Adams Where Art Thou

By Joseph Dowell

Adams Where Art Thou is an autobiography of the author’s life to spiritual leadership. In families, men begin out of position with God and the Father making a clarion call to all men (Adams) to get back into a place of worship with him so he can give instructions for the family. When men, or Adams, are out of place with God, the family structure, communities, and societies crumble. This is a personal account of the rise, fall, and restoration of one man and his family, made possible only through our Almighty Father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796036848

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Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Dowell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Website

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 05/30/2019

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 No Excuse

Chapter 2 The Call

Chapter 3 The Turning Point

Chapter 4 My Wilderness Experience

Chapter 5 The Seeds You Sow Will Be the Harvest You Grow

Chapter 6 Never Let Her See You Sweat

Chapter 7 Love Conquers All

Chapter 8 God’s Care Instructions

Chapter 9 From Her Heart

Chapter 10 The Birth after the Pain

Chapter 11 In Conclusion1

DEDICATION

To my Father in Heaven for the Love that you have shown me through this process of change and never letting your purpose and destiny for me be aborted. Thank you for Making me your SON. To my wife, for without your yes to God’s will, this book would not be possible, my Partner for life, to the one who has my Back. I love you. To my children, grandkids, family and friends, Spiritual Mother and Father who have been apart of this Journey, I SAY thank you. I Love you. To my Brother Elder Felix Corchran who passed away in April of 2019 who helped me on this project. I miss you and love you.

Chapter One

NO EXCUSE

On the back cover of the book, I mentioned several things, but I want to make three points very clear:

Point 1—I stated that Christian husbands have been given a mandate by God to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The word mandate means an authoritative order or command. We see this command illustrated in the fifth chapter and twenty-fifth verse of the book of Ephesians, where the apostle Paul is acting on behalf of our risen Lord Christ Jesus.

Paul states, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.

This is a mandate or, keeping in line of its definition, an authoritative command given by Paul through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We will talk more on this verse later on in the chapter entitled God’s Care Instructions. Now for those of us Christian men who think or have thought in times past that there was no such command or mandate, well, here it is; we have no excuse!

With that in mind, allow me to give you the definition of excuse that you will not find in any dictionary because it was given to me by my pastor by divine revelation in a Bible study one night.

Here is what he said: An excuse is a request or plea for someone to accept an inferior performance. Man, that hit me right in the gut. God has given us everything we need to successfully carry out his mandate. The question is, Do we really take advantage of what he has given us? If we are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we don’t. Because of this fact, we make so many choices we should not be making that we end up making a loud demanding request for others in our lives to accept our inferior performances, mainly our wives who are the closest to us.

When it comes to the mandate for us Christian husbands to love our wives as Christ loved the church, which he gave himself for, we are actually asking Christ, who is our head, and our wives, whom we are spiritual coverings to (according to Ephesians 5:23), to accept an inferior performance when we forgo the operation of unconditional love in our lives. Deep, isn’t it? It’s tight, but it’s right.

Point 2—Love your wife as Christ loved the church. We must understand that the love Christ showed his bride, the church, is symbolic in nature to the earthly husband-and-wife relationship. I do not want to go into great depth, but I will say this: there was a time when I thought loving my wife as Christ loved the church was impossible. But after going through the harsh reality of God stripping me of false character and humbling me in a way that only God knows how, I realized that loving my wife the way God says to love her is possible. Now I am not saying that I have arrived fully, but I am certainly heading in the right direction.

We need to understand that God is a spirit (John 4:24) and God is love (1 John 4:16), so when we receive Christ as the Lord and Savior of our lives, he now lives in us because he has given us his Spirit (1 John 4:13). Now we have just received the supernatural ability to love unconditionally. The only problem is, we still live in this flesh in which no good thing dwells (Romans 7:18). When we are in flesh, we can’t please God (Romans 8:8); therefore, we should have no confidence in it (Philippians 3:3).

This transformation does not happen overnight; it is a process of continually dying to the flesh and becoming more like Christ.

The Lord told me once in prayer, and he said, The best way to kill the flesh is to do what the flesh does not want to do. That makes a whole lot of sense now.

It’s anything that lives and breathes. If you feed it, it stays alive; but once you starve it, it will eventually die. It reminds me of Brother Paul when he said, I discipline my body and bring it under subjection … (1 Corinthians 9:27). In other words, Paul took away the cravings of the flesh by going to war with it. But this war is ongoing until Christ returns for us.

Point 3—This is about our clouded eyes. In Matthew 7:1–5, it clearly states, Judge not that ye be not judged (2) for with that judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete: it shall be measured to you again (3) and why behold thou that is in thy brother’s eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye (4) or how will thou say to thy brother let me pull the out the mote out of thine eye and behold a beam that is in your own eye (5) you hypocrite, first cast the beam in your own eye; and then you can see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother’s eye.

In these scriptures, Christ teaches that we have no room to judge, criticize, or condemn anyone for anything because we see out of cloudy eyes. Let’s just kick the facts. We as husbands have the nerve to try and judge, criticize, and condemn our wives when we have a big 747 in our own eyes. We must first let Christ deal with our own issues, then we can see clearly to gently help our wives with theirs. For myself, I had a big problem with a few things in my life: pride, selfishness, and a what-about-me attitude. These beams tended to cloud my eyes when it came to loving my wife as Christ loved the church. This is because of what I call the what-about-me syndrome. What is a syndrome? It is a predictable characteristic pattern of behavior or actions that tends to occur in certain circumstances. Think of it, brothers. When we are ignored, our feeling is hurt; and when it is not about us or when we are not the center of attention, we fall into a predictable pattern of behavior, a syndrome. Oh, wait. I hear the violin playing in the background. Can you hear it? I can. Adams, let’s pull up our Underoos and stand up straight. Adams, it is certainly not that our feelings and needs are not real or that they do not matter. I went through some of the same things and heard the same violin music; truth be told, I still hear it even now and again. God did not call us to a what-about-me syndrome; he called us to see our wives as he sees them as the weaker vessel, as coheirs to the throne of grace, as our helpmeet, and as the ones we are supposed to nurture, protect, and cherish. But we don’t because we are full of ourselves and not full of Christ.

The Lord spoke to me once while reading a book, and he said to me, The key to everything you need begins with intimacy with me. It’s only right that when we, as the coverings to our wives, submit wholly to the covering of Christ, we can begin to see spiritual and physical change in every area of our lives; then and only then will we be able to see our wives willingly submit to the spirit of Christ in us.

We should never try to lead our families without first being led by Christ ourselves. When I was in the military, we did nothing without first receiving orders or instructions from a higher-ranking soldier. Let’s face it; how important are the ones you lead: your wife, your children, your church, and even your community? Are you lying before the one who is your covering, who is Christ, seeking your orders for the ones he has left you in charge of? Or are you too prideful, selfish, and too full of you to humble yourself before the one who has the perfect plan for your life?

Adams, if we are honest with ourselves and really let the Holy Spirt examine our hearts, we will find out that according to Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it. Also, according to Proverbs 21:2, Every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lords weighs the heart. What we will find is, we are not the Adams that we really say we are and that we still see out of clouded eyes.

Brothers, believe me, I’ve been there when it comes to pride, selfishness, and a what-about-me attitude. In this, there is no self-examination. There is only outward condemnation and blaming of others and, more importantly, our wives when we take on this mind-set.

Adams,