Healing is going to take a while. You need to give God
all the time He needs. First of all, give Him the time He needs to heal
you. Do not become impatient with yourself, just follow His directions and
let Him heal you from the inside out.
Give Him all the time He needs to work on your spouse.
Don’t become anxious and try to hurry things up a bit. Mark 4:26-29
talks about a growing seed. Read it now.
Realize that you are planting seeds of marriage healing.
You are sowing good seed to reap a good harvest. Galatians 6:7,9 (NIV)
says, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he
sows . . . Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time
we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
God has a timetable for the seed you have planted. It
will come to harvest when it is mature. Each crop has its own specific
timetable. Each marriage has its own timetable. Do not compare your
marriage to someone else’s. Do not try to harvest your crop before it is
ready. Do not demand that things come together before their time. God
knows how long it will take to heal your marriage. Leave it in His hands.
You will have well-meaning friends and counselors who
will feel that you have waited long enough. They will tell you that if
God was going to do something He would have done it by now. Stand firm on
what God has spoken to you. God gives the grace to go through something to
the one who is going through it, not to those who are watching. In 2
Corinthians 12:9, the Lord said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for
you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." God will not only
give you grace to face what you must, but He will also perfect His power
in your weakness.
Think of this healing time as a course of physical
therapy. When a human body has been injured, it has a tendency to become
"stiff" as it heals. The job of the physical therapist is to
force the body to move even when it doesn’t feel like it. It is painful
at times and usually not what the person would do on their own if they
were not forced to do it.
You have been wounded. Your marriage has been wounded.
Sometimes it seems easier to just stay where you are in your pain and wait
for it to go away. God has a plan for your healing, though, and that plan
is going to force you beyond what you would be willing to do on your own.
Through this time He is not just healing your marriage, He is also causing
growth within you at a rate that probably would not have been achieved without
the pain. There will be days when you just wish God would leave you alone
and let you just sit in your misery. Just like the skilled physical
therapist, however, God is going to help you to go beyond your own limits.
His plan is to bring a vibrant wholeness and health to your marriage that
will reflect His glory. He is not just doing this for you. He has a call
upon your lives together in this marriage and He plans to touch many
others through the two of you.
If you are standing for the healing of your marriage
just for yourself, there will be times when you will be more comfortable
just forgetting the whole thing. If, however, you realize there is a
greater purpose of God in all of this, you will have the strength and
courage to allow God to do what He needs to do even though it hurts.
The time that it took to stand for the healing of our
marriage seems very little now in comparison to the joy that God has
established in our lives. It seems He has truly redeemed the time and has
accomplished more in us and through us in the years since our
reconciliation than could have been accomplished had we not given Him
those years to heal. The fruit of the years of standing is much greater
than the time it took.
Today Michael truly is the godly man that the Lord spoke
of years ago. He is born-again, filled with the Spirit and on fire for
God. He is a preacher and teacher of the Word and has led many to the Lord
just as He said he would. The Lord has established us as a couple in a
ministry to marriages and we have watched Him touch thousands of lives
through us. God has begun expanding the ministry world-wide that more and
more couples might know of His love for them. What a waste it would have
been had we let Satan have this marriage.
God has a plan for the two of you also. You have been
given an assignment that is yours alone. The victory gained in your home
is going to minister to more people than you can imagine.
"Lord Jesus, I give you permission to do what You
need to do within me and within my life. I know it will sometimes be
painful, but I am willing to let You take me beyond my comfort zone. Mold
me, Lord, into Your image. Use me, Lord, for the glory of Your name.
And, Father, when our marriage is reconciled and healed,
use us as a mighty one-flesh team to take Your love and healing to others.
Give me vision now for that future plan. In Jesus’ Name. Amen."
Mike and Marilyn Phillipps are the founders and
directors of Nova Shalom Ministries International. Through weekly home
meetings, seminars, and church retreats Nova Shalom leadership couples
minister to thousands of marriages weekly across the United States and on
five other continents. Couples are taught the depth of covenant love and
given scriptural principles which will resurrect a dead marriage, heal a
wounded one, and cause a stable marriage to sky-rocket in Jesus.
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