‘And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” ‘ Revelation 21:5(NLT)
‘I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.’ Romans 15:13(NLT)
‘Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!’ Psalms 43:5(NLT)
If God showed us a timeline of all the occurrences that would happen in our lives, we would most assuredly start hyperventilating and bargaining with Him to reroute the path ahead of us. In no way, shape or form would we ever think we could survive such difficult circumstances. Death of a loved one, infidelity by a spouse, the loss of every material possession we own. It’s more than our finite minds can even begin to fathom. And because of that, He doesn’t show us. Instead, He gives us the grace we need to get through things as they come.
Ever been here? To the place of life-altering change within a matter of hours or minutes? You’re going about your day, doing your daily routine, clearly expecting to find what you normally find on that day, and then BAM! Nothing is the same and everything is different.
Whether your marriage has endured betrayal that left you wishing for death or you’ve just managed to become roommates in a stale, marital environment, I pray you find hope for the next six days of this plan. But you have to make the effort. You can’t want your way into a healthy action.
You have to commit to doing it. You have to step through the pain and difficulty, through the sacrifice and discomfort that will be present on this journey. My pastor, Craig Groeschel, says, “It’s often the things that no one sees that result in the things that everyone wants.” It is a daily choice to do the things that need to be done to have what we want to have.
Hope seems to be in short supply these days. Maybe that’s because we are looking to the wrong sources to find it. It is not found in a possession or a human being. It is found in the One True God. The Creator of the Universe. Our Abba. Let’s seek Him like never before in our happy days and in our brutally difficult days. For He is always near and will never, ever, ever forsake us.
Food for thought: Where is your marriage today? Would you rank it high, low or somewhere in the middle? Discuss this with your spouse and name one thing that you will commit to doing to begin to see change.
from Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall