Restoration is Not your Responsibility!
Your lost spouse needs a lot of help, but that help can’t come from you like you want it to. I know many of us go into this believing that we might have broken the relationship, hurt the spouse because they tell us it’s our fault. They may even have real valid accusations that let us know that yes, we do have some changes that need to occur in us. But these changes, are not warranted for a spouse to abandon and give up the marriage and then enter into an adulterous affair. The Word of God says this about committing sexual sins.
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.1 Cor 6:18
There is no way that anything you have done justifies a spouse committing a crime against their own body! But they do, and they justify it and get others to believe what they did is absolutely normal and ok!
How? How are they able to sleep at night, how are they able to talk their family, friends, co-workers, and even their own pastors into approving of adultery? How has it become normal, that spouses are taking the person they are in adultery with to church while their spouse sits a few rows away?
We have to believe when the Word says that Jesus leaves the 99 to hunt down that lost sheep. A spouse having an affair, caught in the snare of the strange woman/adulterous spirit is exactly the kind of lost sheep that Jesus goes looking for. He said that none that were given to Him will He lose. Anyone that belongs to Jesus, He will bring back! That is His solum promise.
So how do they ignore Him? Conviction from the Holy Spirit is LOUD. But so is the attitude of blame and deflection.
Let me help you understand this. Ever had someone do something that really hurt and offended you? Angered you to where you could not stop thinking and talking about it? Where you were consumed by it? Where the thought of praying for them, forgiving them, or just dropping what they did turned your stomach?
When a lost person wants to keep on the path they are going, for whatever the reasons are (and there can be many deep, dark, hidden reasons) they are going to get extremely angry and upset at anything that they see as a threat that comes to steal, kill, destroy their new direction in life.
They believe they have just found the answer to all their problems in life. That they were straight from God Himself as a way of rescuing them out of an unhappy life where they felt like they were drowning and lost. They will feel blessed in their sins, happy, elated and alive for the first time in many long years and nothing is going to convince them that God doesn’t understand and wasn’t behind this because of how they FEEL. Get it? They are going by FEELINGS and not truth. FEELINGS and not what the Word of God says about sexual sins.
And FEELINGS are what stops a spouse from FEELING the conviction of the Lord like it’s supposed to do.
When a spouse believes their choice is being taken from them because you won’t sign the divorce papers, not only do they stew in their anger, most likely the other person is in their ear day and night throwing gasoline on this. Not only do they have to deal with their own feelings of being held in bondage against their will, but they also have to deal with the feelings of others that want them free from the marriage. That includes family, friends and even the pastor or counselors they are getting help from.
The more you send them scriptures, people to explain to them how wrong they are, the more angry and focused on YOU they will become. This anger is what fuels deflection and blame and stifles the voice of conviction.
I can’t tell you how many times I left a conversation with my spouse that left me deep in regret because I realized I had made things so much worse. As I attacked his belief, his choices, his feelings, his decisions, he become more upset, defensive, more DELUSIONAL and appeared more deceived. But the truth was, he was willing to speak lies and defend in what he knew he did not believe it all to prove that he was not going to bow to me and give in. He had a mission and purpose. To never let me or anyone else steal his voice again. To never let me rule or control him………..even if that meant telling me the sky was green when he knew for a fact it was blue!
God had to deal with me about this because for some reason, I struggled greatly with laying down the responsibility. somehow had mixed this man up with myself thinking I owned him and that for me to be at peace, have joy, or be happy………..it could ONLY happen IF I controlled him and we were happy together. That he was not allowed to be happy with me, not allowed to make decisions on his own that affected me. That was what marriage was right? How dare he try to live his life where he made decisions that destroyed MY life!
This is where God taught me that I had to give up the control. That two people were not meant to live where they controlled each other to ensure that THEY were secure. But two people surrendered to the Lord, and the LORD ensures that they are well taken care of in Him and each other. This is meat right here, so please go back and really ponder this.
God takes care of you both when you come to Him as individuals and as ONE He covers your marriage. If it was designed that we just needed our spouses, where would He fit in? He didn’t create us to only need a spouse. That is not where our identity comes from. The only way we can gain our identity in Him is by surrendering, submitting, and pursuing a deep relationship with Him first and above all else. That means your relationship with the Lord is where you go first to get all your needs met, not your spouse!
God wants you to give up control because you are afraid. He wants you to trust Him and do what His Word says when it comes to spouses who want to leave the marriage. LET THEM GO because you are called to peace. And that means that you are called to create a peaceful place free of conflict where blame and deflection thrives. When you let the spouse go, peace comes and quiets the anger which allows the conviction of the Lord to THRIVE!
In the quiet places where your spouse is no longer pointing fingers at you as to the reason they are unhappy is where God starts to talk to them about HIS relationships with them. When the fighting over the children stops, the fighting over the asset and who gets what. The defending themselves from you, from the scriptures and people you sent to them to make them see how wrong they are stops, then PEACE comes. The kind of peace that God needs to work on their hearts and help the blinders come off.
Angry people who are always having to defend themselves have no time to take a good hard look at themselves to see where they have gone wrong and what they need to fix about themselves. Angry people will spend hours and hours talking about those that attack them and try to steal their choices from them. Or they will do worse, turn to addiction and vices to numb the hurt and pain that this anger is bringing them. They become emotionally exhausted from defending themselves and want to escape.
Leave your spouse in God’s hands and let them go. Let them go so God can be heard! So He can heal them, restore them, bring them to repentance and bring them back to you!
For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for good—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a beloved brother. He is especially beloved to me, but even more so to you, both in person and in the Lord. Phil 1:15-16
Here is a testimony from Lillian, which gives a perfect example of what I just shared.
“Sheila, I wanted to email you and share what God has done and how I finally understand what “Let Go and Let God”, “Zipped Lips”, and “Our fight is in the spiritual not the natural” meant. 4 very long years I was fighting my spouse in the natural. Dragging out the divorce and adamant that I was never going to sign and give him what he wanted. The end to our marriage so he could marry her. I did everything I could to stop it, and had a great support system with my family and a small group of standers. Together they kept me going as I kept the fire fueled between us. It was ugly and I don’t know how I managed it for so long but I did until I could not do it anymore and burned out completely. I thought God would be so disappointed and upset with me for giving up. I thought my husband would gloat and be so happy about me signing and become even more distant and mean. I thought I would die. I honestly thought this would be the absolute end of me. But the exact opposite happened.
First, God told me “Finally!” when I told Him I was done fighting. He said “finally, you are going to stop fighting in the natural what is a spiritual battle. Finally you are going to let me have a chance to speak with Jim.” What did He just say?
Then my husband changed from a real cold, mean person to actually being kind and caring. He had suddenly changed into this new person that I didn’t know, and just as suddenly, changed back into the man I fell in love with. AND we started to communicate. Something I had been begging him to do with me for 4 years. All of a sudden we started to have all those long deep talks that I had always wanted. Oh Sheila, when I found out that he really didn’t want to marry this girl, that he didn’t even love her, but was never going to tell me any of this because his pride didn’t want me to win and force him to do what he didn’t want to do. He did get the divorce, but we are in the process of moving him out of the other womans’ home and he is going to live with his sister while he figures out his life. We are taking it super slow and I don’t want to call it dating, but more of rebuilding a friendship right now.
I just wanted to share with you what God has done and how much help and support your ministry has shown me. ~Lillian
Lillian’s testimony is just one of many that have shared that divorce papers mean nothing when it comes to God restoring relationships and hearts. Sometimes a spouse needs to get what they think they need to see that it was NOT it.
Not every situation you are in with your spouse is going to be an easy decision to give them what they want, in fact, in many situations, you won’t be able to. There is nothing you can do but trust God as you obey what He is leading you in. Knowing that as you obey the Lord, then He is the one who will overcome your spouse’s blame and deflection. The key is to know that you are obeying what God wants from you, and not caught in a battle where fear or pride is misleading you. There are many out there that don’t believe anyone should ever let the spouse go and have the divorce they want, that it’s a sin. I personally don’t believe that, and from the amount of restoration testimonies that happen AFTER a divorce occurs, there is indisputable proof that letting them go, opens the door to God bringing them back!
(~Marriage Revealed Ministries Inc. is committed to helping bring healing and restoration to couples who are struggling in their marriage. We do this through the revelation of Who God is and His heart and design for marriage which never intends abuse in any form. If you suspect abuse in your relationship, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit them online at thehotline.org~)
