Posted on 07/22/2022 12:11:01 PM PDT by metmom
There is no getting around it. If I am to become the man and minister God has called me to be, my wife must be able to say honestly before heaven, hell and all the world, “My husband loves me with the love of Christ. He makes mistakes, but he’s growing more patient and understanding with me. He’s becoming more tender and caring. He prays with me. He isn’t a phony. He is what he preaches.”
If this isn’t my wife’s testimony — if she has a secret pain in her heart thinking, “My husband isn’t the man of God he pretends to be” — then everything in my life is in vain. All my preaching, accomplishments and charitable giving amount to nothing. I am a withering, useless branch that doesn’t bear the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus will cause others to see the death in me, and I’ll be worth little to his kingdom.
A while ago, a middle-aged pastor and his wife came to me brokenhearted and weeping. The minister told me through tears, “Brother Dave, I have sinned against God and my wife. I’ve committed adultery.” He shook with godly sorrow as he confessed his sin to me. Then his wife turned to me and said softly, “I’ve forgiven him. His repentance is real to me, and I’m confident the Lord will restore us.” With that, I was privileged to witness the beginning of a beautiful healing.
We can never make up for our past failures; but when there is true repentance, God promises to restore all that the cankerworm has destroyed.
I wish every couple who enjoys a Christ-centered marriage would rise up and tell the truth: “It isn’t easy.” There is no other school as difficult and intense as the school of marriage, and you never graduate. God makes it clear to us that our life with our loved ones is the pinnacle, the very summit, of all our testings. If we get it wrong here, we’ll have it wrong everywhere else in our life.
Marriage is a day-by-day effort, in the same way the Christian life is. Like the way of the Cross, it means giving up your rights daily and turning to Christ’s promise, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NKJV).
The Return ping
The problem for a lot of christian women is that we are forced to forgive before the man truly repents. So many men take communion while still looking at porn or cheating on the wife. It’s sickening how the christian leaders will coddle the men but chastise the wife for being hurt over the husband’s lust.
True that.
I don’t think forgiveness means enabling abuse.
Sometimes pragmatically we tolerate it. But I am not sure that is what forgiveness means.
Powerful...
Thank you for posting.
Scripture clearly teaches “without repentance there is no remission of sin.”
Only love can forgive when there is true repentance, or literally a turning away from sin.
True love may exist even without repentance, as “bears all things, Hope’s all things...”, and “Love covers a multitude of sins.”
When Christ went to the cross, He did ot for those (uncluding me), who were His enemies, and “dead in trespasses and sin.”
In other words, He took the punishment of all Gods wrath against my sin (all sin), even while rejected, and before there was any repentance.
His forgiveness comes when there is true repentance (can only happen in true humility and brokenness), and true faith in Christs finished atonement for my sin, which He accomplished after He (coming from Heaven) “humbled himself, and became lower than the Angel’s.
We couldn’t, and didn’t do anything to deserve Gods love and payment for our rebellion and sin.
*Ephesians 2:8-9
But then —
And husbands, we are to love our wives in the same way. We love her, and submit our very lives for our wives, even if they reject us, and hurt or crucify us. (Ephesians 5)
Scrupture teaches that wives should also be living testimonies to their unbelieving and unrepentant husbands. (Of course, this does not mean being abused, doing evil to please your husband, or threats to life)
“Love does not seek it’s own.”
This is love.
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