How many of you married the perfect man?
How soon after the honeymoon did you realize that?
Did you marry him hoping to change him?
YOU CAN’T!
In When I am in Your Arms our hero, an abused kid from South LA marries Barb, a cradle Christian, a sheltered West Virginian from a small town who has won every sword drill and Bible verse award, they soon clash cultures. Nick changes profoundly and God makes a father out of him as he step-fathers her three children and God gives them two babies together. Eventually he is called into ministry to set other men free, and when he is, he brings Barb into ministry as well, and she shares with women how to change your man—knowing, as she tells their mentor, “I can’t change my husband, no one can change someone else—only the Holy Spirit can change him.” By the way, she changes, too.
In an upcoming book, currently a WIP, child prostitute Cathy Miller believes she will never marry, and when her graduate student teacher falls in love with her, he courts her, and convinces her, but she struggles with happiness. When she loses a baby, she believes God is punishing her, her sins have found her out. Fortunately her OB is a Christian, and he reads I Corinthians 6 to her, some of such were some of you, but you are washed clean, made free from the guilt of sin, consecrated, justified by Jesus Christ.
That is the life-changing truth of the Gospel of God. We do not stay the same. Literally, when Christ moves in, He breathes the Holy Spirit into us. We are a new creation and if we continue under the washing of the Word, we grow from faith to faith and glory to glory.
In his book, The Man Whisperer, Rick Johnson reveals the profound influence a wife can have in her husband’s life: not by leaving tracts around or nagging, but as, I Peter 3 says, without a word, by their godly conduct.
In my experience, I unwisely married a man who told me he had lost his faith, but it was OK for me to be a Christian. For ten years I struggled with different world-views, different goals, and different wants and needs. I cried at the altar. Then I learned to pray in faith, believing: Mark 11:24: whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that it is granted to you, and you shall have it. Instead of begging and pleading, hoping, I had every confidence God heard my prayer and granted my request, so I rejoiced. In five months Joe’s life was gloriously changed. He was once called “Angry Joe,” and in a few months he was dubbed “Holy Joe.” I’ve been running to keep up with him spiritually ever since!
The Good News: God can and does change others—your parents, your teenagers, your siblings. Step aside, and let Him!