Re: Any divorced or seperated spouses "standing" for marriage and prodigals?
I recently wrote this as a response to another stander's message, and received such insight from the Lord while writing it that I simply couldn't hold it back from everyone who is going through this experience. I hope the original recipient will forgive me for publicizing, for the sake of all us benefitting.
I can completely feel your heart through your message; I send you an *e-hug*.
I've been standing for about 6.5 years now (admittedly, I didn't even know what that was the first few years), and while I haven't yet experienced the elation of my prodigal's return to be able to truly share that experience with you, in a way I'm grateful that the Lord (via RMM, this chat room) clued me in on the realities of return first so I wouldn't be as shocked and crushed by a secondary leave as you've been dealing with. (You're not alone; the community of Standers will help hold you up.) Because it almost took my very life the first time (before I found RMM), so I know it would have truly taken me down the second time. When I first learned about that likelihood from Charlyne's daily email message, I was so horribly disappointed and even disillusioned; how is God perfect if His work is so easily falliable? Not lasting? If God knows how badly that can hurt us, why doesn't He wait until it really is finished? I don't entirely understand all the details of His reasoning yet, but I've only just recently come to understand the bigger picture of why He does it this way. The witness to others (such as the family members you mentioned) is one part, and our own growth is another part. But there's more! Hopefully I can explain it clearly enough in this post that you'll be able to share my excitement and gratitude to God. It's very much an "Oooooooooh, NOW I get it!!" moment.
Let me try to break it down into segments:
1) If you feel like the family that came to God then turned away is even partially a failure on your part to be a good representative or advertisement for God's trustworthiness, like your particular marriage/stand was an unfortunately poor example pulled out of the hat, you must know God is more than capable of managing His own reputation. See Ezekiel 39:25 "I jealously guard my holy reputation!" and Isaiah 48:11 "I will not let my reputation be tarnished." While He does care how we represent Him, He is not solely dependent upon us for His reputation. Afterall, others can't give you a bad reputation if your actions don't corroborate, right? Reputations can be impacted by others but not created by them, becasue they are inherently a personal creation. That means, just like you, God has to create His own reputation. So please don't put too much responsibility upon yourself. You HAVE been a great representative, and that's why those family members noticed! You were the John-the-Baptist figure announcing prior to the arrival of God's provision, right? You prepared the way. But it was not your job to be the Messiah. And even John questioned the turn of events later on, from his own prison, remember? "Are you it or should we look for another?" Things did not go the way anybody expected, but that doesn't mean God's plan was wrong. Their perspective was simply too limited in scope; they thought the story ended when Christ died.
Clearly, it didn't.
Your prodigal's weakness may have dinged God's reputation a bit in their eyes, but remember that God had a reputation for thousands of recorded years prior to that! If you hold up His written record to them (it will also be good for your faith), they will not be able to deny that the tides of battles may go to and fro, but when the war finally ends God has always decisively won! They may not right now, so you go through scripture and make a list of God's promises and deliveries, much like the way a baseball player's stats get listed for an overall batting average to be calculated. Then show them your list! "THIS is God's reputation. The battle for my marriage may not be in my favor in the moment, but the war for Godly marriage across the world is far from over! I'm not quitting when we still have soldiers on the field." Then, if you still need a little more punch, finish with one of my favorite quotes: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found lacking, it has been found difficult and left untried." (G.K. Chesterton)
Za-Zing!!
Improving your own reputation as a victorious believer, and representing His better in the process, is the subject of the next section.
