Easter Sunday is a glorious day to celebrate the victory of Christ. It's my favorite day of the year. And then Monday arrives and we again face all the struggles of our fallen and unresurrected world. And, uh, this includes the struggles that are very close to home, the struggles that are even inside of our homes.

One man, a husband and a father writes in to ask this. Pastor John, I am a Christian. My wife is not. When we met and married in medical school, nine years ago, I held firmly to atheism and relativism. She was Buddhist. Five years ago, God opened the eyes of my heart to see, experience, and know the truth of Jesus Christ.

Like Nebuchadnezzar, God brought me low. And from those depths, I arose in awe and praise. However, these last several years have been challenging for my marriage. Despite sharing two young sons together, my wife and I are spiritually at odds. Despite my attempts to explain, she does not understand my faith in Christ, nor my time spent in Bible reading and prayer.

My time at church on Sundays is often viewed as a distraction from our family life. I love my wife immensely. I love our experience of each other caring for our sons. I believe those joys are pointers to an experience of God's joy. She does not. I feel like there's a spiritual divorce of sorts that has already happened.

I have no intention. I have no intention of a legal divorce. I want to keep alive the hope that we will one day share a Christ exalting marriage and lead our sons in a walk of faith. But how do I persevere in love, empathy, and in a Christ-centered way amidst this great spiritual divide with my wife?

Oh my. I want our friend who doesn't give us his name to know that I have prayed, not just for him in his request, but for her. This is a beautiful testimony. God brought me low and from those depths I arose in awe and praise. That is a beautiful testimony of a beautiful act of sovereign grace and a powerful one.

And I thank God for it. It's also beautiful because he says, I love my wife immensely. I love our experience of caring for our two sons. I believe those joys are pointers to an experience of God's joy. It's beautiful. And it's beautiful because he wants help in persevering in love.

All that is pure, amazing, supernatural, miraculous, divine work. And I praise God for it. I stand in awe of God's power in this man's life. What a great testimony. And it's a painful testimony. Yes, it is. She does not understand my faith in Jesus or my time spent in Bible reading and prayer, sometimes she views my church involvement as a distraction from family life.

I feel like there's a spiritual divorce of sorts, but oh, how I thank God that our friend has not done what so many do, namely equate that internal breakdown with a justification for divorce. He says, I have no intention of legal divorce. I want to keep alive the hope that we will one day share a Christ exalting marriage and lead our sons to walk in faith.

Amen. Amen. God is so pleased with that resolve and Lord make it happen. So in answer to the question, how can I persevere? How can I endure in love and empathy in a Christ-centered way amidst this kind of spiritual divorce of heart, if not marriage? Now I'm going to try to answer with some passages of scripture because the key to persevering will be hope and faith that God can overcome this divide and this faith and hope are all built on the word of God.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and we need God to speak to us every day. That's what this man needs. Every day he needs God to speak to him, not just once in a while, in order to give him grace and perseverance, but the word becomes effective through divine work in our hearts in response to prayer.

So I'm going to start there in 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 5. May the Lord direct your hearts. I'm saying this to him now. May the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness, the endurance of Christ. This is Paul's prayer that the Lord would direct our hearts.

This is what our friend will need more than anything, namely God. The almighty God must do heart work on him, heart directing. I pray this often for myself. The love of God and the steadfastness of Christ are essential for being steadfast in marriage, but the Lord must direct our hearts to the love of God and direct our hearts to the steadfastness of Christ.

So this is the great foundational need, a heart, a sovereign heart directing work of God. So we join Paul in praying for that day in and day out. Oh God, direct my heart to what I need in your word. Direct my heart through your word to the reality that I need for strength.

And it is a wonderful encouragement that virtually all of the Bible is designed to encourage endurance and hope. Listen, listen to Romans 15, 4 to 6. Whatever was written, whatever, all of it, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures.

So I think that means the endurance and the encouragement that scriptures give, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and the God of encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, sweet marriage verse, with no distortion of meaning, such harmony with one another in accord with Christ that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that is a beautiful passage that without any twisting can be applied to marriage. That together you may with one voice glorify God. That's his heart's desire for his marriage. And that's what this text is about. And it's all about hope from scriptures, hope based on endurance and encouragement that come from the scriptures.

And the way it does this is by acquainting us with the God of endurance and the God of encouragement through the scriptures. One of the hardest challenges for him will be not just to endure and persevere, but to do so with joy. We want our children and our unbelieving spouses to see that Jesus satisfies and that we don't just gut out the life he's given us to live, but that in it, with all of its sorrows, there is profound joy.

So here's the way Paul prays in Colossians 1, 9 and 11. "And so from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you (now I'm jumping to verse 11) be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy." This is God's great miracle work in answer to prayer.

May God strengthen you according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. Nobody but God can do that in a difficult marriage. Let me just quickly give two other passages that come at it from two different ways. Marriage is like a marathon, not a sprint. It's a marathon.

And some marathons have more hills, more heat, more obstacles than other marathons. And here's how Jesus ran his marathon and calls us to run the marathon of our marriage and every other marathon that we face. "Since we are surrounded," this is Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, "Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance." That's what he's asking for.

Perseverance, the race that is set before us. And here comes how? Looking to Jesus. "The founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross." So don't be ashamed of looking forward to the future joy to experience portions of it in the present to sustain you in your marathon of marriage.

And the last text, this is one of the most crucial because it relates the suffering of such a marriage to hope and the endurance. Romans 5, 3, even the suffering and the difficulties are meant to help us persevere. It says, "We rejoice in our sufferings," and just add marriage, "our sufferings in marriage, knowing that suffering produces endurance or perseverance and endurance produces a sense of approveness and approveness produces hope and hope won't let you be ashamed because the love of God is poured out into your heart through the Holy Spirit." So I end where I began with that amazing statement of the source of our daily need for renewed hope, namely Romans 15, 4.

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through the endurance, the perseverance, and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you, Pastor John, for all of that biblical hope for endurance. And thanks for listening to this episode. You can find our audio feeds, you can browse and search all of our past episodes, and you can send us a question of your own all online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

And speaking of marriage, next time we're going to look at male headship in the home. Is this structure in the home a dated and obsolete cultural custom or is it true today? And even if it is biblical, is it now a lost cause within the church? Those are some of the blunt questions that are on the docket for Wednesday.

I'm your host Tony Reinke and we will see you then.