After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid Abram, I am your shield your very great reward.”
Genesis 15:1
Dear Husband,
I saw you today in a way I have never seen before. You have always been strong, protecting yourself, defending yourself. You’ve spent your life making up for what your mother and father never let you have as a child. The right to have boundaries, the right to feel, the right to be loved.
My heart broke as I watched yours break in the hours leading up to your fathers passing. How could this be what God had intended for you? How could He call you to stay and not go to see him go? Abram. I let you leave with your anger into to the open fields where there was nothing but you , the planted grain and God. I prayed for you in our silent kitchen harder than I ever prayed for you before. Hannah That the Spirit in you would prevail as the flesh was denied. I fought for our home as you wrestled with God like Jacob, just another James, never letting go until He showed up for you.
And so He is. Your true Father fights the battles that you cannot see. He fights the real enemy that wants to devour you with grief and with regret. There was nothing you could do beloved. You cannot make someone love you, choose you. But someone chooses you now and is faithful to you because your faithful to Him. David. Because you choose Him, He will greatly restore all that you have lost. Job. The walls have crashed and He is now building something new in you.
Can you see us there with you? Small hands passing bricks to place on the rock foundation, me clearing out the rubble and passing the new wood for our walls. Building a whole new house of faith as a family that will last into eternity. Despite our parentage, despite our history, we have overcome and now we walk into something we never would have without the God of our youth. Though we have lost much we have gained so much more. Pressed down shaken over for He is our Great Reward.
What do you do with relationships that are estranged? Will there be reconciliation? Will there ever be peace between you? What can you do when you have hurt another sister or brother in Christ? Can they forgive you? Can you forgive them? I have had my share of those situations. I look back and see how much I have changed even in the pain of it all. Walking through that fire I have learned something so profound. These situations are never easy. It takes the directing of the Holy Spirit for reconciliation. And it takes forgiveness and change in order to grow in any relationship. Some relationship doors close forever and sometimes you know right away what relationships those are. Some never close and you grow together even in pain, despite the past. Those are the refining moments for a better future. At the end of the day only the Lord can tell you what He wants for the both of you or all of you. Because He loves you all and knows what you need to grow closer to Him and become who He has made you to be.
Let them Speak, Let them Walk
If anyone has something to say
Let them come
Let them speak
Maybe we can change
Maybe we can grow
Let me ask for forgiveness
Let us seek truth
Hope in the Future
Hope in the tomorrow
Let there be better days
Let love overcome pain
If anyone refuses the Light
Let them walk
Let the door close
There can be peace
There can be rest
Let me let them go
Let me forgive and move on
Hope in the King
Hope in a better me
Let there be freedom
Let love remain in me
May God be with you in every area of your life. May His voice guide every relationship in your present and the future. Seek His truth. There is nothing too hard for Him to do. No matter your pain, confusion, anger or guilt there is and will be healing in Him. He will restore and He will make all things New.
I want to share with you a few paragraphs from the book ‘The Marriage Builder” I think It’s important to put these before I move on and show you the example of these truths in my own marriage and what God has done with us in knowing them.
“In explaining Spirit Oneness, my primary focus is on each partners individual relationship with God and how that spiritual relationship reaches into a person’s needs for security and significance.
“..if the foundation of Spirit Oneness is mutual dependence on the Lord for personal needs, then the foundation of Soul Oneness is a mutual commitment to minister to one another’s personal needs.”
Although my husband and I are not responsible to supply things to each other to make us feel significant or make us feel secure, we do have a responsibility to each other in helping one another by giving and ministering to each other the love of Christ.
A few years after my marriage and before this book came across my path the Lord spoke to me about who Eve was. He said to me “Eve was not created for the pleasure of Adam. She was not created to fill voids in Adams life. She was not created to be his servant. She was not created to change Adam or to help him in His relationship with God. Or make him a better man. She was created to be apart of Adam. To uplift Adam. To help him. To support him. To partner with him. To create with him. To walk with him all the days of his life.”
I could understand this only to a small degree. The Lord was showing me that as I women and a wife you are not your husband’s keeper and he is not yours. But for the first time ever I understood who I was as his wife. When we started reading this book I understood even more. That in order to be one with my husband I must minister to him as his wife. Not worship him, not even submit to him, but to minister to him. What would that look like?