2) I'm sure you're familiar with the "your own growth" part of God's purpose at this time, and if you're like me you probably have an Eyore-ic "yeah yeah" reaction because if you're not the one who screwed up the marriage, it will never feel fair that you have to do as much fixing of self. So maybe if I add a little more info to clarify the self-growth part, it would help make it more desireable for you. (And quick parenthetical here, remember that from here forward throughout eternity we're supposed to be working on our personal relationship with Christ anyway, so this personal growth into His image is never supposed to end even when are marriages are fixed. Most of us have to reprogram our mental expectations of life because we were reared to think once you achieved something in life it would always stay that way. Nothing does. Nothing. Whether things change because they're dying or they change because they're growing, nothing just cruises through eternity unchanged. There is no plateau of maintaining the status quo. That is a big fat lie we all have to gouge out of our minds and hearts. Furthermore, the motivation to find such a fantasy is ultimately laziness, is it not? Avoiding more work? Well life (with God) isn't supposed to be so hard in the first place, so if we get THAT fixed making a little effort won't seem so objectionable. All efforts will be made toward going forward, not just keeping up. The truth is we will be striving towards growth in Christ every day from here to forever. Once we each accept that as our Christian lifestyle, the rest gets easier to accept because it natually follows as a-part-of life, not in-addition-to our otherwise normal life.)
Okay, so back to the growth part you might actually want to do. In your message I feel your heart aching over why your husband left a second time, and your mind returning to comparisons of yourself to the other woman flabberghasted why she is even the least bit tempting to him. I have days like that, too. WHICH MEANS if you're not the only one thinking it, it cannot be about your loveability. Right? You don't know me, your husband's choices have nothing to do with my prodigal's choices, right? Our lives are separate. SO, the fact that we're experiencing the same symptoms means we're being attacked by the same thing. It's no different than calling a neighbor to ask if their power is out, too, or if it's just your house. If the whole neighborhood is without power, then you don't think there's anything wrong with your house, do you? Same thing here. We're all stumbling in the dark right now in our relationships because Satan has identified weak spots in our power grids and sabotaged us, taking away our power. We have to learn how to get it back and fortify better so it won't happen again. Perhaps you have a fence to protect your physical house, but do you maintain a spiritual fence to protect your spiritual household? In my own personal/ministerial journey I'm learning more about spiritual warfare--and WOW, is it fascinating! For decades I've lived so thoroughly frustrated and fed up that in today's corrupt world, good people can't seem to win. Even if you're super smart, talented, energetic, hard-working, logical, whatever--it's never enough to out-do the corrupt people who always seem to hold all the power. And, as we've both experienced, no matter what we say or how we plead, no matter how much sense it makes for our prodigals to stay with us, they got pulled away. Well, if we're going to operate solely in the world's system those are our only choices. But if we choose to operate in the Kingdom system, we have more--and better!--choices. Including using faith and proclamation of the Word as very powerful weapons. From a worldly point of view it sounds too easy to be effective, but from a Kingdom point of view it makes total sense. After all, God created the Earth and everything else by speaking, not by sweaty labor or logical arguements.
When you start looking at your scripture with the "reading glasses" of physical realm AND spiritual realm, you'll start to notice a lot of things you probably glossed over before (like I did). Like the way the Israelite army took Jericho by marching around it, then shouting; or Elijah opening the eyes of his servant to see the chariots of fire before the battle, or the way Daniel helped pray the Israelites out of Babylonian captivity--and when the archangel Michael showed up, they got decisive victory. These battles were not won in the physical, by typical actions. (I mean, really: shouting at a wall? That's ridiculous.) They were won in the spiritual realm, by acts of faith on the part of people and response to that faith on the part of God and angels. Again with Jesus and healing or dead-raising miracles; how many times did He say a person was healed or a thing was done because of the asker's faith? And finally in Paul's letters, where he tells us straight out that our warfare is not against other people but against the powers of darkness, and that we have armour and weapons given to us for that purpose. Most Christians, myself included, have weak spots in our grids because we are either ignorant of what's going on in the spiritual realm (God said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge!") or we choose to ignore it because we don't want to believe the scripture and therefore take on the responsibility of acting accordingly. Paul told us, and Jesus told us, that we would have to fight in this life but that we were given the advantage and the assurance of victory. (Ever wonder why such a big portion of the O.T. is a seemingly never-ending narrative of wars? It just seems like boring history until you realize God put that in our Handbook of Life to help us fight our own battles!)
