Tonight I went to say goodbye to my Pawpaw who’s in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. I also went to check on my Grandmother who has been married to him since she was 14 years old. He is all she’s ever known. In 63 years of marriage, they went from poverty to building a very lucrative business, having 6 children together, which produced 16 grandchildren and a still-growing number of great grandchildren! It wasn’t a perfect marriage by anyone’s standards, but it was a lasting one. 

I was thankful to see she seems to be prepared for the inevitable. I know she and the rest of the family gathered in that tiny hospital room are too busy grieving right now to notice, but it was truly a special moment. Here this man was surrounded by his family who were each retelling various memories they had of his impact in their lives. The weight of his final time here on earth was palpable, but it was balanced by the happy memories and the joy shared with each other in the family he helped create. 

As I was leaving, I stood by my Pawpaw and Grandmother together one last time. I looked at them and said, “Sixty-three years is a long time to be with someone.” Grandmother simply paused and replied, “Yes, but it’s a short time also…”

That answer impacted me to the core. I drove home thinking about how few, nowadays, are privileged to experience that same sentiment. I told the Lord that I wanted to be a part of that select few. My grandfather had some major faults, as does my grandmother. However, they stayed together through it all to reach the point where she is faithfully beside him during his final moments. On either side, I want that to be me. I want loved ones surrounding me faithfully when I’m at my worst and I want to be the faithful party standing beside those in their worst moments…

God, in Your infinite grace make it so… 

JW and I have been discussing the faithfulness of God throughout our life together. He reminded me that He was even there in our beginning, before we got married. So, I thought I’d share how we came to be one…

JW and I are fortunate to have our roots in high school. Were we high school sweethearts? Only briefly. We were more high school buddies. 

In my 10th grade year, I was dating a senior. He and I wanted to introduce our best friends. My best friend was another sophomore; his was a junior named John Wesley.

The night we met was fairly uneventful. I don’t believe in soul mates or love at first sight. Those things have no biblical basis, and actually are used by Satan to deceive people into being dissatisfied with their spouses and to pursue selfish and sinful paths. I do believe God has a plan for us though. And although neither one of us knew it at the time, God’s plan was for us to meet. 

My best friend and JW did end up going on one date. To say the least, they were incompatible, and so were me and my senior boyfriend. So, after the night we met, we thought nothing more of each other. Fast forward to the beginning of our next year in school. I’m now a junior and JW is the senior.

I remember JW was walking down the breezeway of our high school one day. I don’t think he saw me, but that day he caught my eye. I asked my best friend if it would be alright to talk to him. With her blessing, I pursued him. To this day, I can’t remember how I got his phone number or how we started talking, but we did. Our first date was homecoming. We took pictures and had fun. I liked him and he liked me, so we dated. About a month into our relationship, I decided that although he was a nice young man, he and I had different goals in life. (He wanted to settle down in our hometown, have kids, and lead a simple life; while I wanted to get as far away as possible from our hometown, never have kids, and travel the world!) However, just because we had different goals didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends, so we did. He became one of my best friends. We talked all the time, did all kinds of stuff together, and he even took me to prom. We got along so well, people wondered why we weren’t dating! In our conversations, we’d talk about a future if we got married, yet we remained just friends. 

Of course that changed after JW graduated and got a girlfriend who didn’t like our friendship. JW became distant and I became hurt and angry. I wanted everything to stay the same. I wanted him to play by my rules, to hold my hand when I was scared, but let me keep my distance when it got too serious. JW wanted a serious relationship that would lead to marriage. When he found that in another, we grew apart. I missed him, but we moved on. I ended up going to the same college he did, and would see him every now and then. We’d cordially speak, but we were no longer friends. Through those brief conversations, I knew he was still seeing the girlfriend. I wished him the best and kept going. 

Well, I kept going for 3 years. During that time I made new friends and dated other guys. I even got my heart broken by the wrong guy, but I was on my own path following my own plans when out of the blue God tells me to call JW. I ignored it. God told me again and again. He was so persistent that I got mad and told God He was crazy if He thought I was gonna call him! Well, God wouldn’t leave me alone. I figured John Wesley had married the girlfriend that hated me, so I was gonna call to get God to leave me alone and that would be that. I didn’t even have his number anymore. I had to call his parents (who always liked me) just to get his number. They were so happy I called that they both got on the phone! They gladly shared his phone number AND where he was living, what he was doing, the truck he was driving, and the time I needed to call him! (Geez.) I thanked them and told them I’d give him a call then. 

