How Do I Love My Unbelieving Spouse?
00:00:00.000 | Easter Sunday is a glorious day to celebrate the victory of Christ.
00:00:08.800 | It's my favorite day of the year.
00:00:10.300 | And then Monday arrives and we again face all the struggles of our
00:00:15.000 | fallen and unresurrected world.
00:00:17.400 | And, uh, this includes the struggles that are very close to home, the struggles
00:00:22.200 | that are even inside of our homes.
00:00:24.280 | One man, a husband and a father writes in to ask this.
00:00:29.120 | Pastor John, I am a Christian.
00:00:30.560 | My wife is not.
00:00:31.840 | When we met and married in medical school, nine years ago, I held
00:00:35.400 | firmly to atheism and relativism.
00:00:37.720 | She was Buddhist.
00:00:38.760 | Five years ago, God opened the eyes of my heart to see, experience, and
00:00:42.640 | know the truth of Jesus Christ.
00:00:44.660 | Like Nebuchadnezzar, God brought me low.
00:00:47.840 | And from those depths, I arose in awe and praise.
00:00:51.520 | However, these last several years have been challenging for my marriage.
00:00:55.920 | Despite sharing two young sons together, my wife and I are spiritually at odds.
00:00:59.760 | Despite my attempts to explain, she does not understand my faith in Christ, nor my
00:01:04.160 | time spent in Bible reading and prayer.
00:01:06.160 | My time at church on Sundays is often viewed as a distraction from our family life.
00:01:11.440 | I love my wife immensely.
00:01:13.880 | I love our experience of each other caring for our sons.
00:01:17.200 | I believe those joys are pointers to an experience of God's joy.
00:01:20.640 | She does not.
00:01:22.480 | I feel like there's a spiritual divorce of sorts that has already happened.
00:01:26.000 | I have no intention.
00:01:27.640 | I have no intention of a legal divorce.
00:01:30.640 | I want to keep alive the hope that we will one day share a Christ exalting
00:01:34.160 | marriage and lead our sons in a walk of faith.
00:01:36.480 | But how do I persevere in love, empathy, and in a Christ-centered way amidst this
00:01:42.140 | great spiritual divide with my wife?
00:01:44.880 | Oh my.
00:01:46.600 | I want our friend who doesn't give us his name to know that I have prayed, not
00:01:52.200 | just for him in his request, but for her.
00:01:54.920 | This is a beautiful testimony.
00:01:58.120 | God brought me low and from those depths I arose in awe and praise.
00:02:05.600 | That is a beautiful testimony of a beautiful act of sovereign
00:02:10.760 | grace and a powerful one.
00:02:13.600 | And I thank God for it.
00:02:15.280 | It's also beautiful because he says, I love my wife immensely.
00:02:20.640 | I love our experience of caring for our two sons.
00:02:24.200 | I believe those joys are pointers to an experience of God's joy.
00:02:29.280 | It's beautiful.
00:02:31.200 | And it's beautiful because he wants help in persevering in love.
00:02:36.240 | All that is pure, amazing, supernatural, miraculous, divine work.
00:02:42.000 | And I praise God for it.
00:02:43.640 | I stand in awe of God's power in this man's life.
00:02:48.160 | What a great testimony.
00:02:49.840 | And it's a painful testimony.
00:02:52.200 | Yes, it is.
00:02:53.080 | She does not understand my faith in Jesus or my time spent in Bible reading and
00:02:58.880 | prayer, sometimes she views my church involvement as a distraction from family
00:03:05.560 | life.
00:03:06.040 | I feel like there's a spiritual divorce of sorts, but oh, how I thank God that our
00:03:14.800 | friend has not done what so many do, namely equate that internal breakdown
00:03:21.400 | with a justification for divorce.
00:03:24.760 | He says, I have no intention of legal divorce.
00:03:29.320 | I want to keep alive the hope that we will one day share a Christ exalting
00:03:37.120 | marriage and lead our sons to walk in faith.
00:03:39.800 | Amen.
00:03:40.560 | Amen.
00:03:41.760 | God is so pleased with that resolve and Lord make it happen.
00:03:46.520 | So in answer to the question, how can I persevere?
00:03:50.200 | How can I endure in love and empathy in a Christ-centered way amidst this kind of
00:03:56.520 | spiritual divorce of heart, if not marriage?
00:04:02.240 | Now I'm going to try to answer with some passages of scripture because the key to
00:04:09.800 | persevering will be hope and faith that God can overcome this divide and this
00:04:18.080 | faith and hope are all built on the word of God.
00:04:22.560 | Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and we need God to speak to us
00:04:28.920 | every day.
00:04:30.080 | That's what this man needs.
00:04:31.040 | Every day he needs God to speak to him, not just once in a while, in order to give
00:04:36.280 | him grace and perseverance, but the word becomes effective through divine work in
00:04:45.480 | our hearts in response to prayer.
00:04:47.600 | So I'm going to start there in 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 5.
00:04:52.160 | May the Lord direct your hearts.
00:04:55.960 | I'm saying this to him now.
00:04:57.440 | May the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness, the
00:05:04.600 | endurance of Christ.
00:05:07.120 | This is Paul's prayer that the Lord would direct our hearts.
00:05:13.160 | This is what our friend will need more than anything, namely God.
00:05:18.640 | The almighty God must do heart work on him, heart directing.
00:05:25.560 | I pray this often for myself.
