Did you know he wasn\u2019t a Christian when you married him?<\/p>\n
How many of you have been asked this question from others in your lifetime?\u00a0\u00a0 Raise your hand\u2026.<\/p>\n
For me it was and is always a hard question to answer and I even fear will I be asked today.\u00a0\u00a0 It is so hard having to answer this question over and over and you know sometimes when you get asked you know the person asking is genuinely concerned about your marriage and then sometimes you wonder do they ask just to \u201ctalk about you\u201d and I think that is the hardest for me.<\/p>\n
How many of us made up answers to this question because we just didn\u2019t want to face the facts again?\u00a0\u00a0 We thought of many creative ways to tell others \u201cNO I didn\u2019t know that about him\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I did know this before I said \u201cI do\u201d and yet I still said \u201cI do\u201d.<\/p>\n
As I stated before to all of you I was not taught about marrying a non-believer so to me I thought, no worries, you can change him after you get married, don\u2019t worry now, all is well.<\/p>\n
Guess what\u2026..I could not then and even now after all these years \u201cI\u201d still can\u2019t change him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All I can do is pray that he will allow God to do the changing.<\/p>\n
Pg. 84 \u201cGod is calling us no matter how we arrived to be the presence of Christ in our husband\u2019s lives\u201d.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to hold back any good thing from your husband just because he doesn\u2019t believe in God, instead your loving treatment of him may cause him to have a change of heart!\u00a0 This is not to say that a wife has the power to save her husband\u2019s soul; only the Holy Spirit can accomplish that, but you can certainly influence your husband (without words no less!) and show him the love of Christ.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have to brow beat God or have a Gospel ambush onto our man, instead just know that we are to be obedient to Christ and live Him in front of our man. Your man will recognize love when he sees it and if you are being obedient then you are showing him \u201cGod\u2019s love\u201d. We must remember we are the conduit to bring God into our marriage.<\/p>\n
A good statement I heard in a sermon once is \u201cno one was ever nagged into the kingdom of God\u201d. If our spouse is on the receiving end of criticism and manipulation \u2014they\u2019re going to run. The harder we try, the faster they run.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t give up, God is fully aware of our situation, when we recognize God\u2019s presence we can relax and stop trying to do God\u2019s job and that is when we will begin to enjoy our marriage again, tensions will ease and we won\u2019t have to constantly be talking to our man about our faith, because we are living it in front of them\u00a0 (remember, actions speak louder than words) they will see!\u00a0\u00a0 We aren\u2019t better than our spouse just because we are the believer, he will see right through all that and we must know that this superior attitude is not showing or providing a warm welcome to who Jesus is.<\/p>\n
You can speak the Gospel loud and clear by never mentioning the name of Jesus. We\u2019re not authorized to judge others (Matthew 7:1<\/a>). Sometimes in marriage we\u2019re prone to judge because of what we know \u2014or think we know \u2014about our spouses. We do know that God cares about our mates. The struggle may take time, and may even challenge our faith. We can trust God to nurture our spouses and our marriages.\u00a0 Scripture says that he may<\/i><\/b> be won, not he will<\/i><\/b> be won. It does not say that because we have a quiet, gentle, and meek spirit that our husband will be saved in two weeks. We need to try not to analyze why our spouse won\u2019t \u201ctake hold of the cross.\u201d I have dwelled on this thought many times and realize I am taking up time enjoying him and our life by wondering \u201cwhen\u201d will he make a decision.<\/p>\n