K
kristie
Guest
"I Know God Can, But I Don't Know If He Will Do It For Me"
I think the majority of standers go through the "but will He" syndrome. You get to a certain level of relationship and faith with God, you cannot have any doubts that He can do anything, so that is Satan's next attack strategy...yes He can, but will He do it for you?
This is one of the things that I have tried to get across to standers who are tossed about and fretting so much about their marriages. God is God, and what God speaks as His law and will, one of those things being marriage is for a lifetime and let no one separate what He has joined together, is set in stone. It is God, what God wants and what God will enforce because it is His command to us. It is like government laws, the law says that we have to pay taxes, if we do not pay taxes, then the law forces us to pay taxes, we suffer and get chastised, taken away from, go to jail, etc., until we pay the taxes. We do not have to beg the government to let us pay our taxes. It really is no different, and the only difference for the stander is the emotions involved that Satan plays on.
If your spouse was a tax evader, you would not be fretting because you would know that the government is going to make him pay his taxes one way or the other, the easy voluntary way or the hard way. There is no need to fret and torment yourself over if your spouse is going to obey Gods law for your marriage either, because God will make sure they do one way or the other, the easy way or the hard way. The government does not just throw up their hands and say, "Well, he wont pay, so we are just going to leave him alone and let him go on". God never does that either, He enforces His laws, especially when someone is petitioning Him to do so...hence our praying.
God wrote the law on marriage, and if one person stands on the law that He wrote for marriage, God cannot ignore His own law and not enforce it, if He did He would be making a mockery of Himself, and God won't do that to Himself. So you need to have as much confidence that God will uphold His law about your marriage as you do that the government will make you pay your taxes.
My Pastor once illustrated faith in God fulfilling His promises and word like this. You go into church and you sit down on the church pew. When you do this, you do not hesitate and question if the pew is underneath you, if it will hold your weight, you just plop down having full faith that it is there and will hold you. Faith in God's promises should be the same way, no hesitation or doubt if they are there for you and will hold you up. You do not look at all the other people sitting in that pew and think, well it is holding them up, but will it hold me up?
Marriage restoration is not something that we have to beg God to do, and fret if He will or will not do. It is His law for us, His command to us, His calling upon us to uphold His law and fight for our spouses. He called you to obey His law, not vice versa.
I have had prodigals contact me here at the ministry and they were touched by God to fight for restoration and wanted direction. These were marriages where the prodigal ran out on their spouse with another person, divorced their spouse, moved on and the spouse did nothing about it, just let them go and moved on themselves...then God grabbed a hold of the prodigal who started it all and turned them around and put them to standing for the marriage restoration. That has spoke volumes to me in this ministry calling, when both parties just accept the breakdown of the marriage and do nothing to stop it, and then down the line God grabs a hold of the one that ran out and changes their heart and puts them to the battle.
I have standers further question it by asking what about the ones who are never called to stand by God; even Christians who are in church. All I can tell you is that I believe every single Christian is called to stand for their marriage. The ones who do not, who claim even that they were never called by God to do so, there is something wrong with them. It was not that God did not call them to it, they chose to not hear the voice of God, to ignore the voice of God, and they will reap the consequences of such somehow or somewhere down the line.
God kind of gave me some insight into this question when a brother in my church, who I knew very well because he was married to my stepson's mother, so it was kind of like a family connection of sorts there with us. He was devout Christian, and his wife, my stepson's mother, was a unbeliever. He married her because his covenant wife had died from cancer at a young age leaving him with five small children. It was this event in his life that turned him from being a drug dealer and criminal to a child of God in fact.
He led his new wife to Christ, we thought she had accepted Christ, she went to church for some time and played Christian, but once they had another child together and they now had seven children and the new and romance wore off, she made no ifs, ands or buts that she was not a believer and would not participate anymore in playing church. She began cheating on him and things got worse and worse, and that is when my stepson ended up moving in with us. After that, I had not really heard from them for a year. Then one day she called me and was very angry and bitter. She said that he had filed for divorce from her and had already taken up with another woman, that in fact she found out that he had been talking to this woman online for several months prior to him leaving her and filing, so she felt like she was set up. He literally was jumping from her to another woman just like that.
I saw him a couple months later when he and the new wife and family showed up at my church to visit. He knew what my ministry was, and even though I did not say anything or approach him in anyway, he made a point of approaching me and the first thing he said was, "Please do not put God in a box". He then began telling me that he had prayed and prayed, for a year, for his wife to change, to give her life to God, but things just got worse and it got to the point where she was abusing his children and he felt like he had to get them out for their safety. He said that his new wife was not someone that he just met online and took up with, that she was someone that he had dated all the way through high school, and that he knew since childhood. That she also had come out of a very bad and abusive marriage and their online interaction was only that of crying on one another’s shoulders, supporting one another, that is was not until after he moved out that they began talking about getting together.