00:05:27.840 | The love of God and the steadfastness of Christ are essential for being steadfast
00:05:34.000 | in marriage, but the Lord must direct our hearts to the love of God and direct our
00:05:40.920 | hearts to the steadfastness of Christ.
00:05:44.240 | So this is the great foundational need, a heart, a sovereign heart directing work of
00:05:54.560 | God.
00:05:55.200 | So we join Paul in praying for that day in and day out.
00:06:00.440 | Oh God, direct my heart to what I need in your word.
00:06:06.120 | Direct my heart through your word to the reality that I need for strength.
00:06:13.520 | And it is a wonderful encouragement that virtually all of the Bible is designed to
00:06:22.120 | encourage endurance and hope.
00:06:24.720 | Listen, listen to Romans 15, 4 to 6.
00:06:29.720 | Whatever was written, whatever, all of it, whatever was written in former days was
00:06:35.960 | written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of
00:06:44.200 | the scriptures.
00:06:45.520 | So I think that means the endurance and the encouragement that scriptures give, we
00:06:50.360 | might have hope.
00:06:52.040 | May the God of endurance and the God of encouragement grant you to live in such
00:06:57.480 | harmony with one another, sweet marriage verse, with no distortion of meaning, such
00:07:04.920 | harmony with one another in accord with Christ that together you may with one voice
00:07:09.640 | glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:07:12.360 | Now that is a beautiful passage that without any twisting can be applied to
00:07:17.760 | marriage.
00:07:18.960 | That together you may with one voice glorify God.
00:07:22.840 | That's his heart's desire for his marriage.
00:07:25.520 | And that's what this text is about.
00:07:27.560 | And it's all about hope from scriptures, hope based on endurance and encouragement
00:07:33.480 | that come from the scriptures.
00:07:35.680 | And the way it does this is by acquainting us with the God of endurance and the God of
00:07:42.120 | encouragement through the scriptures.
00:07:44.400 | One of the hardest challenges for him will be not just to endure and persevere, but to
00:07:55.040 | do so with joy.
00:07:57.080 | We want our children and our unbelieving spouses to see that Jesus satisfies and that
00:08:06.800 | we don't just gut out the life he's given us to live, but that in it, with all of its
00:08:12.280 | sorrows, there is profound joy.
00:08:16.120 | So here's the way Paul prays in Colossians 1, 9 and 11.
00:08:21.280 | "And so from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you
00:08:27.000 | (now I'm jumping to verse 11) be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious
00:08:34.240 | might, for all endurance and patience with joy."
00:08:41.680 | This is God's great miracle work in answer to prayer.
00:08:46.760 | May God strengthen you according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience
00:08:52.720 | with joy.
00:08:54.360 | Nobody but God can do that in a difficult marriage.
00:08:59.320 | Let me just quickly give two other passages that come at it from two different ways.
00:09:04.840 | Marriage is like a marathon, not a sprint.
00:09:08.720 | It's a marathon.
00:09:09.760 | And some marathons have more hills, more heat, more obstacles than other marathons.
00:09:15.480 | And here's how Jesus ran his marathon and calls us to run the marathon of our marriage
00:09:19.920 | and every other marathon that we face.
00:09:22.640 | "Since we are surrounded," this is Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, "Since we are surrounded by so
00:09:27.560 | great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so
00:09:32.040 | closely and let us run with endurance."
00:09:35.520 | That's what he's asking for.
00:09:37.080 | Perseverance, the race that is set before us.
00:09:40.040 | And here comes how?
00:09:40.880 | Looking to Jesus.
00:09:44.080 | "The founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured
00:09:49.120 | the cross."
00:09:50.040 | So don't be ashamed of looking forward to the future joy to experience portions of it in
00:09:59.080 | the present to sustain you in your marathon of marriage.
00:10:02.720 | And the last text, this is one of the most crucial because it relates the suffering of
00:10:08.520 | such a marriage to hope and the endurance.
00:10:13.280 | Romans 5, 3, even the suffering and the difficulties are meant to help us persevere.
00:10:19.560 | It says, "We rejoice in our sufferings," and just add marriage, "our sufferings in
00:10:24.960 | marriage, knowing that suffering produces endurance or perseverance and endurance
00:10:31.160 | produces a sense of approveness and approveness produces hope and hope won't let
00:10:35.840 | you be ashamed because the love of God is poured out into your heart through the Holy
00:10:39.960 | Spirit."
00:10:40.920 | So I end where I began with that amazing statement of the source of our daily need
00:10:48.120 | for renewed hope, namely Romans 15, 4.
00:10:50.480 | Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through the
00:10:58.120 | endurance, the perseverance, and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might
00:11:04.920 | have hope.
00:11:06.520 | Yeah, beautiful.
00:11:08.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for all of that biblical hope for endurance.
00:11:11.720 | And thanks for listening to this episode.
00:11:13.600 | You can find our audio feeds, you can browse and search all of our past episodes, and
00:11:18.400 | you can send us a question of your own all online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:24.360 | And speaking of marriage, next time we're going to look at male headship in the home.
00:11:28.240 | Is this structure in the home a dated and obsolete cultural custom or is it true today?
00:11:34.280 | And even if it is biblical, is it now a lost cause within the church?
00:11:38.640 | Those are some of the blunt questions that are on the docket for Wednesday.
00:11:43.280 | I'm your host Tony Reinke and we will see you then.
00:11:45.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]