Dec 13 2008
Can Your Marriage Be Saved? Chapter 1
INTRO:
Do you find yourself in a difficult marriage? Has your spouse cheated on you? Are you just not “in love” anymore? Do you feel neglected? Are you in an abusive relationship? If you have picked up this book, you are probably in the same position as many others who are in an unhappy marriage or on the brink of divorce right now!
We want to tell you the good news; there is hope for you and your marriage. God has been healing marriages and families for thousands of years. When God saved our marriage it was not because we were special, but because we were his children and it was and is his desire to heal and restore marriages and families.
We would like to share our testimony with you and share about how God intervened in our marriage. Although our experience may not be what you are going through, the same biblical truths for marriage and God’s plan of action can save your marriage as it did ours. After we each share our own testimonies we will then share with you what the Bible has to say about marriage. We have also included practical steps out of the Word of God for you to use as you begin the work of building up your marriage and following God’s plan. In closing, we hope to encourage you with God’s promises on obtaining the victory that God has for you and your spouse.
I was probably 4th or 5th place in my husband’s life as far as attention and consideration would go in our marriage. He would watch his sports and be on the internet while I would take care of the kids, read books and shop. Shopping was my way of filling the void of not being “loved” in the true sense of the word. Oh, my husband wanted sex of course but that was all it was to me, just another chore I had to do. We would tease each other a lot, in insulting ways too. I would say we had a typical American marriage, but certainly not the one God had in mind. My husband, unbeknownst to me, was looking at pornography on the internet and chatting with women on it as well.
TESTIMONY PART I : HE SAID
We were fence-sitting hypocrite Christians who went to church on Sunday and lusted after the things of this world the rest of the week. Well, just like the Laodicean church in the book of Revelation, because we were neither hot nor cold, Christ had to spit us out.I as the spiritual leader of our home, was openly worshiping sports to the complete disregard of my family and secretly addicted to pornography. All this was happening while going to church and being named a deacon. I remember my pastor at the time telling his congregation, you need to have God as top priority in your life because HE will not be second place in your life. I thought to myself, I don’t have God as my top priority, not even close actually, and I’m doing OK. I know… what an idiot.
The day that pastor told me I was a deacon; he also told me that “there is a big bulls-eye on your back” and there is a real enemy that wants to destroy you. I really loved this guy but I was thinkin’, he might be a little over the edge on this one. I had no idea about spiritual warfare but I was about to find out.
Shortly after that, I noticed my bride began to say words like “I” and “me” more often than I had ever heard before. After awhile I noticed she would always leave to go “shopping” on Sundays when we got home from church. That didn’t bother me much of course because I could watch several hours of football without her complaining.
Shortly thereafter, I began to suspect that she was committing adultery with her boss. Now how does a man who watches 13 hours of football on Sunday and hides in the dark to view pornography try to save his marriage? The answer was by himself and in the flesh, of course.
I set out to “win” my wife back on my own. Not surprisingly, it only got worse. She genuinely hated me, and said so very often.
Finally, somehow, for the first time in my life I began to listen to radio pastors at work. It was as if Christ was reading my mail. My situation was being revealed to me every day along with Spirit led instructions on what to do.
I was so excited. I wanted God to change my bride and save our marriage so bad, but God had something else in mind first. Isn’t it funny how we always want God to “change” our spouse never thinkin’ we might be the problem?
Well, Christ knew there was no reason to change my bride if all she was going to return to was me (the way I was) so He changed me first. That is not how I would’ve done it, because in my mind, she was much worse. God didn’t see it that way and His ways are NOT my ways.
Amid the call to repentance and some pruning, all those radio sermons came down to this: God had me go home and tell my bride, who was steeped in adultery, that “no matter how many times you hurt me, I am going to stay here and take it because I don’t believe you can continue to go on hurting me this way”.
He had me tell her that there is forgiveness here (“here” being Christ IN me). What I didn’t know at the time was the enemy was telling her, “there’s no way, if he ever found out he’d leave you” and “God doesn’t even want you back”. The sad reality is that far to often, the offended spouse will agree with the enemy.
I am often amazed at how, when asked - a man will boldly tell of how he would die for his bride. Why it’s a death of honor, nobility, courage, and the ultimate sacrifice. It is my contention, that dying (a physical death) for them is easy, at least it’s easy to say.
Let’s be honest, the odds that any man would actually have to die for his wife is slim at best. What grieves me the most, is when that same man of great bravado, faces a situation where his wife has hurt him, humiliated him, or betrayed him in some way. That same man’s initial reaction will be to attack, leave, or divorce his bride.
This is the tough part, staying with her when you only die to yourself, when your pride has been severely wounded, and you’ve been brazenly hazed with the badge of humiliation and pain. We not only refuse to die this way for them, we often refuse to stay with them, and we refuse to forgive them. This is where we fail as men of God, and satan wins.
In Matthew 6:15 The Lord Jesus Christ says: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
According to Ephesians 5, we are to “make our wives holy” and present them to ourselves and our Lord “as a radiant church (Bride) without stain, wrinkle, or blemish”, we are to present them “holy and blameless. We are commanded by God’s Word to do this. Christ did it and does it still by forgiving, reconciling, renewing, restoring.
Our natural bent is to point out thier wrinkles and blemishes to everyone in order to make ourselves look better or achieve some measure of victory over our estranged bride. We take the easy path the devil lays out for us. Condemn, criticize, abandon, and claim moral superiority. It’s a victory in hell, and the spoils are your family.
Proverbs 14:12 says: There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
But I digress.
Anyway, for the first time in my life, The Lord Jesus Christ became real to me. I guess it would be better said to say for the first time in my life I got real with Christ. For the first time in my life I began to seek Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. I didn’t know it then, but He says in His Word that He will be found of us when we seek Him that way!
Alleliua!!! For the first time in my life I could see Christ as Alive and Actively Involved in my life. He loved my bride through me, He took all the pain, all the torment, all the animosity and loved her through me, but she still hadn’t changed or repented.
Throughout this entire time, my precious bride lied to me like Bill Clinton lied to
America. Then she would attack me for bringing things up, a very familiar defense strategy. A few months passed in this manner.
It happened that while on Christmas vacation, my precious bride took sick. Praise God Almighty, because He ministered, nurtured, and cared for her through me during that time and for some reason, THAT made a difference in her mind. It was then she decided in her mind to break off her relationship with her boss. She still hadn’t confessed her sin, but she had a change of heart praise God!
Christ tells us to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves, so I managed to convince her that we had enough money in our account to get by for three months. OK, I lied but she quit her job which is what I knew she had to do. That relationship had to be severed even though she still denied a relationship existed.
So she quit! Praise God Almighty she quit!!!! She CAME OUT of the workforce and into our family. That day, for the first time ever, PEACE entered our home and marriage. What I neglected to tell you was that she never wanted to work outside of the home… I forced her to.
We quickly learned that it is God’s will for her to be at home according to Titus 2:5 so that the Word of God be not blasphemed. God orders our steps in His Word.
She finally confessed to me and to God on Super Bowl Sunday. Normally, I wouldn’t miss a minute of the game but now God had PRIORITY in my life and I didn’t see a minute of it.
What I did see was Christ take a marriage (and I mean both of us) so foul, so filthy, so sickening to His Name and breathe new life into it. That was a most glorious day of Restoration, Reconciliation, and Renewal. He saved our lives, He saved our marriage, He saved our family, may He ever be Praised!!!
