Is There Hope for My Marriage?

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hope for marriage

“Is there hope for my marriage?” We at Biblical Counseling Center hear this question many times every week. The answer: Yes!

Today’s post comes from biblical counselor Julie Ganschow, founder of Reigning Grace Counseling Center in Kansas City, MO. Here’s the post at her blog: Is It Too Late for Us?

 logo“Is it too late to save my marriage?”
I have been asked this question over and over in the counseling office. I hesitate to say that “too late” applies to a marriage that involves a Christian, and especially two Christians because that implies that God is not able to change them. When God is involved, nothing is impossible! Please remember that; even as you struggle day to day in a difficult marriage. On the other hand, I have also seen marriages between believers dissolve.

When troubles persist even in a “Christian” marriage, damage continues to mount and love grows cold. The actions of love cease to exist as withholding of affection, attention, and serving each other become commonplace. Bitterness and resentment grow between the couple and distance becomes preferable. This is where things usually are by the time they come for biblical counseling.

God Restores Marriages

I want to encourage you by reminding you nothing is impossible when God is involved! Even if your husband has left you, moved out, or moved on. When people are willing to do what God asks of them in spite of how they feel great things happen!

 

That being said, some women reach that certain point emotionally where they just give up and refuse to believe anything will ever change. I call it “rounding the corner” and when this happens it is very rare for her to come back to the marriage. Her heart hardens, she refuses to cooperate anymore in counseling, or to give her husband another opportunity to change and get it right.

Sometimes it is because he has promised for months or years to change and nothing lasting has happened. Sometimes she finds someone else. Other times she is just without hope anymore. All of these are sad, and even sinful responses a person can have to someone else’s sin. That may sound harsh to you, but I speak from the perspective that God is able to do more than we ask or imagine according to His will.

It is not the will of God that two people who make a covenant before Him to be husband and wife until death parts them decide for themselves they don’t want to be married anymore.

One Plus One Equals One

So is there “hope for my marriage”? If you want to save your marriage, Christian woman, begin by becoming husband oriented. Ephesians 5:22-24 gives us some instructions about our role in the marriage with respect to submission.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
How many women have mastered the not complaining or arguing aspect of submitting to authority but still are unsubmissive in their hearts? Many I fear!Women who are not husband oriented are as much a problem as husbands who are not wife oriented! Women have become so supremely selfish! I hear about “my career,” “my private time,” “my time for the spa” (or shopping or fill in the blank). Too bad, husband, fend for yourself! The couple leads separate lives.

 

If this describes you totally or even remotely then it is time to make a new commitment to become a “new person”: one plus one equals one. If you have lived for years or even months independently as a couple, it is going to take some work from both of you to change this.

You will need to commit to change, change of the heart.

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