"All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD." – Proverbs 16:2 (NIV)

There's an old joke floating around about the codependent who is falling over a cliff and someone else's life flashes before him!

A codependent, among other things, is someone who short-circuits the consequences of somebody else's negative behavior. For example, I know of one mother whose grown daughter in her 30s was an alcoholic who still lived at home. When the daughter would go out and get drunk, the mother would go and pick her up. And when she was too drunk and too sick to go to work and couldn't pay her car payments, the mother would make the payments for her. So whom would say was the sickest of the two? I think the answer is obvious.

When a wife keeps covering for a drunken and or an abusive husband/father, and keeps protecting him, etc., she becomes a part of the sickness. After setting healthy boundaries and exercising various steps of tough love, if worst comes to worst, the most loving thing a codependent wife, mother, husband or father can do is to step aside, let go of the over-dependent person and let them crash. This won't guarantee that the person will get into recovery. But if this isn't done, it will guarantee that they won't get into recovery and get well. If we're taking care of them, why should they?

Now here's the big problem for many a codependent Christian. Codependency can look, smell and feel like it's being very Christian. But it isn't. Anytime we do anything for anyone that they can and need to be doing for themselves is keeping them over-dependent on us. That isn't loving. And when it comes to the motive, we are actually doing it for ourselves out of our own need. We are afraid to stand up for ourselves, or afraid of conflict, or want to be liked or loved. We may feel needed but we will never feel loved when we are doing things for others out of our own false motives.

Another thing, we codependents can be masters at being caretakers. As long as we are taking care of someone else with their problems and trying to fix them, we don't have to face our own issues and fix ourselves! It can be a very subtle and self-deceptive means of avoiding our own problems. 

Sometimes we try to set God up, too, and seek to have him be codependent by asking him to do things for us that we can and need to do for ourselves. God won't ever do this. He will give us wisdom and guidance if we ask for these, but he won't allow us to stay immature and over-dependent. And he always knows the motives of our heart so we can't trick him.

"Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you that you always know what is going on inside of me and know what my motives are. Help me to also know what they are and will you please help me to purify these and serve others out of love rather than my own needs. Gratefully in Jesus' name. Amen."