When I called later that night, I said, “Hey John Wesley, how are you doing?”

He said, “Good. Who is this?” (Really?)

I responded, “It’s Jennifer. Whatcha been doing?”

He replied, “Nothing. Jennifer who?” (Seriously??)

When I told him, I could hear the long “Ohhhh” as it dawned on him who I was. (Oh brother.)

After that difficult start to our conversation, the ice broke and we caught up from the past 3 years. He never did marry the girlfriend, was dating others, but nothing serious. That night we picked up our friendship where we left off as if we’d never stopped being friends. This time, though, we were older and had both experienced a lot of heartbreak that made us value the other more. The qualities JW possessed became what I was looking for, rather than what I wanted to avoid. God knew what He was doing, and I soon knew, too. I was to marry John Wesley.

And we did…6 months later. 

Jeremiah 32:27 (KJV) Behold, I [am] the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?

I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared this revelation or not, but it was very significant in changing my view of God that perhaps I should designate its own post.

In 2012, while my husband was in the Far Country and I was desperately praying for the restoration of our marriage, I had this visual image in my mind of God. I thought God would have to rise up from His throne, take action, and change my husband’s heart. I didn’t think anything was wrong in that thought. Honestly, I didn’t even realize those were my thoughts until God pointed out the truth to me. God showed me that my thoughts of Him were truly small. I thought God would have to “do” something to change my husband.

He corrected me by telling me that all He would have to do is just breathe and all would change.

Whoa.

In the Spirit, I saw this big God who is so big and mighty that no mere man could make him move from His throne. God has to take no action. He wills it, and it comes to be. He thinks it, and it comes to pass. All He had to do was to take a tiny breath, and my husband would succumb to His will, and my marriage would be restored. He would be a changed man forever.

After that day, I was a changed woman forever. I saw how great God was and how small we are. I thought I believed that before, but that day God showed me my true heart. I’m so glad He did.

Without realizing it, we put God in a box with our preconceived ideas or our expectations of Him, when all He truly wants is to reveal His power and might. Don’t make God small. Open your eyes and heart and see how truly BIG our God is.

Jeremiah 32:17 (KJV) Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, [and] there is nothing too hard for thee

Isaiah 29:5 (NIV) But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant…

2 Samuel 22:16 (NLT) Then at the command of the LORD, at the blast of his breath, the bottom of the sea could be seen, and the foundations of the earth were laid bare.

Whether your spouse has come back home or, wonderfully, never left, you need to make God your spouse! Don’t you want a happy marriage? Don’t you want it to be all that it can and was designed to be? Don’t you want to be satisfied and fulfilled in your marriage?

THEN DON’T LOOK TO YOUR SPOUSE FOR THESE THINGS!!! It will only cause disappointment in you and unnecessary pressure on your spouse. Please realize that your spouse is a sinful, selfish human just as you are and absolutely zero hope can be found in him/her! (You might need to read that again!) Our hope can only be found in One: that’s Jesus!!

Isaiah 54:5 For your Maker is your husband, The LORD of hosts is His name; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth.

Our spouses constantly make mistakes, just like we do. But God is perfect and knows everything…especially how to fix stuff. We take our hopes and dreams and desires to Him in prayer and watch Him fulfill them. When our spouses are ugly (I’m a mom of preschoolers and this is the best way to say this!) we don’t retaliate or nag our spouses to change. Instead, we pray for God to change them. Our expectation must be removed from our spouse (they can’t fix themselves any better than we can) and fixed on God, the true source of power and change.

Psalm 62:5 My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him.