But anyway, he tried to convince me that God put him and this new wife together, that he did all he could to save his marriage, and he was okay with God in his choices. So time went on and then about another year later he and his new wife came back again actually joined our church. Over the course of the next year of being church members with them, I came to know his wife really well, became friends. She was really a Godly woman, was the niece of a well known pastor in fact and raised by him and in his church.
They were both very Godly, but it was obvious that there were serious problems. She was in serious pain, and often she would get up during service and run out of the church in distress. Finally one day she confided in me that since the marriage, her two children had abandoned God and the church, and her. They would have nothing to do with her and she had not had any contact with her own children in a year, they disowned her. She was having great strife with his children and the home was always in turmoil and stress. She had come down with and was diagnosed with a terminal condition that would deform her bones and muscles until she could no longer walk or move, and that is why she had become bent over in walking and in so much pain, some days not even able to get out of bed. That their business began crashing and everything going wrong there to the point that they had to file bankruptcy and they were losing everything.
With all of this going on, there was also strife between them and pressure on the marriage. I had no idea any of this was going on, because they would just come into church and put up this front of being this very happy and Godly family, like everything was perfect in their lives, so much so that it had me questioning things. It was a couple of weeks later, that as we were exiting service, he grabbed me and asked me how my stand for my marriage was going, how was my husband. He then told me that he made a really wrong choice in what he did about his own marriage, and was now reaping for what he had sown greatly, that they would get through it all with Gods help, would endure because he would not make the same mistake again, but that he had now learned that what I preach is true and that God does not make exceptions for some situations and everything will be okay, that he thought this marriage would be blessed, but it in fact has been cursed because it was not Gods perfect will for him or for his new wife who also left a marriage behind.
So what I can tell you is this. Gods law stands firm for all Christians, and it is not that God does not call some to uphold His laws, they just choose to believe the enemy and believe they are alright in what they are doing. You may never see the reaping that they are experiencing from their choices, because like the couple I am telling you about, they put up a front in public never exposing the real turmoil and reaping they are going through, you will not see what is really going on in their lives.
God's law is God's law period, and you either obey it or disobey it, and if you choose to disobey it you will pay a heavy price for that, one that you will never forget. There are standers who were married before, I am one of them, and divorced and moved on to subsequent marriages. Now you are here fighting for the subsequent marriage, why...because you broke the laws of God with the prior marriage and you are reaping what you have sowed. It is spiritual law.
Everyone who breaks the laws of God somewhere, at sometime down the line finds themselves floundering and suffering, coming to the revelation that they are in a mess because they themselves created the mess. Pretty much everything in this life is a reaction to a decision, good things and bad things. As my Pastor always said, if there is something going badly in your life, if you seek for the root of that something, you will almost always find a decision/action you made to be the root/cause. I can sit here and bellyache that I am always under financial affliction, and I am, and question why God is allowing this. But if I want to seek the root I can find it easily enough.
I blew off education and opted to marry before I even got out of high school, to a man that also had no concern or interest in his future, and started having babies. I made a life choice that rooted me in a poverty way of life. I have since done things to try to improve my situation, going to nursing school to get a better paying job, stop trashing my credit so I could buy a house, etc., but I was the one that set the foundation for this part of my life way back there coming out of high school. I set the stage for the biggest battle of my life, my marriage. I married and divorced the unbelievers before I ever got it together and married a believer, I unequally yoked, and then when I bailed out of those marriages and kept going on to yet another, when I finally got to a correct yoking, Satan pounced and tore me up. I reaped for all that law breaking before, and I reaped so abundantly and long term that it has changed my very person, I would never even ponder for one second breaking another one of God's laws....I shudder at the thought. I am coming out the other end, but I am very scarred and disfigured from it and that may never go away, be there forever to remind me of my disobedience and waywardness and keep me in line.
Bottom line is, if it is God's law, God will enforce it. Some may seem to go on and nothing ever comes of the breaking of it. When you have two married people and they divorce and both move on to new marriages and lives, then you can be assured that they reap greatly down the road and come to a regret over their choices. When you have two married people and one leaves and tries to divorce, does divorce, and the other one stands firm on the laws of God, you can be assured that God honors that one standing and enforces His law with the other. He calls for just one person to stand in the gap, just one as His word says, and then He will act and make His law stand firm. He has shown us that even in circumstances where no one stands in the gap, He brings one of those people back around to standing in the gap. It is not that God is not doing His part, it is that people are believing the lies of the enemy, are being disobedient and ignoring God, but you cannot ignore God forever. There is no spanking like a spanking from God to get your attention, and there is no escaping that no matter how far you try to run.
Kristie
I think the majority of standers go through the "but will He" syndrome. You get to a certain level of relationship and faith with God, you cannot have any doubts that He can do anything, so that is Satan's next attack strategy...yes He can, but will He do it for you?
This is one of the things that I have tried to get across to standers who are tossed about and fretting so much about their marriages. God is God, and what God speaks as His law and will, one of those things being marriage is for a lifetime and let no one separate what He has joined together, is set in stone. It is God, what God wants and what God will enforce because it is His command to us. It is like government laws, the law says that we have to pay taxes, if we do not pay taxes, then the law forces us to pay taxes, we suffer and get chastised, taken away from, go to jail, etc., until we pay the taxes. We do not have to beg the government to let us pay our taxes. It really is no different, and the only difference for the stander is the emotions involved that Satan plays on.
If your spouse was a tax evader, you would not be fretting because you would know that the government is going to make him pay his taxes one way or the other, the easy voluntary way or the hard way. There is no need to fret and torment yourself over if your spouse is going to obey Gods law for your marriage either, because God will make sure they do one way or the other, the easy way or the hard way. The government does not just throw up their hands and say, "Well, he wont pay, so we are just going to leave him alone and let him go on". God never does that either, He enforces His laws, especially when someone is petitioning Him to do so...hence our praying.
God wrote the law on marriage, and if one person stands on the law that He wrote for marriage, God cannot ignore His own law and not enforce it, if He did He would be making a mockery of Himself, and God won't do that to Himself. So you need to have as much confidence that God will uphold His law about your marriage as you do that the government will make you pay your taxes.
My Pastor once illustrated faith in God fulfilling His promises and word like this. You go into church and you sit down on the church pew. When you do this, you do not hesitate and question if the pew is underneath you, if it will hold your weight, you just plop down having full faith that it is there and will hold you. Faith in God's promises should be the same way, no hesitation or doubt if they are there for you and will hold you up. You do not look at all the other people sitting in that pew and think, well it is holding them up, but will it hold me up?
Marriage restoration is not something that we have to beg God to do, and fret if He will or will not do. It is His law for us, His command to us, His calling upon us to uphold His law and fight for our spouses. He called you to obey His law, not vice versa.
I have had prodigals contact me here at the ministry and they were touched by God to fight for restoration and wanted direction. These were marriages where the prodigal ran out on their spouse with another person, divorced their spouse, moved on and the spouse did nothing about it, just let them go and moved on themselves...then God grabbed a hold of the prodigal who started it all and turned them around and put them to standing for the marriage restoration. That has spoke volumes to me in this ministry calling, when both parties just accept the breakdown of the marriage and do nothing to stop it, and then down the line God grabs a hold of the one that ran out and changes their heart and puts them to the battle.
I have standers further question it by asking what about the ones who are never called to stand by God; even Christians who are in church. All I can tell you is that I believe every single Christian is called to stand for their marriage. The ones who do not, who claim even that they were never called by God to do so, there is something wrong with them. It was not that God did not call them to it, they chose to not hear the voice of God, to ignore the voice of God, and they will reap the consequences of such somehow or somewhere down the line.
God kind of gave me some insight into this question when a brother in my church, who I knew very well because he was married to my stepson's mother, so it was kind of like a family connection of sorts there with us. He was devout Christian, and his wife, my stepson's mother, was a unbeliever. He married her because his covenant wife had died from cancer at a young age leaving him with five small children. It was this event in his life that turned him from being a drug dealer and criminal to a child of God in fact.
He led his new wife to Christ, we thought she had accepted Christ, she went to church for some time and played Christian, but once they had another child together and they now had seven children and the new and romance wore off, she made no ifs, ands or buts that she was not a believer and would not participate anymore in playing church. She began cheating on him and things got worse and worse, and that is when my stepson ended up moving in with us. After that, I had not really heard from them for a year. Then one day she called me and was very angry and bitter. She said that he had filed for divorce from her and had already taken up with another woman, that in fact she found out that he had been talking to this woman online for several months prior to him leaving her and filing, so she felt like she was set up. He literally was jumping from her to another woman just like that.
I saw him a couple months later when he and the new wife and family showed up at my church to visit. He knew what my ministry was, and even though I did not say anything or approach him in anyway, he made a point of approaching me and the first thing he said was, "Please do not put God in a box". He then began telling me that he had prayed and prayed, for a year, for his wife to change, to give her life to God, but things just got worse and it got to the point where she was abusing his children and he felt like he had to get them out for their safety. He said that his new wife was not someone that he just met online and took up with, that she was someone that he had dated all the way through high school, and that he knew since childhood. That she also had come out of a very bad and abusive marriage and their online interaction was only that of crying on one another’s shoulders, supporting one another, that is was not until after he moved out that they began talking about getting together.
But anyway, he tried to convince me that God put him and this new wife together, that he did all he could to save his marriage, and he was okay with God in his choices. So time went on and then about another year later he and his new wife came back again actually joined our church. Over the course of the next year of being church members with them, I came to know his wife really well, became friends. She was really a Godly woman, was the niece of a well known pastor in fact and raised by him and in his church.
They were both very Godly, but it was obvious that there were serious problems. She was in serious pain, and often she would get up during service and run out of the church in distress. Finally one day she confided in me that since the marriage, her two children had abandoned God and the church, and her. They would have nothing to do with her and she had not had any contact with her own children in a year, they disowned her. She was having great strife with his children and the home was always in turmoil and stress. She had come down with and was diagnosed with a terminal condition that would deform her bones and muscles until she could no longer walk or move, and that is why she had become bent over in walking and in so much pain, some days not even able to get out of bed. That their business began crashing and everything going wrong there to the point that they had to file bankruptcy and they were losing everything.
With all of this going on, there was also strife between them and pressure on the marriage. I had no idea any of this was going on, because they would just come into church and put up this front of being this very happy and Godly family, like everything was perfect in their lives, so much so that it had me questioning things. It was a couple of weeks later, that as we were exiting service, he grabbed me and asked me how my stand for my marriage was going, how was my husband. He then told me that he made a really wrong choice in what he did about his own marriage, and was now reaping for what he had sown greatly, that they would get through it all with Gods help, would endure because he would not make the same mistake again, but that he had now learned that what I preach is true and that God does not make exceptions for some situations and everything will be okay, that he thought this marriage would be blessed, but it in fact has been cursed because it was not Gods perfect will for him or for his new wife who also left a marriage behind.
So what I can tell you is this. Gods law stands firm for all Christians, and it is not that God does not call some to uphold His laws, they just choose to believe the enemy and believe they are alright in what they are doing. You may never see the reaping that they are experiencing from their choices, because like the couple I am telling you about, they put up a front in public never exposing the real turmoil and reaping they are going through, you will not see what is really going on in their lives.
God's law is God's law period, and you either obey it or disobey it, and if you choose to disobey it you will pay a heavy price for that, one that you will never forget. There are standers who were married before, I am one of them, and divorced and moved on to subsequent marriages. Now you are here fighting for the subsequent marriage, why...because you broke the laws of God with the prior marriage and you are reaping what you have sowed. It is spiritual law.
Everyone who breaks the laws of God somewhere, at sometime down the line finds themselves floundering and suffering, coming to the revelation that they are in a mess because they themselves created the mess. Pretty much everything in this life is a reaction to a decision, good things and bad things. As my Pastor always said, if there is something going badly in your life, if you seek for the root of that something, you will almost always find a decision/action you made to be the root/cause. I can sit here and bellyache that I am always under financial affliction, and I am, and question why God is allowing this. But if I want to seek the root I can find it easily enough.
I blew off education and opted to marry before I even got out of high school, to a man that also had no concern or interest in his future, and started having babies. I made a life choice that rooted me in a poverty way of life. I have since done things to try to improve my situation, going to nursing school to get a better paying job, stop trashing my credit so I could buy a house, etc., but I was the one that set the foundation for this part of my life way back there coming out of high school. I set the stage for the biggest battle of my life, my marriage. I married and divorced the unbelievers before I ever got it together and married a believer, I unequally yoked, and then when I bailed out of those marriages and kept going on to yet another, when I finally got to a correct yoking, Satan pounced and tore me up. I reaped for all that law breaking before, and I reaped so abundantly and long term that it has changed my very person, I would never even ponder for one second breaking another one of God's laws....I shudder at the thought. I am coming out the other end, but I am very scarred and disfigured from it and that may never go away, be there forever to remind me of my disobedience and waywardness and keep me in line.
Bottom line is, if it is God's law, God will enforce it. Some may seem to go on and nothing ever comes of the breaking of it. When you have two married people and they divorce and both move on to new marriages and lives, then you can be assured that they reap greatly down the road and come to a regret over their choices. When you have two married people and one leaves and tries to divorce, does divorce, and the other one stands firm on the laws of God, you can be assured that God honors that one standing and enforces His law with the other. He calls for just one person to stand in the gap, just one as His word says, and then He will act and make His law stand firm. He has shown us that even in circumstances where no one stands in the gap, He brings one of those people back around to standing in the gap. It is not that God is not doing His part, it is that people are believing the lies of the enemy, are being disobedient and ignoring God, but you cannot ignore God forever. There is no spanking like a spanking from God to get your attention, and there is no escaping that no matter how far you try to run.
Kristie
