Sacred Influence (6 page)
Painful Perseverance
The reason it’s so important for you to concentrate on your own growth is so that you can avoid the sin of pride, which constantly tempts us to focus on changing our spouses while neglecting our own weaknesses. Jesus warned against this with startlingly strong words: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Luke 6:41 – 42).
Making over your marriage
begins with you
. For me to suggest anything else would be to deny everything I’ve ever written. I’m not saying it’s wrong to desire more from your husband. I’m not denying that you might enjoy your marriage more if your husband would drop some bad habits and pay more attention to you. I
am
saying that if you use this book to focus on changing your husband in such a way that you neglect to grow yourself, all I’ve done is inspire another Pharisee, not the godly woman God seeks.
Let’s agree to keep this perspective in mind throughout the book.
How is God using the reality of living with an imperfect man to teach you how to grow in patience and understanding? How is God using your marriage to an irritable man to teach you how to love angry people? How is God using your husband’s sexual desires, your husband’s vocational insecurities, or perhaps your husband’s lack of social skills to teach you how to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him?
How is he using your marriage to teach you how to love?
When you find yourself in a difficult marriage, or in a basically good marriage with one particular issue that grates on you, you can be sure that God wants to mature you as you face this problem
with
strength
,
courage
,
dignity
,
and biblical wisdom
. God could, of course, speak the word and your problem would be solved — voilà! But that’s not how God usually works. He allows us to face issues that may terrify us and make us feel completely inadequate — he may even walk us through our deepest fears — so that we can grow in him.
The Bible is adamant about this. Spiritual growth takes place by persevering through difficult times:
“We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:3 – 5).
Most of us will never confront the physical persecution these verses were directly addressing, but we do face spiritual and relational trials with the same effect. God can use your marriage to make you a stronger, wiser, and more complete woman — provided you don’t run from the challenges that being married to your husband represents.
The Equation of Change
Your marriage isn’t just a number on a scale of 1 to 10; it’s a mathematical equation:
x
+
y
=
z
. Your husband may be the
x
— a number you absolutely can’t change. But if you change the
y
(that’s you), you influence the overall result of your marriage:
x
+ 2
y
=
q
. That’s at once both the beauty (change is always possible, even if only unilaterally) and the frustration (the nature of that change is limited and not guaranteed) of human relationships. It’s also why this book focuses on how a woman can
influence
a man, not on how a woman can
change
a man.
It is entirely natural and healthy to dream big things for your husband, but that’s very different from selfishly
demanding
those things.
3
When you dream something in a positive way, you offer yourself to God as an instrument of love, change, and spiritual transformation. When you demand that someone change for your sake, you’re literally trying to bend the world around your comfort, your needs, and your happiness. That’s pride, arrogance, and self-centeredness — and God will never bless
that
.
So let’s lay out our expectations right at the outset. What do you dream for your man? Maybe you want your husband to stop drinking, to pay more attention to the kids, to pray with you, or to read with you. Or perhaps you want him to stop giving free rein to his temper, to quit looking at pornography, or to be more of a spiritual leader. Chances are pretty good you want your husband to be more relationally aware and involved.
These are good dreams! Any man would get a tremendous blessing if just one of them were to come to pass. But please keep this in mind: your eternal standing before God does
not
depend on the success of any of these endeavors.
The good news is that you and God are in this together. He knew, even before he created you, who you’d marry. And he will continue to give you the tools you need to become the person he’s called you to be and to do the work he’s created you to do within your current relationship. God would
never
leave you alone in any situation: “He will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6). Even if you married a non-Christian, God’s grace is sufficient for you. You cannot dig a hole so deep that it cuts you off from God’s provision, care, and life-giving strength. Yes, our choices may result in unpleasant consequences, but even then, God helps us to endure.
That’s the message I want to communicate: you and God are in this together, and he’s beginning your marriage makeover
with you
. Let him transform you as you seek to move your husband. While you may never achieve the results you have in mind, you can — without question — change the equation of your marriage by remodeling yourself. It begins with understanding, perhaps for the first time, the glory of being a godly woman and acting with the strength of a godly woman who understands she was created in the image of God, forgiven of her sins through the work of Jesus Christ, and gifted and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to live the life God has called her to live.
You may have picked up this book simply to find out how you can motivate or even transform your husband. I’m here to tell you that as noble as this cause may be, it’s too small for you. God made you to remake
the world
. Your home is where it starts. By courageously facing up to the challenges that every marriage faces, and by letting God change
you
in the process, something wonderful takes place — the formation of a new woman, fully alive to God, who can take the lessons she learns at home and apply them everywhere else.
“We can’t guarantee success in this war, but we can do something better. We can deserve it.”
Part 2: Creating the Climate
for Change
Chapter 4: The Widow at
Zarephath
Understanding a Man’s Deepest Thirst
W
as there ever a more desperate woman? In a land laid waste by famine, with no food anywhere, the mother looked at the remaining flour and oil and realized she had enough for one last meal.
This scene played out nearly three thousand years ago, long before supermarkets overflowed with food and before convenience stores and fast-food restaurants on every street corner promised quick remedies for growling stomachs. Back then, during a famine and drought, no food meant, literally,
no food
. Every apple had been picked; every potato had been dug up. Even the bark had been stripped off the trees. Anything that could possibly be consumed had been, leaving death as the last certainty.
Imagine you are this widow. You’ve endured the trauma of watching your husband die — and now you face the awful prospect of watching your son slowly waste away from starvation.
Just then, a strange man enters your life, claiming to be God’s prophet. He asks you to make him a meal. When you reply that you’re running out of flour and oil, with just enough to make one last meal for you and your son, he assures you that if you’ll bake him the last loaf, your jar of flour will never run out and your jug of oil will never run dry.
What do you have to lose? So you do what he says and then watch in amazement as his words prove true. For months on end, that tiny pile of flour and that small jug of oil continue to replenish themselves. At first, you opened that jar and jug with great trepidation. You wanted to believe you were living a miracle, but your mind fought the idea all the way: “Maybe the flour was just stuck to the sides of the jar; maybe the oil likewise just ran down the sides and gathered at the bottom — ” Gradually, after a few days, you realize that only one explanation makes sense: God is miraculously providing for you through this prophet named Elijah. No natural phenomenon can explain what you’re experiencing.
Over time, you’re no longer surprised when you open up the jar and the jug. In fact, though it goes against all reason, you would be more surprised if those receptacles were empty than full. The replenishing has happened so often that it no longer seems like a miracle. It’s just the way things are.
But then tragedy strikes and shakes you from your complacency.
Your son becomes seriously ill from a disease that bears no connection to hunger. After a painful battle, he succumbs to the sickness and dies.
Now you are furious with the man of God who has kept you from starvation. What good did it do you to be spared an early death from hunger, only to watch your son die from disease? You confront Elijah and tell him exactly what you think of him and how you wish you had never laid eyes on him.
Elijah takes your son into a back room, out of your sight. A short while later, you can’t believe your eyes — your once-dead son walks straight into your arms! You’ve never felt joy like this — and in a spontaneous gush of praise, you cry out, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth” (1 Kings 17:24).
Suddenly it gets very quiet. You realize you’ve just insulted the man who saved your son.
Now
you know that he is a man of God and that God speaks through him? Only
now
you believe him? What have you been eating for the last several months? From where do you think that flour kept coming? Who told you, against all reason, that the oil would keep flowing? And yet, still, it takes
this
for you to believe his words?