Your builders outdo your destroyers, and those who laid you waste go away from you… Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land-surely now you will be too crowded for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. Isaiah 49: 17, 19, NRSV.
Dear Father, once again we are in Your presence seeking a blessing! We realize that no one else can bless us! May Your Holy Spirit speak words of restoration to our hearts; we pray in Jesus’ name; Amen.
We read in God’s Word, “In the beginning, God…” and as a result of that beginning, worlds and constellations, galaxies, and solar system, became. We have not been the most faithful stewards of God’s creation; yet stars remain suspended in space; and the earth, and the other planets, continue to travel around the sun, without crashing into each other. This has been going on for more than six thousand years! Based on this conclusive evidence; I truly believe, that any structure, that is going to withstand the floods of life, must have its foundation built on God; the solid Rock (Matthew 7: 24, 25)!
Homes that are built upon the sand of human philosophy will most likely fall; because the logic of human beings at times, can be terribly illogical. Can you imagine a man or woman being abusive to their spouses, and believing that they will be able to retain their spouses’ love under such circumstances? Can you imagine parents being unkind to their children, and believing that their children will see them as friends? Yet many homes are built upon these shaky, illogical, premises, with disastrous results!
But God restores! God is the one who instituted marriage in the beginning; and God can restore marriages in the Twenty-first Century! One of the recipes for a happy home, found in the Word of God, is in Ephesians 5: 21 – 6: 3, NIV. Some of the counsels found herein are: (Speaking to spouses) “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (21); “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (22); “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave [H]imself up for her…” (25); “…In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body,” but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-for we are members of [H]is body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh… However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (28-31, 33).
In the process of restoration, husbands and wives obey Christ’s command: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another”(John 13: 34). What makes this a “new command?” Had not Jesus, from the very beginning, established that the greatest of all commandments was love to God; and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22: 37-39)? So what makes this command new? May I suggest that it is a new quality of love! It is not hard to submit to someone who loves you with a Christ-like love! It is not hard to submit to someone who respects you! Therefore, the command is to, “submit to one another,” in Christ-like love; and allow God to restore your marriage, and rebuild your home.
We will continue tomorrow.
NOTE: We regret that because of circumstances, we have fallen a day behind. By God’s grace, we hope to be soon caught up! We thank you for standing with us, through the ups and downs of our first year. Blessings!