From another post #34
Brother: I am going to share something and so you may have to take it as a grain of salt. All I ask is that you take what I share by His grcae & by His help before that throne of grace for discernment.
No matter how much the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, therefore what is impossible with man, is possible with God.
Commitment is usually associated with more and more the religious striving of an individual in saying "I will" and winds up doing the best they can.
I have seen believers making this commitment to Christ and burning out because of it, in trying to follow Him by keeping that commitment the best they can.
Some christians testify that christianity doesn't work, and that they have tried "it".
This is all bearing witness that there is a huge difference between following Him by faith that He will help us to follow Him and making a commitment to follow Him by the flesh.
It took the Lord the longest time to help me see my doubleminded state when I was led by my church to make Jesus Lord of my life by making a commitment to Him in my high school years even though I was a believer long before that time. Little did I know I was hoodwinked in being foolish using my zeal & love for God like the Galatians in trying to finish by the flesh what was begun with the Spirit.
As if that commitment wasn't enough: in 1994, I had picked up a pamphlet from Bill Rudge Ministries that convicted me of the words of my mouth because I had picked up the habit of cussing out at the warehouse I was managing when no one esle was around to let off some steam. On the back of the pamphlet after reading scriptures that convicted me of the words of my mouth, I was led to make a covenant with my mouth for which I had applied not to cuss like that ever again out at the warehouse.
The very next day, I was worse than I ever was before. Thoughts in my head were accusing me of not being His, because if I was His, He would have helped me to keep my covenant. I had stopped listening to that train of negative thought or the devil, and just surrendered because I was at my wits ends so I had asked the Lord in prayer why He was not helping me. Then a small still voice spoke: not audible: but it came: :You made the covenant. You said you were going to do it. I made the Covenant with you and I said I am going to do it. All I ask from you is to believe in Me."
I was humbled that day, but the Lord had to still get His message through to me because I did not apply it to reprove the commitment to Christ that I have made, remade, and remade again, and still trying to do the best I can following Him.
I was at two Bible studies not held by my local church at that time. Both were praising the Promise Keepers program. One said it was about men keeping their promises to God and not to men, because they knew man could never be abloe to hold each other accountable because they can't always be available to accomplish that. The other said it was about making promises to men and not to God because they know the danger of making promises they cannot keep.
I did not go to that Promise Keeper convention held in Pittsburgh, but I knew it was about making promises to men & to God which was why I was using the "talent" God has given me to testify against the Promise Keepers program.
In one Bible study, a Catholic/Mason asked me "Isn't a commitment to Christ like a promise? Sure it is."
And that was when the Lord made it clear to me of my doubleminded state and had set me free from all yokes of bondages. He is helping me to be a true witness of Him by testifying of my faith, hope & trust in Him to help me live the christian life by enabling me to continue in His words to follow Him, thus I am living by faith in Him.
Now some would contend with me by saying that commitment means relationship, but from what your quote imply: there is alot of judging of the person's sincerity so I tend to believe commitment here as you are using it means "I will do it" or "She will do it".
So my question here is: was your wife living the christian life religiously? Did she not praise you for being a good husband and a good father? Did she give that credit to the Lord in your life? I do not think she did with all of that compliments flying your way. And yet in light of all of that compliments, did she in her zeal try to be a good wife and a good mother and thus feeling like a failure? Did she give up thinking of herself as a fraud and that she could no longer be around you because she cannot do it?
I do wonder if she had praised God for His work in your life that she would not have that same hope in God for working in her life, but instead, I see defeatism & the futlity of man and woman in the flesh.
Now I apply the commitment in your marriage to be the same as that commitment to Christ: a religious zeal that has burned her out, convinced her for being a fraud, convicted her of not being able to do it, converted her into believing that it is better to be honest with herself and not be around you because she is a failure of a wife and a mother because of it. She has been led to concede defeat & failure to accept her sinful fallen state as a broken vessel that cannot achieve what she seems to think you had achieved by keeping that commitment as a faithful husband & father religiously. In other words, she believes she does not belong.
When I was under that commitment to Christ, I was a deacon twice in my former church and I had quit twice because I felt like a fraud.
Maybe I am wrong to apply my failed religious apostate experiences with how she was trying to live her commitment to you in your marriage, but I share this with you in the hopes that God is ministering to you to discern and to see if she is going about the marriage in the wrong way as you are.
God has joined you together to be one flesh. Now as believers, we are joined to Christ as the bride to the Bridegroom.
All I ask is for you to ask her to stop trying to be religious about the commitment to the marriage to be as "good" as you in being a good wife and a good mother because you love her as God loves her as you are confident that He will finish His work in her as you are about Him finishing His work in you. Try to assure her of God's promise to you and to her that He will help us to be good parents and a good couple by faith in the Son of God in us so that she will stop looking at herself in doing the best she can and look to Him as her Good Shepherd to help her to follow Him by the grace of God & His help.
Needless to say, cussing does not have dominion over me any more. That does not mean I never say it, but it does not have dominion over me as I trust Him to lead me away from temptations & deliver me from the evil one because the power in living the christian life is by faith in the Son of God and not having any confidence in our flesh.
Psalm 19:12 Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. 13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. 14 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
So may God help you to relay a message of hope to her that in living the christian life, she would trust the Son, Jesus Christ, to do it now since she has admitted defeat.
May your marriage survive by faith in the Son of God as your walk with Him continues in the same since we have been reconciled by God through Jesus Christ by faith so that any good that comes in us & in our lives will also be a work of His grace through faith in Him so that our praise to Him would not be empty nor vain so that sinners may see our hope in Him and be converted and be saved, trusting Him to deliver them from their sins so that sin will no longer have dominion over their lives in following Him.
Oh, I'm going to be a PTA too!!