Reason Three: Long Marriage - 48 Years!
Today Dan and I celebrate forty-eight years of marriage while I celebrate my twenty-five years of marriage with God. I wear three rings. One is my engagement ring and wedding band. The engagement ring is missing the diamond it came with. Years of drama and toil caused that diamond to fall off. I haven't replaced it as a reminder of what we have been through and why we remain. The third ring is my marriage with God. Because of God I have both. If it wasn't for God Dan and I would have been divorced in our first year or two. However, through God we celebrate forty-eight years.
Attending church without my husband was rough. Satan knew exactly what buttons to push and he used everything he had in his arsenal to get me back into his camp. There was a term used in church, "spiritually single" for people whose spouses were not members of the church. I loved that title. However, it also made me long to be like the singles in our church. They seemed to be having lots of fun encouraging each other on dates. I wanted to be part of that. Eventually, I had to stop using that term for myself and others like me. "I am married. I am NOT single spiritually or physically." Soon that term was no longer used in our church. It was just another deception, from the evil one.
As a young disciple, I attended every church service, every midweek service, every conference, studied the Bible with many people, attended any and every event the church had. I spent more time involved with church than whatever else I was doing, which meant I was not home a lot. Not being home meant my marriage was damaged. We drifted apart. Years later I had to learn to have balance between church and home.
I had to learn to enjoy spending more time with my husband. I am now at a place where Sundays are reserved for my date with God and my date with my husband. Sunday is the best day for us to meet and regroup after a hard week. We both spend so much time doing so many other things apart, that we both realized Sunday is the day for us. Rarely do we do something else that does not involve the other on a date on Sundays; it is untouchable. Sundays are a joy for me – I get time with the body of Christ and time with the spouse God granted me with.
Balancing home and church meant saying "no" to church events and obligations and allowing God to direct me at what service I should or should not provide in His kingdom. It is so much easier allowing him to lead. With my hands on the controls, I was overwhelmed, stressful, and lacked peace. God's way is always best.
"The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,'for she was taken out of man.' That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." Genesis 2:23-24 (NIV).
The four paragraphs before the scripture are republished from "Lives of a Gem! God's Treasured Possession".
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These are her four blogs:
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