One day this wife made a list of all the things that she knew Christ would have different in her life. Then she prayed with me, asking God to change these. For the first time in a long while she could not wait to get home! Five days later her husband came to see me. He started by describing what “ a wonderful change” had come over his wife, and he asked if the same thing could happen to him. He became a Christian then and there, honestly facing the things that were wrong in his life and asking Christ to forgive him and to change him and take over his life. With Christ at the center of these two lives, the marriage was transformed.
The difference Christ makes in a marriage is that He becomes the center. Then two people can live in the same home without conflict. When children come, they also find their proper place around the true center. This is real peace. Let us express this mathematically. In a marriage without Jesus Christ, the formula reads 1+ 1=2. Where there are children, 1+1 + 1+1=4 . Very simply,-—this is hell! About marriage, the Bible says, “ These two shall be come one.” Mathematically this means that 1+ 1=1. This sounds ridiculous in the science of mathematics, but it makes wonderful sense in the metaphysics of matrimony! A Christian marriage is not a perfect one, where there are no problems. But it is a relationship that can heal itself when trouble does arise, for at the center of the home is Jesus Christ, whose love and power are able to change the people involved. He brings healing and new- One attractive young couple, in discovering a Christian marriage, recently came to realize that the budget was their biggest problem. Each had felt that their tight budget and growing debts were the result of the other’s irresponsibility and poor management. The subject was explosive and for a while neither dared bring it up, know ing the violent consequences. During this period the wife expressed her rebelliousness by going on a periodic clothes-buying spree, while the husband bought model trains. The answer came when they admitted, as new Chris tians, that Christ had a right to decide how they spent their income. They set a time every two weeks to go over the budget. To remind themselves who was to have the final word, they placed an empty chair at the head of the table. In a short time they were able to discuss their finances without anger, to live within their income, and to come slowly out of debt. Christian love is the key to a Christian marriage. This kind of love is not blind, but has its eyes wide open. It does not vanish when the faults appear, for it tries to see and understand the other person as he really is and love him that way. BICKERING FOR YEARS I can think of a couple married thirty years who finally discovered Christian marriage. After a life-time of bicker ing and fighting, with constant hurt feelings, they literally began their honeymoon. Today, they possess the happiness which exists when people know what it means truly to love each other. They are grandparents, and also have young children of their own. This couple took some very definite steps in making their discovery. It began with a conversation in which the wife chiefly expressed her complaints. Her husband was hard to live with and touchy. He sulked and was unrea sonable. He was also extremely stubborn. Above all, she was active in her church and her husband was not. She said she wanted me to tell her how to make her husband a Christian! I pointed out that if she herself were a Christian, she had an obligation not only to make her husband good, but to make him happy. This was a new thought. She then came to realize that in spite of all of her church work, perhaps she had never let the Lord Jesus Christ have His way in her life.
There is no way even for God to change a marriage and leave the people involved unchanged. C. S. Lewis once said, “ No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelette.” If God is to change my marriage, I must let Him begin with me. Not long ago a woman came to her minister, telling G A CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE ness of life every day to those who know Him.
him that she was at the end of her rope and begging him to tell her what to do with an alcoholic husband. She had taken all the abuse and humiliation and poverty she felt she could stand as the result of his drinking. Her minister asked what she had done to try to change him. Well, she said, she had begged and argued, preached at him, read the Bible to him, threatened him, and prayed for him for years. “Have any of these seemed to work?” the minister asked. “No,” said the woman, “ they have not.” “ There is one thing you haven’t tried. Why don’t you pray for yourself, instead of for your husband, and ask God to change all of the things in your life that you know are wrong.” The woman tried it. The result was almost unbeliev able. Her husband never got drunk again. He didn’t have to! Awareness of one’s faults and a desire to change, how ever, are not in themselves enough. A group of men were meeting weekly to share their faith, to discuss their problems, and to pray. One young man came for a number of weeks before he ever said anything. One night he surprised the group by telling them how much they had helped him. He saw for the first time how unloving and unkind and unreasonable he had been with his wife and son. He was determined to go home and be a different husband and father from that night. He came again each week for almost a month, but said nothing more. Then one day he came to see me. I asked him why he had come. He broke down and, with tears in his eyes, said that he was unable to be the husband and father he really wanted to be — that he was still the man that he always had been. “Wonderful!” I cried. “ Now you can become a Chris tian husband and father.” We prayed and he turned his life over to Jesus Christ, telling Him of all of the things that he knew ought to be changed, admitting that he was unable to change them. The whole marriage relationship is changed when either person in it becomes a Christian. Because of this change, this man’s wife became a Christian a few months later. Anyone can discover a Christian marriage who will sincerely pray the prayer, “ 0 Lord, change this marriage, beginning with rrie.”
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SEPTEMBER, 1959
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