{"id":1932,"date":"2012-10-01T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2013-01-24T19:01:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T00:01:24","slug":"winning-him-without-words-know-that-youre-not-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/01\/winning-him-without-words-know-that-youre-not-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning Him Without Words:  &#8220;Know that You&#8217;re Not Alone&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I realized I was the first blogger for this new study I have to admit I was very nervous, because this first chapter is one that hits hard on my heart.<\/p>\n<p>I am one of those ladies who walks into my church every week without my hubby by my side.\u00a0 Many years ago I was just like how this chapter described her entrance into church.<\/p>\n<p>I looked for the closest seat to the back, so I could get in quick and out faster. I tried to make sure I was just a few minutes from service beginning before I walked in then I wouldn\u2019t have very many people looking at me or wondering if others were following behind me.\u00a0\u00a0 It would allow me to slip in quick, slide in the pew and look down quickly at my bulletin, like I had been sitting there all the time.<\/p>\n<p>When my husband and I were first married he attended church with me, but about 1-1\/2 yrs.\u00a0 later he slowly stopped going with me at all, and that is when the loneliness began to set in.<\/p>\n<p>Back then I would ask him every Sunday if he would go with me and he kept saying \u201cNo\u201d\u2026I would sit in church week after week watching all the couples come in, slide into a pew, and then that is when it hit me\u2026..that husband\u2019s arm would come around his sweet wife\u2019s shoulder and I would be so jealous that I wanted to move to another pew, but that didn\u2019t help because there was just another couple doing the same on another pew.<\/p>\n<p>They just had the \u201clook\u201d that I so wanted.\u00a0 All these couples made me want to quit going to church all together\u2026.until one day God showed me:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cwhy are you looking at others, when you should be focused on me\u201d\u2026..WOW did He ever get my attention!<\/p>\n<p>Here I was treating this like a ball game or a movie, when I should\u2019ve been focusing my attention on what God was trying to teach me from His Word for my life, not the fact that I was sitting alone in church without my mate.<\/p>\n<p>Pg. 26 of our study described my feelings exactly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I yearned for my husband to be there to sit with me<\/li>\n<li>I dreamed of feeling his arm come around my shoulder<\/li>\n<li>I desired to have him look up a Bible verse together, then him holding my hand after we found it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>God showed me years later that my responsibility in my marriage is my relationship with Christ, and that I don\u2019t need to worry about my husband\u2019s, that God will take care of that.<\/p>\n<p>So ladies, that is what I did:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I kept going to church and serving God in areas that He led me to<\/li>\n<li>I kept asking my hubby to come with me<\/li>\n<li>I took our children with me so they could learn about Jesus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have continued for 33 years serving Christ, yet serving alone (without my mate with me).<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully God is sitting with me in that pew and friends are close by and support me, embrace me, and pray for me.<\/p>\n<p>And ladies I will continue to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep going to church and serve God where HE wants me<\/li>\n<li>Keep asking my hubby to go with me<\/li>\n<li>I will keep praying and asking God to open his heart<\/li>\n<li>I will continue to look for that arm around my shoulder<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Let\u2019s pray:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>God I pray that any of us who go alone to church without our spouse will stay encouraged, will focus on You and let You do the leading in our marriage.\u00a0 In your name I pray, Amen!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Your assignment:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. For those who attend church alone please share with us what God showed you that has helped you get through the feeling of loneliness at church without your mate.<\/p>\n<p>2. For those of you that have had your mate with you the whole time in your marriage please give others encouraging words to help us get thru each week sitting in that pew alone.<\/p>\n<p>________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>For those who may be reading this blog and are interested in joining this Bible study we would love to invite you to join us! The Sign-Up button is located at the top of our website page, in the Menu Bar section. Click on that button and follow the directions. It&#8217;s that simple! We hope to see you soon!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blessings,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bev<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 When I realized I was the first blogger for this new study I have to admit I was very nervous, because this first chapter is one that hits hard on my heart. I am one of those ladies who walks into my church every week without my hubby by my side.\u00a0 Many years ago [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[147,315,370,425,436,554,634,648,1126,1135],"class_list":["post-1932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-womens","tag-bible-study","tag-dineen-miller","tag-family","tag-girlfriends-coffee-hour","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-lynn-donovan","tag-marriage","tag-winning-him-without-words","tag-womens-bible-studies","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39pHp-va","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8129,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions\/8129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}