Prior to 2012, I whined to my husband about how he wasn’t romantic enough or that he didn’t seem to know me well enough to get “perfect” gifts. When he didn’t treat me just the way I thought he should, I’d give him the cold shoulder as punishment. I look back at those days in disgust at myself. Why are we so petty? Surprise, surprise our spouses actually CAN’T read our minds. I wanted my husband to treat me like a queen, but I was unwilling to treat him like a king! Why are we so selfish?  If you want a better marriage, let God make YOU a better person. Treat your spouse better than yourself and take it ALL to God in prayer. You’ll be amazed at what God can do!!

If you are standing for your marriage, you MUST read Numbers 14. This is the story of what happens after the spies come back from viewing the promised land. All the spies agree that it is a land truly “flowing with milk and honey.” Joshua and Caleb then admonish the people to rise up and take possession of the land as God promised He would give it to them. Yet, the other spies convince the congregation that there was no way for them to succeed. There were giants and fortified cities too strong for them to overcome. Then the people wailed and mourned saying they should return to Egypt! They even wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb for trying to encourage them to have the faith necessary to follow God’s plan!

This story hurts my heart, because it’s just like marriage restoration. God PROMISES us restoration in our covenant marriages. We are called to stand in the gap for our prodigal spouses. Yes, it’s full of giants and fortified cities. Standing for your marriage isn’t easy. No one said it would be, but you have the power of the Almighty God on your side. Through Him you can overcome anything! But this story shows us what happens when you don’t believe in what God will do. If you don’t have the faith to move forward with God and trust Him to overcome your circumstances, then He won’t. Those grumbling people were told they would never see God’s promised land. They would never experience the joy of receiving the “land flowing with milk and honey.” They wouldn’t know the highs of overcoming with God as their weapon. They wouldn’t taste the success of being God’s chosen people. And that’s true in your marriage. You must follow God’s leading to taste victory in your marriage. You must obey Him to see your prodigal come back home. You must have the faith that God can fulfill His promises to enjoy the sweetness of marriage restoration. And, oh how sweet it is!!! You can see a land flowing with milk and honey, but to know that land is yours is even better!

I want to encourage you today. Do NOT be one of those 10 spies who come back saying it’s too hard or impossible for us to overcome. That’s why God got so angry, because they weren’t saying THEY couldn’t overcome, they were saying HE couldn’t overcome. That’s the worst thing to believe: that God can’t fulfill His promises!!! Be Joshua and Caleb and say that no matter the circumstances God will do it!!!!

Hopefully by now, we understand well that nothing is impossible with God. 

Luke 1:37 (NKJV) 37 “For with God nothing will be impossible.”

But do we realize that there is another for whom nothing is impossible? Nothing is impossible to him who believes!

Matthew 17:20 (NKJV) 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

Can you believe it?! It took me performing a bible search for “nothing impossible” looking for the first scripture, for God to grab my attention to the second. In the whole NKJV of the bible these are the ONLY TWO scriptures which proclaim nothing is impossible!!! And WE are one of them!  I was floored. 

What is Jesus telling us here? He’s telling us that we have His authority right here on earth! We have His power! All we have to do is believe/choose to take it up!  The red words of Jesus promises that “nothing will be impossible for you!” 

I’ll stake claim in it, Father. Help my unbelief, because I want nothing to keep me from all You have for me! Amen. 

Here’s some various questions we have answered in the past. We hope you find them useful in your stand.

QUESTION: Did your prodigal have the craziest, most up/down patterns of communication? We’ll communicate steadily and then NOTHING!!! It’s so hard to handle…frustrating, encouraging, frightening, and more…

A: I remember once my husband sent me a text saying he missed me. My heart soared. Later I asked him about it and he said, “Did I say that?” What?! That severely deflated me! Now that I’ve been pregnant, I can easily compare the prodigal’s actions to a woman’s hormones. The constant up and down, irrational behavior, hot and cold treatment of the stander. The prodigal is in a constant state of turmoil from which they are seeking peace. They seek that peace in another person, in alcohol, in ______. But they also see if they can find peace in their covenant spouse. That’s “testing the waters.” I too, started arguing with my husband when he first did this. An understatement would be it didn’t help! Oh how much worse I made it. My anger or logic or even scripture would turn him away. I finally got a clue what God was telling me: I needed to shush and be the wife God called me to be regardless of my husband’s words and actions. That’s when things turned around. You kinda just live in a state of hurt and confusion toward your spouse while God works on them. The irony is you also live in a state of peace toward God as He works on you!

