“Help! My marriage is not working”
“What if I had a marriage that didn’t start out with God at the centre?
What if I wasn’t born again before I got married? Is that the end of me? Is there a way I can get my marriage “born again?” Is there a marriage reset button I can press?”
Yes there is!
Image source from fotosearch.com
As much as one will like to say that such marriages started on the wrong foot, the good news is that there is nothing that is beyond the grace of God and His power to save. Your marriage can be saved. It can be sanctified even if one party is not born again.
God respects your choices. So if you chose a spouse without heaven’s approval or because you were going to have a child out of wedlock, God respects the choice and will do all He can to bless you and bring your family into the experience of salvation. With God there is nothing like a hopeless marriage.
Bathsheba was already married to Uriah. She got pregnant for David out of wedlock. David even went on to plot the death of her husband. The other queens and society made her realize how much of a cheap husband snatcher she was. But it didn’t matter. David prayed. God intervened. She became the lineage of royalty ahead of all the other wives that started right. Because she negotiated and defined the purpose of her marriage.
Esther is usually held out as the role model for Christian girls. The bible version is significantly different. Yes she was a virgin – but all the girls that were shortlisted for the king were also virgins. Their “beauty contest” was to sleep one night with the king and if they are able to please his lordship in bed he will consider marriage. Each girl had to be disvirgined by the king and because they have slept with the king they are not permitted to sleep with any other man. But the king can only have one queen – so the rest will serve as concubines.
That was Esther’s lot. She found her virginity taken away by a lustful, power hungry king before marriage. It was against Jehovah’s laws. It was a bad start marriage and she was not happy in her home. It was a marriage where she was not even permitted to see her husband when she desired. She risked it at the pain of death. That is not a pleasant marriage. But Esther prayed and God stepped in and gave her favour.
But that is not the point I want to draw your attention to. I want you to see that the marriage was hell for Esther until she was able to see the PURPOSE through Mordecai’s insightful words – “If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” Esther 4:14 (NLT)
If you really want to reset your marriage and get the best out of it, all you need to do is find the purpose why you got married. If you can’t find one, sit down with your spouse and invent one. God will honour your choice and you will find a new dimension of peace and love in your home.
Nothing can give you peace in your home like a clearly defined marital purpose.
I encourage you to read 1 Corinthians 7 and pay close attention to Verses 12- 17. It addresses the issue of bad marriages – unequally yoked marriages.
And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life. Don’t think I’m being harder on you than on the others. I give this same counsel in all the churches. 1 Cor 7:17 (MSG)