My husband works in the world sometimes all day. There are times he comes home more spiritually exhausted than physically or mentally. As soon as I notice it I make sure I remind him of what our Father has told us. Where He is taking us and what the word says about un-godly people. I am ready at anytime ready to minister truth to my husbands weary heart.
Sometimes my husband struggles with insecurity. He has dreams that God has placed in his heart and he sometimes feels inadequate to do them or feels like he wants to give up. I am ready to sow love and encouragement in him. Reminding him that God is the author and finisher of our lives and that His will for him will come to pass in His timing. To keep the faith and know that it will be through Him that theses things are accomplished. I always want my husband to know how proud I am of him and how far he’s gotten. I point out how much he has already done and the progress he has already made, proof of God’s provision and will.
To be one with our spouses we must be ready to minister to them even when we are not happy with one another. This is by far the hardest part of soul oneness. When things are not going well it is easy to leave ministry and step into manipulation. All of a sudden when your feelings are crushed you withdraw and refuse to speak to your spouse until you get an apology. You withhold sex from him or her because your don’t like how they have been treating you recently,.You put them in the “dog house” and send them to the couch to sleep. You refuse to allow them back in your bed until they are ready to comply. You withhold telling the truth about your feelings afraid of being hurt and let down.
All of these things are manipulation tactics. But we don’t see them that way because the world has taught us it is normal, acceptable or okay. And while its okay once again to draw boundaries, we are not to use the law of boundaries to control or punish one another. God calls us to be of the Word and not of the World. He call us to love like Christ loves the Church and to respect and honor each other. Nothing against Paul but these two scriptures in Ephesians should go for both sexes and not just penned to the individual ones:
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
One day while we were heading out to go shopping I was highly upset with my husband. To control my reactions I become very silent. I shut my mouth when I’m hurting because I am a feisty little women and my mouth gets me into trouble. As I was praying on the way to the mall asking God to heal my heart and forgive me, the Lord spoke to me when I asked Him what to do about the situation. He said “Love as Christ loves the Church” He said it to my 5 times. So I looked over at my husband and apologized and forgave him as well. I chucked what he did as far as the east was from the west and moved on. This is the art of ministry in our marriages that creates Soul Oneness.
The more you sow into Soul oneness with your spouse the more your hearts will change toward one another. You may be the only one doing the sowing but remember that every seed will come to life. But what seed are you sowing? The law of sowing in reaping is inevitable. So try to start habits of sowing through ministry and not manipulation. Of course there is SO much more in the book, so again I will put it down below. Share with other couples you know even if they aren’t struggling. We all need these truths in our marriages and it’s best to know them now than too late.
At the age of 23 years old I walked down the aisle for the second time. For two and a half years I prepared myself to become a wife for the first time. In my last marriage I never got a chance to be a wife. I was too busy being the wife and the husband. I had to lead my marriage and our lives which was not the will of God. But my husband refused to have a relationship with God and lead our marriage. When your out of alignment in your marriage all heck breaks loose. Eventually came infidelity on my part and then divorce later.
I read so many marriage books, searched the Word of God, worked on my heart with the Lord and sought out advice from older married women. But talking to them only confused me more when I was hoping for wisdom. I picked up Joyce Meyers book on marriage and for months I cuddled up on my couch devouring and highlighting every sentence that I felt spoke to me. I was on a mission to preparing myself to becoming a wife by doing pre martial counseling, growing closer to God, and seeking wisdom. But even after all of that I still years later had no idea what I was doing and was afraid I had once again failed.
One day my husband and I met up for lunch on his lunch break. Our daughter loved any chance she got to see him randomly in the middle of the day. We got into an argument over something stupid and that led to harsh words and my heart breaking for the first time in our marriage. As I was driving home listening to Air1 radio a song came on reminding me that when God ordains something He has a will and plan for it. In His time and in His way He takes care of it. I began to weep. So loudly I am sure the people who were driving next to me could hear me through my rolled down window but I didn’t care. I felt like my whole world was falling apart. I said out loud through my choking tears “Lord I do not know what you’re going to do but I trust you know better than me. And you have a plan.” I was barely married and the year-long honeymoon phase passed so quickly. I was trying so hard to be a good wife and mother. But I felt utterly useless. I didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes.