Q: What was it like for you, knowing he was with another woman?

A: It was heartbreaking, but that pain drove me into the arms of God. I desperately sought His words to comfort me and they did every time. Dennis Wingfield, who has written devotions for RMM, said he’s experienced the pain of divorce and the pain of spousal death. He said divorce was worse. I truly believe that. It hurt so bad, but I also knew the pain wouldn’t just go away if I stopped standing, so I stood and I hurt. But in that pain I found the sweetness of being carried by Christ. I experienced the Holy of Holies. It’s a place I’d never been before and, honestly, never since. I’ve decided that we can never truly know our Savior until we suffer like Him.

Q: My prodigal isn’t a Christian. Doesn’t that make a difference? What’s gonna make him/her come back home?

A: This is from my husband- God is Sovereign, He works in the heart of believers and non-believers and He is not limited. The scripture actually says that we cannot even come to Christ to be born again unless He calls us to do so. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” – John 6:44. It is the praying/standing spouse that must stand in the gap and pray for the prodigal to repent and come home, whether the prodigal is a believer or a non-believer because both are in the enemy’s camp and are held captive by their sin and shame. James describes it like this. “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” – James 5:19-20. The prayer and intercession for the non-believer is no different than the prayer and intercession for a believer that has wandered away. Standers must stand in the gap and pray as if their spouse’s eternity depends on it, because it does.

Q: I’ve been wondering about something….the standers are standing for marriage because God hates divorce & calls us to stand, and also for our Prodigal’s salvation, is that right? What I don’t understand is how are we responsible for our Prodigal’s salvation?

A: Ezekiel 22:30 (NKJV) 30 “So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.”
God calls us to stand because He’s giving us an assignment: we are to stand in the gap for our prodigal. We are to pray, fast, etc on behalf of them. It’s just like Abraham praying for Lot to be saved from the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. God honored Abraham’s request and spared his nephew’s family. Ultimately, we are not responsible for another’s salvation, but God’s word says that God heeds our persistence in Luke 18:1-8. I believe we are also able to pray more effectively because of our one flesh covenant.

Q: I have given up my stand.

A: I am so very sorry to hear that. I pray you are not resigned to that decision and that God changes your heart. My thoughts keep turning to just how many times my husband has looked me in the eyes and said, “Thank you for standing for me.” I also know that even if God had not restored my marriage, He was doing a work in me that would change me forever. It took that suffering to make me just a bit like Christ. That’s God’s goal, not to make us happy or restore our marriages or bring us kids. His goal is to mold us into the image of Jesus. Unfortunately, it takes pain and suffering to get there. May God bless you

I wanna share this video God led me to this morning. It has very little to do with marriage, but everything to do with the REAL and AWESOME power of our LIVING God.

In 2012 God’s ultimate mercy rebooted my life. Ever since then, I have wanted my life to declare the glory of God, to never again profane or shame His name. Right now God is working in mine and my husband’s life to be used to reach people everyday: those who are hurting, in physical pain, and dying in this world of sin and selfishness. We don’t know what He has planned, but we will accept whatever it is gladly and willingly to be used to tell His story. He deserves no less than our lives and so much more than we can ever give!

Father, let our lives be living epistles which all men read and give YOU glory!

2 Corinthians 3:2-4 (NET) You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, revealing that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts. Now we have such confidence in God through Christ.

Nehemiah 8:10 (NKJV) Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.“

The Lord just reminded me of a testimony of mine from 2012. I want to share it to help or encourage others who might go through the same thing.

Before 2012 I had been on antidepressants for a couple of years. But in 2012 when my husband left and God told me to stand for my marriage, He also told me to get off those meds. I knew He wanted me off the antidepressants, because He kept telling me I didn’t need them. I didn’t argue with God, but I told Him fearfully that of all the times in my life to get off antidepressants this was THE WORST time to do so…my husband had just left me! But I told Him that since He was telling me to do so, I’d do it.

I’ve never taken another antidepressant since then. He became my antidepressant 🙂 His joy really became my strength that day and everyday after…