Eleven days ago my husband gave me a bouquet of flowers for our 33rd wedding anniversary. This morning they still look wonderful. I remarked to him “just like our love they refuse to die.” He smiled. Things were not always so sweet between us. There was a time when the primary emotion I felt from him was rejection. The primary one he felt from me was anger.
Our problems were huge and too many to recount here but did you know that the Bible has a “love potion”? It’s not a magic potion but it never fails. It’s formula is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (N.I.V.) God used that scripture we so often hear at weddings to heal my marriage.
The focus of my prayer life at that time was on God changing Ray. I was tired of the way he treated me. I was sick of the rejection and the disrespect. I wanted out but knew how God felt about divorce. My minister told me the three options when in a bad marriage: Divorce, learn to live with it or change your bad marriage into a good one. I opted for change. Unfortunately I just wanted Ray to change because I was really a good wife (or so I thought).
One day I was praying after a particularly difficult day. I knew God loved me so I said something like this “Daddy God to you see how he’s treating your little girl? Your Word says You’ll contend with those who contend with me (Psalm 35:1) so contend with him, Lord. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Then a scripture reference came to my mind. It was 1 Corinthians 13. At the time I didn’t know what that was so I got my Bible. When I read it I thought. Yes! That’s how I want to be loved but God impressed upon me that I was to love Ray that way. Just like Moses after his call to Egypt I argued with God that I just couldn’t do that. But He had more to teach me. I happened upon 1 John 4:20 “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar” (NIV). Did I hate Ray? Some times I did, sometimes I just didn’t like him. But I sure didn’t love him the way God wanted me to. So I determined in my heart to obey what God had revealed to me and love Ray with 1 Corinthians 13 love. It was hard to do that. I discovered I was not the good wife I thought I was when measured against the Word of God. Many times I would go to God complaining about how Ray was treating me and many times I felt God directing me back to 1 Corinthians 13 and asking “do you love Ray like that, yet?” The irony is that the more I loved him that way, the more he loved me that way. It was a long and difficult struggle and many times I wanted to quit but I am so glad I didn’t. The last thirteen years have been so different from the first twenty. The love and respect we share now is evidence of what God can do when we obey his Word.
We serve a God of second chances, a God who delights in taking a marriage like a caterpillar and transforming it into a butterfly. Are you in a difficult place in your marriage? God can transform it – I know because “I’ve been there, done that” and I have a beautiful bouquet of flowers as evidence.
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