What I would do if my wife left me.
I remember hearing about a guy coming home and seeing his wife holding their 2-year-old daughter in her arms getting into the back seat of her parent’s car and driving off. They left abruptly from the parsonage where he was the youth pastor of a newly formed Bapticostal church in West Knoxville, TN. They were young 24 and 23 each. The parents were wrong. The choice was wrong.
He was devastated. He hadn’t hit her or cheated on her. He was struggling financially but as a youth pastor at a small church that had just lost half its membership to a doctrinal split. Some were for speaking in other tongues and some were not. The associate pastor took half the members and started another church twenty minutes away.
A prophecy had been given a month before to this young couple that God was about to bless their socks off. She still left and maybe a month or so later a high school friend of the young, newly called, youth pastor walked up on the church property and gave him $48,000 worth of commercial mowing contracts for free. The young wife had moved in with her parents in the garage with the baby to a city twenty-five minutes away. The youth pastor was asked to resign because she had left him and it didn’t look good.
So with the new mowing contracts in hand he resigned and moved to an apartment in the city where his wife had moved. She eventually came back and then left again and as a result the youth pastor moved back to West Knoxville and began attending another church. The damage had been done. The divorce occurred and the scars set in.
This story is just one of millions. How do I know that because half of all marriages fail today whether in the church or not. Actually at one time it was slightly higher in the church. And because of that many are left damaged and hurting and lost. You may see the smile and their presence at church. But inwardly you can hear the emptiness inside where a union was and now is not. What is a person to do like that?
God hates divorce right. Maybe he hates me now? In fact I don’t know if maybe He caused the whole thing. He sure let it happen, didn’t He? Either way hope and for that matter help is gone out the window. Right?
Wrong! Emphatically. I’ve been thru it. I can tell you number one, that He didn’t cause it and that number two He is the answer. If you are like I was and you loved God with all your heart, you know what it is like to feel the aborting of what is supposed to be an eternal union. Vows that were taken in His plain sight that were dissolved. In my situation it seemed like I spent the next ten years in the tub alone with the Word and the bubbles seeking, searching, looking for clues as to where I went wrong. What I could do to make it right or at least to get the pain out of my system. I think I can honestly say that divorce brought out a fire in me that drove me even ‘til now to draw closer to God rather than drift further away. I have not remarried and may not. But that will be my choice. Either way I have His blessing and I can prove it.
But what I want to do right now is show you what I did when my wife left. First of all, as clueless as I was about the whys and everything I stayed in the Word. I was a minister and I knew that my answers were in the Bible. If God hated me well then to bad He is still going to have to talk to me because I’m not going anywhere. Divorce or not I’m in for the long haul. It’s foolish to think He would hate me but you just have to expose some of these thoughts to get past them. They are there and they are real. There are many I won’t mention here but if you have or are going thru this then you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Secondly, I kept soul winning. I don’t need to preach a sermon to feel validated. You don’t need anything to assign you worth in this life except God’s unfailing love for you that He demonstrated to you on Calvary.
I was called to win souls for Jesus before I was recognized publicly so now that I was apparently decreasing why should I stop. Even if the powers that be wanted me to step back that was fine. I could heal up in the process. But, as I saw it divorced people make up one of every two people in America. The odds were in my favor that I could win even more now that I had so much in common with the population right outside the door. So I won and won and won, soul after soul after soul to Him who called me.
Thirdly, I noticed that no matter what devastation I was dealing with after the fallout of the divorce- not getting to see my little girl very much, worse financial problems than I ever imagine, loss of self-esteem, loss of friends, loss, loss, loss. God, everyday, had something for me to do that I knew in my heart of hearts would eventually show up on the radar screen of my life as it pertains to destiny. He had not quit me.
Fourth, I forgave and forgave and forgave, some by faith and over a long period of time and others instantly. I refuse to let someone think that they can avoid me or act uncomfortably around me. If at all possible, and it doesn’t seem like I am unwisely opening myself up to further hurt, I reach out to them. Amazingly, I have had to do this more than once in the last 11 years. I have dated and it didn’t work out and I went to church with them too. Seeing them was hard and sometimes felt impossible to do, but never underestimate the power of God to bless you if you walk in love towards His people.
Women have a security gland that must be taken care of. They meet you and you are firm and perfect. Good-looking and in love with God and have drive and determination. You have goals and a little date money. It looks promising. Then after time goes by, you haven’t reached your goals yet not to mention the ones she has set for you or even others. You don’t have all the answers and you are familiar looking now, not so mysterious. After listening to friends or even family maybe it’s not all that after all….And the money isn’t as much as she thought it was and you are tired of seeing all your money drained each weekend just to keep things going. What now?
Now is the time to buckle up on you and Jesus. Tithe. Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you such a blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts, And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”
A tithe means ten percent. That is before taxes, child support, gas, food, etc. When you do, you qualify for financial blessings according to Malachi above. This, financial problems, is as I understand it the reason for most failures anyhow. Plus, it is increasing your trust in Him.
Luke 6:38 states, “ Give, and it shall be given unto you a good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over shall men give unto your bosom. For with the measure you give out it shall be measured unto you.” Get your seed in the ground. Listen to what Eccl 11:1-6 says, “Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find them after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: (harvest is coming once the cloud is full) if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. (And it won’t be in some indescriminate place it will be according to how and where you sow) He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. (You don’t have to see it to believe it is working you just have to believe it is) In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether they both shall be alike good.”
Deuteronomy 28:2 says, “ All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.” It says you will be blessed in the city, and the field, rising up and laying down, your basket and your storehouse your seed and your cattle. If you obey Him concerning your life. You qualify.
Then I would start attending church every time the doors are open. Look at Isaiah 4:6 , “ And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covertfrom the storm and from the rain.” This is your local home church in the New Testament. Look at Hebrews 10:25, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” And not just attend but plug in. Submit your self to the pastor. Ask him how you can help further his vision and God will take care of yours. And ask the Lord to direct your heart into the right church, and not just the closest one to you. It might be that one but stay sensitive to His leading about it.
So now you can see after a period of time you are building eternal security as well as financial. Your character is strengthening and the promises of God are coming into your life. People, the right ones, should be coming into your life and the wrong ones should be vacating simultaneously.
Read the Word and pray daily, nightly. Is it too much to ask when He holds your life in the palm of His hand? Your breath is His and so is your future. It will be as the scripture says, “ And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of living water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” Isaiah 32:2.
Also, Isaiah 13:12 ,” I will make a man more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir” And Zechariah , “ Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all the languages of the nations, even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew,(That is you now) saying,’We will go with you for we have heard that God is with you.’”
Can you see what transformations are in store? Let her go if she wants to. You can’t change her. All you can do is seek to be better tomorrow than you are today. Stay in front of the mirror. Keep looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of your faith. He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it. See Hebrews 12:2 and Phil 1:6. If God hasn’t been able to change her up to this point what makes you think you can? With that said, however, you can pray effectively for her. Use the Apostle Paul’s Word based prayers found in Ephesians and Colossians. Then God has something to work with. Start in Ephesians 1: 15-23, 3:14-2, and Col 1:9-12. Insert her name in there and personalize that prayer for her. Do it a thousand times a day. You will be doing the will of God for her. Also, do it for yourself and I know you will be amazed at what happens. Take your time and do this a while. In time who knows where things will wind up?
This is what I would do if my wife left me. I hope this helps. I know it did me.
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