This time was strange. It wasn’t like all the last times when God spoke. Usually when He speaks to me, He gives me a vision of something going on in my life, followed by confirmation of the step He is asking me to take. He begins confirming it in his word, through sermons, through my friends and family, in situations. I see clearly. Not only what He is doing, but where He is planning on going with this. I never realized how dependent I have been on Him speaking in precise and clear ways to me. I know I have great faith, but when God tells you this is the next step, then you take it and you see Him do what He said He would do. Well it’s amazing, but does it really qualify as faith when you follow a clear direction?
This time was different. This time He spoke differently. So I have been wrestling and full of doubt. But God is faithful, even when we doubt and I realize now that I am exactly where He wants me to be.
My ex called me in May and told me he couldn’t decide between me and his girlfriend. That he loves me and wants to be with me, but he feels he needs to be there for her, because she has no one else. This after him trying ever so hard to isolate me from my parents, my siblings, and my friends. He said his friend has told him that this is a difficult situation and someone is going to get hurt. But God had already prepared me for the rejection. He had given me a dream about it and I expected that it was coming. My answer was “I am a queen, Christ’s bride. I am a pineapple – not pineapple chunks. I am valuable and worth having a husband who sees me that way. Me and my kids. I won’t allow you to keep treating us this way. So go, be with her. I don’t want you like this.” He was shocked, but that is what I felt God has been doing. Building up my strength and making me realize my value.
Three days later, came Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” I can’t be a good mom. I can’t be a good leader in my church or my business. I can’t be a good daughter or sister if my heart is not guarded. And I have let a man full of wickedness into my heart for far too long. So I stepped out of the way and promised God that I would stop talking to him completely. It was weird, because usually God gives me the direction and then confirms it with a verse. This time, it was a verse first that I felt strong peace over.
I have been wrestling with it, because I feel that it is cruel. It is completely outside of my character to do anything that he would perceive as “harming him”. Truth be told, I am not harming him. I am protecting myself and my kids. He won’t see it that way. He doesn’t see it that way. A few days ago (several months since we have talked), he finally realized that we haven’t been talking. He called and I didn’t answer. It was the 3rd time he has called in 2 months. When I didn’t answer he texted “It’s not right”. I wanted to scream at him and shout across the rooftops. “NO IT’S DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT! It’s not right that you flew to Thailand to have ANOTHER affair. It’s not right that I spent 9 years trying to change myself so that you would love me more and not feel the need to chase other women. It’s not right that my kids have had to be exposed to your sin. It’s not right that when I started pursuing God, you told me I was going overboard. It’s not right that after 9 years and at least 15 affairs later, I finally got the nerve to file for divorce and you did nothing to fight for us. It’s not right that you pretended like you wanted to try to make things work and that as soon as I slept with you, you found yourself another woman AGAIN. It’s not right that when we made another attempt to repair our relationship after the divorce was final, that you decided you still wanted to live in sin with your girlfriend instead of coming home to your family. It’s not right that you continue to live in sin, but then expect us to be available at your beck and call, the moment you start to feel a little sad. It’s not right that you keep reaching into our lives, trying to pull us down, while you live the life you live. That isn’t right. What is right is that I’ve chosen to obey God, even though it pains me. I’ve chosen to stay out of His way, as He has called me for years to do. I have chosen to stop being the enabler of your wicked ways. I’ve chosen to let God put His hand on this situation and do what only He can do. And even though you and the world may perceive it as mean, God perceives it as right. He told me that my feelings can be hurt and I can be obedient, or I can enable you again by reaching out, but be disobedient. So even though I don’t understand what God is doing or why He has told me not to talk to you anymore, I am choosing to obey Him regardless. I don’t need to understand what God is doing. I just need to obey.”
I’m sure it’s needless to say that I didn’t say any of that. Instead I just closed the text and moved on with my day. But God gave me this amazing verse as confirmation.
