submission and adapting

Fresh Manna
by Pastor Tim Burt

As a Pastor, I was asked to give spiritual guidance for marriage to struggling couples countless times. Sometimes, I’d have both the husband and wife wanting to make things work. That is the best-case scenario with the best potential for success. Other times, I’d have a husband who wanted to fight for his marriage, but his wife didn’t. Or a wife that wanted to fight for her marriage but the husband didn’t. These marriages are complicated to help. In any case, I felt obligated by the Word of God to point couples to Jesus, to His Word, and to believe for a miracle of resurrected love that can only come when hearts are open to learn and be corrected by God’s Word.

The Word of God doesn’t give me permission to say, Just hang it up—you two will never make it. Only in cases of infidelity, abuse, or when one person is married to an unbeliever does God show allowance for divorce in His Word, and even then, He desires for the husband and wife to submit themselves to Himself and His Word so that restoration of their marriage can happen. (And by the way, this is not to judge or condemn anyone who is remarried or who has been divorced. Let’s look forward—not back!)

I have never hidden the fact that Renee and I had problems in the first few years of our marriage. We were passionately in love yet plagued by immaturity. We were stubborn and selfish and had slightly delusional ideas of how marriage was supposed to work as we entered marriage. Most everyone thinks they can figure out how to be married. They think love will conquer all—that is, until they face a brutal awakening.

There were times when each of us would occasionally be haunted by the thought that we might not make it. We didn’t say it out loud to each other, but later we confessed that it was a thought we each had to cast out of our thinking! We hated the thought. We wanted our marriage to work, but those kinds of thoughts do come when you feel like your feelings of love for each other have become faint to non-existent. So what kept us fighting for our marriage?

Being Christians, we didn’t want our marriage to fail. What kind of testimony to God’s love and power is that? Failure only represented our unwillingness to submit to God and each other! We didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment. We didn’t want to be failures. We didn’t want to be viewed as phonies and hypocrites. Those were all poor reasons for wanting to have a good marriage and yet I am glad they were there. Good or bad, they helped us hang in there.

There were also good and important reasons that we couldn’t quit. First, we knew it was not God’s will. We believed there had to be a way to turn it around. We believed and had faith in that. Secondly, strange as it may sound, amid the turmoil, we knew we loved each other even if we created moments that doused those feelings. Until those feelings were resurrected, we had to live out of the commitment that comes with love. We knew love was deeper and more than just elusive feelings that come and go. Third, we’ve truly believed God always has the answers you need if you will seek Him. He always has His hand of help extended and not just willing but desiring to help you get it right! Always! The question was, were we willing to humble ourselves and seek Him in whatever way it took to get the answers and help from Him to turn it around? We were! We both loved God. We were both determined not to let Satan eat our lunch. We were both determined to fulfill God’s will. And so we fought for it harder than we fought each other!

I sought the Lord, often asking Him to change me and help me do whatever it took to turn our marriage around. In the middle of marriage troubles, it almost always feels like your spouse is the problem. I went to the Lord, not asking Him to change her but to help me change. To do that, I had to create time to spend in prayer and God’s Word. Honestly, most people aren’t willing to pay this kind of price. But the price to co-exist unhappily is higher than the price to seek God for the answers and strength to change what needs to be changed. I prayed. I read the Bible. I read marriage books. I prayed more. I prayed for the strength to make changes in my attitude, responses, and behavior! And maybe most important but scary of all, I asked her what she’d like me to change. She did the same. (I can’t tell you how scary that question is and how defensive you can get when your spouse’s answer comes.)

God opened each of our eyes to look at things that bothered each other with a new and fresh perspective. He helped me be more patient and kind in my temperament. He helped me to value the good I saw in Renee and overlook the little quirks she had. I had them too! We all do! He helped me in ways that I don’t have words for. And as we worked hard at all this, the Lord restored our love for each other. Within a couple of years of being newlyweds, with God’s help, we were able to change and mature inwardly and watch our marriage mature. Our marriage got better every year. We now have an awesome marriage, and we have matured in our love in more ways than I can describe. It makes me so thankful to God.

The Word of God can be so powerful and alive! In John 14:26, the Holy Spirit is called “the Counselor who will teach us in ALL things.” Think about that. He is the Counselor. In other words, the advice, the wisdom, the help, the perfect counsel from the one who is ALL KNOWING is available to those who seek Him! That is why we could not quit. God honored that, and the result is we have the marriage we dreamed of when it was the marriage we toyed with throwing away.

I’ve learned that I can’t make anyone believe God when He says, “All things are possible to Him who believes,” but I know it’s true, and I do believe it! That’s all I can do and all I can share with others. They have to come to that conclusion by seeking Him themselves and asking God to renew their hope and move forward from there. The true spiritual guidance any of us need for any area of our life is present within us if we have Jesus as our Lord and the Holy Spirit as our Counselor!

Mark 10:7-9 NIV “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

In His love,
Pastor Tim Burt

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