I wanted to share this amazing sermon preached by Joseph Solomon.
So good. Thank you so much for this! God has called me to a season of singleness. Truthfully, near the end of our marriage, I was angry and bitter. I didn’t understand why God was allowing this to fall apart when I had worked so hard to keep it together.
I know ultimately, God has made promises that my marriage will be restored and that will happen when God has become intimate with my husband, but I really don’t know how to be a wife. I’m just laying that bare. I don’t know how to be a wife, because I have not been the wife that my husband has needed. I lived in my sin nature for so long, because I thought that was the wife he wanted. What he truly needs though is a wife that sanctifies him. I have gone about that by being critical, judgemental, and condemning. Not convicting him when he needed that conviction. Not encouraging him, when he needed that encouragement. And not allowing God to be the lead in our home.
I know that when God does find my husband in the world, take him by the hand, and put him back on the Rock, that I won’t be there. My calling right now is to be single. To learn how to be a woman of God. To learn how to be a good wife that my someday husband will need. But right now, I am not the wife that I need to be. This singleness is such a blessing. It is going to give me the time to grow in Christ. To be the woman that God has called me to be. God is going to strengthen me daily and help to create me into the wife that my someday husband needs.
Very hard things for a woman in love to say by the way. I still love my husband. My flesh wants him. My heart wants him. Because of that, I often fall into pity. I fall into selfishness. I am human, and I can’t overcome that on my own. I need my Big God to overcome these things in me. But like Joseph said in the sermon, boundaries are necessary. I have to learn to say no. Say no to myself, because I am selfish and want my comforts. And to say no to my husband, who is still pursuing, because his flesh still has wants and desires. He still wants his comforts too. Like a kid who doesn’t want to get a flu shot at the doctor, this suffering is necessary, because it will ultimately lead to something good. Lord, give me the strength to push on through this storm. Give me the strength to keep my eyes focused on you and not watch the turmoil that ensues for this man that I love in my flesh and in my heart. I know that his soul was made for mine Lord, but his soul was first made for you. I give him up to you, if you will do the work you promised to do and draw him back to You. Lord, even if that means I never see restoration this side of heaven. I would rather my husband gain his soul. Mark 8:36 “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Lord, do the work you have promised to do. I give him up to you. You have promised to find his soul. I trust you Lord. I believe in your word. Amen.
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