Isaiah 8:11-15
“God spoke strongly to me, grabbed me with both hands and warned me not to go along with this people. He said:
‘Don’t be like this people, always afraid somebody is plotting against them. Don’t fear what they fear. Don’t take on their worries. If you’re going to worry, worry about The Holy. Fear God-of-the-Angel-Armies. The Holy can be either a Hiding Place or a Boulder blocking your way, The Rock standing in the willful way of both houses of Israel, A barbed-wire Fence preventing trespass to the citizens of Jerusalem. Many of them are going to run into that Rock and get their bones broken, Get tangled up in that barbed wire and not get free of it.'”
God has put me and my kids in this Hiding Place. The word he continues to give me is “Remain”. He is our hiding place and for Chris, he is a Boulder blocking his way. Chris can not trespass on our land anymore. I spoke to my friend about this and she confirmed it for me too. I am an enabler. I always have been and Chris is very well aware of that. This is why this command is especially hard for me. Because my nature, my character, tells me to give him what he wants as an act of kindness and service, but the Lord is telling me right now to fight against my flesh nature and to obey Him, going against what I would naturally do. It is not to be unloving or unkind. It is to be obedient and stay out of Gods way. God has work to do and I keep standing in his way constantly. But Chris will run into this boulder and his bones will break. He will not be able to get back in to the city until he has found the Lord.
Proberbs 2:20-22
“Thus you will walk in the ways of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it;
but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it.”
I want to justify myself to his family and to him. That is the greatest struggle for me, but they should know me well enough at this point to know that if I am behaving in one way, it is not to be cruel, but because God has called me to do that. I don’t think they realize that. I am sure they believe I am being cruel. Still…that very in Isaiah, God has told me not to fear what they fear. Not to worry that they are plotting against me. So I am trying to give that back to God. He will make this right in His ways and His ways are always best.
The other night, God gave me an explanation of something I have experienced for a long time, but never understood. He showed me it in a way that makes complete sense. Every time the kids and I get around my ex, it’s as if I can not hear God anymore. Like there is a block between me and God and I have never understood it, because surely God is strong enough to break through a demonic barrier to speak to me if He wants to. But the picture He showed me was me and my kids standing in the light of Gods presence and glory. And Chris standing on the other side in the dark shadow of the demon. Whenever Chris calls to us and we come, we are walking out of God’s light and into the darkness towards Chris. We are welcoming the darkness into our lives. The reason I can’t hear the Lord or feel his presence is because we have wandered outside of Him. This is why God is calling me to REMAIN. Remain in the light. Remain in Him, my hiding place. When we remain here long enough, eventually God will speak to Chris’s heart and draw him into God’s presence, into the light. When he has done that, I will be able to continue to hear God’s voice and be in His presence and also Chris will be there with us too. We are not supposed to go to him in the darkness. He is supposed to come to us in God’s light. It was another confirmation that God has definitely called me to remain in hiding right now.
This is a struggle. It’s not easy. It’s much easier though than the divorce was. It’s much less a sacrifice then any I have made so far. God has promised me that the worst of it for me is over. The worst of it for Chris has just begun. He is beginning to drown in his sin. It is only a matter of time before God does what he promised to do. To reach down into the ocean of sin and take Chris by the hand; to break the chains off of him and pull his drowned body from the depths; to breathe his breath, the Holy Spirit, into him and revive him back to life in Christ; to disperse the sin around him and make a way for Chris to walk on dry land. God is going to do all of these things and I am certain of this.
Lord you are able and you can save through the fire with your mighty hand. I won’t even say even if you don’t, because I know what you have promised and I have full faith in what you have said. You can Lord and you want to, so I know that you will!
Isaiah 8:16-18
“Gather up the testimony, preserve the teaching for my followers, While I wait for God as long as he remains in hiding, while I wait and hope for him. I stand my ground and hope, I and the children God gave me as signs to Israel, Warning signs and hope signs from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, who makes his home in Mount Zion.”
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