Sharing more thoughts from yesterday’s post. The Message paraphrase of Malachi 2:15 says: “’I hate divorce,’ says the GOD of Israel. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies says, ‘I hate the VIOLENT DISMEMBERING of the ‘one flesh’ of marriage.’ So watch yourselves. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t cheat.”Let’s get it straight. God loves divorced people, but He hates the spirit of divorce. Why? Because it tears apart what God has made one. God loves making two things into one. How did each one of us begin? The sperm from our father fused with the egg of our mother and immediately we were conceived. A new person. No longer two but one. The devil hates new life. The destroyer who comes to steal, kill, and destroy seeks to eliminate this new life. Precious new babies, conceived through God’s wondrous working are dismembered limb by limb in the womb.
The devil also hates God’s plan for marriage where God brings two people together and makes them one. In Matthew 19:4-6 (NET) which is repeated from Genesis 2:24, Jesus said: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one Flesh’? So they are NO LONGER TWO, BUT ONE FLESH.”
God’s plan for our marriage is oneness. This is the very first principle that is mentioned about marriage. He wants us to come together as one flesh, but He also wants us to be one soul, one spirit, and with one vision and purpose. The devil loves destroying God’s plan of oneness. He wants to dismember marriages. Mutilate them. In the same way he is behind the dismembering of precious babies in the womb, he determines the same for marriages. He wants to dismember them little by little and piece by piece.
No marriage suddenly falls apart. It happens gradually. It happens little by little. That’s why we must guard our marriage in every part—physically, spiritually, emotionally, and our thought life. This is perhaps the biggest area of all. Everything begins with our thoughts.
The enemy of our souls tries to bring negative thoughts to you about your husband. Guard your thought life. Cast out every negative, self-pitying, destroying thought in the name of Jesus.
1 Peter 5:8, 9: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring line, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom RESIST steadfast in the faith.” Don’t become a victim. Instead, RESIST.
We must not only watch our thoughts but our spirits. Husbands are not perfect. There will be times when they may say and do things that hurt and wound the soul. This is where we must reach beyond our feelings. Instead of allowing our hearts to become hard, we soften our hearts to forgive, to forbear, and to love. We stand strong and will not allow the devil to have the victory. We will not allow him to dismember our oneness. NOT EVEN ONE LITTLE BIT!
When God talks about a man cleaving to his wife in Genesis 2;24 it is the Hebrew word “dabaq” and literally means “to cling, to be glued to, stick fast.” When God made you and your husband one, He glued you together. Satan will try to unglue you and slowly dismember you. Do not let him.
In the strength of the Lord you can stand against his temptations!
Love from Nancy Campbell
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It’s good to remind ourselves how God looks upon marriage, isn’t it? The passage in Malachi 2:13-16 gives powerful words to every marriage: Verse 14 says: “. . . Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt TREACHEROUSLY: yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant."
When do you begin reading the Bible to your children? We don’t need to wait until they are able to understand the Scriptures. God’s Word is “alive and active.” It goes beyond the mind. Hebrews 4:12 (NET) says that His word goes beyond the intellect and pierces “even to the point of the dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow.” It ministers to the soul, the spirit, and the body.
One of the most beautiful things in life is to keep a soft heart—
This is my husband’s message to fathers today which he posted on MEAT FOR MEN, his Facebook page. I thought you may like to share it with your husband.
1 Corinthians 15:58 tells us to ABOUND in the work of the Lord. Motherhood is the great work God has given us to do, so why not do it with right attitude?
I hope they’ll say she looked straight in our eyes,
My husband was talking with a young father yesterday. He commented on his lovely family around him and asked if he planned to have more children.
God is the creator of the home, and it is meant to be the most beautiful place on earth. It is meant to be a replica of God’s home in heaven. Jesus asked us to pray: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 5:10).
Does Jesus Christ have the preeminence “in all things” in your life and in your home? That means all the little things as well as the big things. I think that if we get into the habit of giving Jesus the preeminence in the little things it will be the norm to give him the preeminence in the big things, don’t you?
The church is filled with tolerating people today, tolerating things that God hates, often because they do not know the truth.
From J. R. Miller (written in 1882).
How is your soul today? Downcast? Reveling in self-pity? Or even dead? I have answer for you. It’s God’s living Word.
I have often shared the following truth with mothers over the years. I believe that it is not enough to love our children; we must also love motherhood. Of course, all mothers love their children, but not every mother loves motherhood. Perhaps the majority don’t. Especially in our humanistic society young women have been brainwashed negatively about the career of motherhood and have been programmed instead for careers outside of the home.
Don’t you like these words? TWO OF YOU—that’s you and your husband. God gives a great promise to the two of you. It’s found in Matthew 18:19 where Jesus said: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.”
God’s word gets to the nitty gritty of life. It’s not only theological doctrine but that which pertains to life. To love our husband is sound, biblical doctrine. To not love them is not disobedience. Are you sowing love to your husband?
What great advice from my friend Rosa Brandt. To hang on to hurts and bitterness will destroy your soul and those around you. Let them go! Yield to the life of Jesus who dwells in you to flow from you, His love and forgiveness.
A cheerful heart will make such a difference to your home atmosphere. But you don’t FEEL cheerful? That’s not the point. I hope you don’t live by your feelings. It’s such a miserable way to live, isn’t it? In fact, it is a false way to live. Feelings are deceiving. They come and go. But truth is real. And the truth is that if you have received Jesus Christ into your life, you have living joy bubbling up within you. Jesus, who lives in you, is JOY. Hebrews 1:9 tells us that Jesus has more joy than anyone else in the world—and He lives in you!
It’s wonderful to gather your family together morning and evening to pray. Pray for one another, pray for the nation, and the countries of the world. Imagine what could happen if every God-fearing family began to cry out to God for this nation each day.
Deception is such a subtle thing, isn’t it? It is so subtle that we usually don’t know we are deceived. We can not only be deceived by the encroachment of our humanistic society, but we can be self-deceived. William Barclay’s translation of James 1:22 says: “You must not only listen to the word, you must act on it. Otherwise, you indulge in self-deception.” This is very challenging to me. To daily read God’s Word and yet not put it into action is self-deception. The more I do this, the more I deceive myself. I pray that the power of the Holy Spirit working within me will keep me from this deception.