"Standing" doesn't mean simply "outlasting." And as one of my favorite teachers recently taught, "patience" does not mean "putting up with." So when you hear people say one of God's reasons for making us go through this is for our own personal growth, it doesn't just mean that we come to appreciate God more or go to church more often. It isn't just a test to see how long we can tolerate the grief and pain. I mean, yes attendance and stamina is growth but it's not enough to warrant all this suffering, is it? A loving Father wouldn't make us go through all THIS just for that. If He deems this much agony worthwhile, the "prize" of personal growth oughtta be HUGE. And it is! It IS!! "Standing" is short for "fighting a battle and being the last one standing." (Draw a picture to remind yourself: draw a soldier standing in the middle of the battlefield, the bodies of dead opponents lying all around. S/He may be injured and wearied, but the last one standing and therefore the winner. War isn't a game; you don't play until the clock runs out. War has always, and will always, be fought till the death.) For us to be Standers, we have to go through some fighting and be the last ones standing. Not fighting with our prodigals but against the Dark Forces who snatched them away as prisoners of war. Our prodigals were snatched! They are prisoners! Do you blame a soldier for being taken prisoner or do you go in after him? I am NOT going to let the Enemy take my man from me! Ooooh No! But I AM going to fight dirty by being as sneaky and under-the-radar as I can be. (And realize this: fighting spriritual war can be dangerous but we are less likely to break a nail than in physical warfare. So when we win, we still have a shot at looking our best. And that does matter to us, doesn't it?)
To be victorious in any war you need to know about your Enemy so you can plan a good battle strategy. You also need to account for which armor and weapons you have at your disposal so you know what your options are. You have to consider where your enemy may be stronger than you, both your offensive strength and defensive strength. You have to use the right tactics at the right times to maximize their impact, you may need other people's help to man multiple fronts at once or to utilize their strengths you don't have. Maybe one of you is like the airforce and another the army, or a third the navy. And you have to be well-organized so you don't shoot yourself in the foot or each other. These principles apply to any war in any realm, which means you can (and I think should) apply them to the War on Marriage to accelerate and improve your victory. Yes, we are waiting on God to do a good work in the hearts and lives of our prodigals and bring them home. But we are not helpless bystanders! We are Rosie the Riveter! We commit to the War Effort, too, at the home front! Like Jericho and all the stories of the O.T., God is your Commander in Chief so you must obey His orders on when, where, and how to fight. He's the only one with wide enough perspective to see beyond the mountains of space and time to make truly wise battle plans.
Initially I was just so relieved and excited to learn there was another and better way to fight than all the tactics I used to try, but here's why I got really excited and hope you will, too: once you learn how to be a valiant soldier in the War on Marriage, you're equipped to apply that skill to any battle on any front at any time in your whole life! In fact, when you get good at occupying and holding ground in your own life and household, you can start to fight for others, too! Like a superhero, you can help others in need. THIS is why God is allowing us to go through this agonizing period in our lives instead of just zapping Satan and getting it over with. Your personal growth is not about mere church attendance or learning to be the best wife you can be. That's not a God-sized idea. God wants you to "be ALL that you can be" by joining His army! You've been hand selected into His exclusive Special Forces to help bring about His Kingdom rule over all the earth and make His reputation as shining as it could possibly be! Don't you see, your marriage problems aren't ruining His reputation, you're just in the early stages of becoming one who will make it undeniable! Don't give up, new recruit, keep training! Who could possibly keep you more motivated than the trophies of God and your husband!
C'mon, Friend, let's "Occupy Marriage" and "Occupy Everything"!
Also God showed me this website when I started my stand that has been very helpful, if you are having marriage problems, seperated, divorced, or even have a prodigal kid out there you should check it out. 