I knew that my now husband was my soul mate sent from God. After I surrendered fully to Him and letting Him become my focus I met my husband 6 months later at two months before my 21st birthday. But a year after we married, I had caught religion and I had forgotten who brought me to this marriage and who sent me to where I am. Because that’s what religion does. It traps you into forgetting the truth and you start accepting what is false about God. But in that moment, in my weakness, my will power failed me and I broke submitting myself to God seeking Him for truth. After asking ministers at the church I was attending to help us and counsel us only to be ignored and told no, I broke down and prayed again. I remember saying “Lord. You have given me the greatest counselor. If I cannot find anyone to counsel my husband and I will you please lead us to something that your Holy Spirit can counsel us in?” After all God knows our inner most thoughts and He created our hearts of Flesh.
Days later my husband comes home after his second job, walks straight into our room and loudly says “You need to get this book. It’s called The Marriage Builder. I was just listening to Focus on the Family on Star and they were talking about this book and I heard God tell me to get it!” I looked at him so surprised but instantly felt revelation spring forth in my heart. My husband had no idea I prayed that prayer but I knew that was God answering it through him. So the very next day I ordered two books offline and we began reading it as soon as it came. I want to share with you the one truth in that book that changed my marriage forever and made a huge difference in how we see each other today.
Spirit Oneness
Spirit oneness is normally confused with soul oneness. For a long time people, even me, have heard that we are one in the spirit with out spouses. But that is not so. We connect with our spouses in spiritual ways but we cannot be one in the spirit with them. Spiritual oneness is only for you and God. When you are one with God spiritually you understand that all of your needs are met by Him. You are loved and can love because He loves you. And no matter what your spouse does or how he or she is towards you, you can have peace and rest in the fact that God sees you and knows what you need. He can supply your every need, emotionally, physically and spiritually even when your spouse cannot.
Feeling alone in your marriage? God promises to be there for you even if it’s two in the morning. Feeling let down and overlooked by your spouse? God sees all that you do and is your biggest cheerleader. If you listen He will tell you how proud He is of you and give you that sense of achievement. Feeling lack of intimacy in your marriage? Intimacy with God is the greater than any you will ever get from your spouse. Intimacy is not sex. Sex is just a product of intimacy which I would love to share with you also in a later post.
The reason why I had to understand this important truth was because when my needs as a wife or a person in general were not being met I would go into a pit of despair, anxiety, depression, and even resent my husband. We would fight like cats and dogs because anger would rise up in me when I felt disrespected and I would lash out in vengeance. When the lack of intimacy in my marriage was in my face evident, I would get depressed and withdraw from my husband and even sometimes my friends. When my husband would not see the hard work I did in the home and would honestly sometimes be insensitive, I would have anxiety attacks and would sometimes even attack him.
But when I understood this truth of spirit oneness with God, every time I felt let down, overlooked or disrespected by my husband I would run to my daddy. Under His pinions I would say “Father. My heart is hurting. Because Jim was so rude to me today. I reacted horribly though. Please heal my heart, help me forgive him, and help me to be a better wife.” Sometimes I would literally run right in the middle of an argument out of the room and into the safety of prayer. I ran to the nearest place I could be alone. On my porch in the summers, in my bathroom and bedroom in the winter and at night on the couch in my living room.
I sowed into my spiritual oneness with my Father by doing that. The more I did that the less I expected of my husband and the less I lashed out when I felt hurt. Now I truly could write a book about this very subject. That is why I had to break this up in two separate posts. Because on the other hand, we do have to understand what our boundaries and that is it just fine to defend those boundaries when our spouses are not respecting them. But both go hand in hand. We need to let go of high expectations of our spouses but also be able to stand up for ourselves correctly when hurt.
I would always tell my husband when he was being rude or not respecting my boundaries. But when I understood my husband’s lack of love and acceptance or attention does define if I am truly loved, accepted and seen, I was able to escape the trap of anxiety, depression and despair. And then I was able to forgive and move on truly never hoarding resentment towards him.
This helped my husband as well. But like me we are both still growing in this. We are always being met somewhere down the line with something we have to let go of and rely on God for. Or something in us that we need to change so that we are ministering spouses and not manipulating ones. When you grow up in an abusive home like we both did, your sense of boundaries and identity is messed up or none existent. That was something we had to both come to understand as well.
Check out the book if you can. There is even more than what I wrote about. It truly is a blessing to us we are actually still reading through it 3 years later. Yeah…. each chapter forced some serious issues out of us both that we had to give time to mature in before we moved on! I will write about Soul oneness in the next post.
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