornings, or I might not have ever figured out what year.)  My wife had become a Christian in 2000. She greatly respected the pastor’s wife who was also a pastor.  The pastor’s wife spent time as the interim associate pastor, and this Bible study might have been during that time.

My wife passed away in March 2023, and I found this study guide as I was cleaning up.  It is a Beth Moore study guide.  Most of the questions are close-ended, mostly fill-in-the-blank.  But my wife was eager to learn.  She wrote her thoughts in the margins.  I will use her comments as I did once before, calling this the “with a little help” in that my wife contributes.  There is more to follow in that she wrote Scriptures and prayers in a notebook.  Probably what she found in giving her encouragement through the long illness that took her life.

So, instead of writing about a topic at random, I am going to write on my wife’s comments in the Study Guide. It may follow the study guide topics, but it may not.

Discussion on this topic

“Isaiah 61:1-3 shapes the heart of our study and states the gracious intent of our God. Before we take this process forward, we’ll trace it backward and capture a fascinating parallel for freedom drawn in Isaiah 9:4.”

• Beth Moore, Breaking Free, updated edition

This is Beth Moore’s opening statement in the Study Guide.  Isaiah declares freedom, but that begs the question: freedom from what?

“Free from financial anxiety.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

My wife was born in Indonesia.  She travelled to Holland twice, moving back to Indonesia the first time.  On the second trip to the Netherlands, her family made preparations to come to the USA, without a sponsor.  Living in a high-rise apartment in New York City, they got sponsorship and a job for my wife’s father in El Paso, Texas less than a week before her father’s visa was to expire.  Of the nine children in the family, there were three children born in Indonesia, three in the Netherlands, and three in El Paso, Texas.  Her father had a good job, but money was very tight.  They came to the USA with nothing.  With nine children, the good job was inadequate.

I say that in that only she listened to her parents about tightening the belt.  She often went to bed hungry because her parents talked about the lack of money to buy food.  My wife was second of the nine, and of the first five children, she was the only girl, with four girls that followed.  In interviewing my brothers-in-law, none of them remembered going to bed hungry.  Either they ignored their parents and ate what they wanted or the lack of food at times was not important to them to remember.

Thus, financial anxiety was part of my wife’s life and my unstable job situation, after I got out of the military, did not help.  I worked for ten years at my first job, but I successfully avoided being fired three different times (with them using me as a scapegoat for their mistakes – odd being commended as the most creative employee and hardest worker, but they wanted to terminate my employment).  Then, the NASA project was cancelled three years after I went to northern Mississippi.  Then, nine months in Washington state before more government cutbacks cancelled another contract.  Then nearly twenty years in the Pittsburgh, PA area, but I worked for an engineering company that laid off vast numbers of people each time sales were low.  I survived all of those (at least a half dozen or more), being laid off (retired basically) about three years after this Bible study was held due to a new company purchasing our company and purging the old employees to ensure a new work culture.  By then, I represented the old culture.

My wife would hold onto a few dollars in her pocket and a few thousand in the bank, even when we had bad debt.  Those dollar bills and pennies gave her comfort – just in case things got worse and she needed to buy food.  She intellectually understood God’s provision, but the scars of her youth ran deep.

“Depression, co-dependency.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

My wife had reason to be depressed.  At this point, she knew she needed open-heart surgery some day in the future (2018) and she knew her kidneys might fail (2020).  It was the combination of these two that took her life in 2023.  But by 2023 she had a calm over the prospects of dying.  Even great Christians could fear the process of dying but know all along that glory awaited on the other side.

My wife took 22 prescription medicines daily and many supplements.  She was dependent on me to drive her at night at this point, but when I retired (laid off) in 2014, she rarely drove the car (getting lost due to early onset of dementia, caused by the other illnesses).

But, what about freedom from those things…

“… Christ’s disciples – profoundly affective.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

She was seeing in the disciples who became apostles a group of people who could be role models.

“Strongholds always lead to isolation. Genesis 25, Exodus 2:15, Numbers 25”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

This comment is a true statement, but some context would be helpful.  Some churches close in the walls to maintain the purity of their beliefs, while other churches risk that in order to spread God’s love.  We need to maintain our Christian foundation, but we cannot close in the walls or we do not do God’s Will.  Of course, in biblical times, a stronghold was a walled city.  The safety within the city meant isolation from the world.

Thus a true statement, but what did the three scripture references mean?  I had to put on my thinking cap, but this was not a hard riddle.

Genesis 25 starts with Abraham having several children with Keturah.  One of these children was Midian.  Exodus 2:15 speaks of Moses, having killed an Egyptian. Moses ran away to the land of Midian.  Then, as the Israelites were wandering in the Wilderness, the Moabites (descendants of Lot) in Numbers 25 unleash prostitutes into the Israelite camp, most of them being Moabite women.  God’s anger burned and He told Moses to gather the people and tell them that each tribe must kill anyone who has slept with one of these prostitutes because the prostitutes also brought false gods into the camp and had the men worship the false god as part of the infidelity.  While the assembly had gathered, the people noticed an Israelite man taking a Midianite woman into his tent.  Phinehas, a grandson of Aaron, took a spear and drove it through both the Israelite man and the Midianite prostitute.

But, in piecing these three Scriptures together, from the Midianites being cousins of theirs to Moses seeking refuge with them and marrying one of them to a Midianite causing sin to encroach the camp, we see how the world corrupts.  Jesus talked of a little yeast ruins the entire batch (that is if you are making unleavened bread).  A son of Abraham named Midian was probably taught who the true God was, but in a few generations, they become the source of corruption.

So, to compare that to the statement about strongholds and isolation, we need to be strong in defending the purity of church doctrine, but we must not close in the walls so that we never shine our light upon the community around the church.

My wife ended by writing down 2 Corinthians 10:4.  She made no comment, but it ties into strongholds.  While churches may wish to have a stronghold to protect church doctrine, non-believers have their own strongholds.  In using God’s weapons, which are not like the weapons of this world, we can break down those strongholds that people have to prevent God’s voice from entering.  But we must be willing to be a vessel to carry those weapons.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory