For an update on Betty, please visit Praises-Answers.

Reading my Journey just now  — way late in doing so; this was yesterday’s offering — I read the story of a young woman planning her wedding and she was pretty much turning into Bridezilla. Then a friend said something that all we who are married or want to be married would do well to hear: “Your marriage points to Him [Jesus], not to you.”

Does it?

Truthfully, I am hesitant to offer this Scripture. It is not intended by me and I think not by the HOLY SPIRIT to be a blanket to smother those wives who are married to godless men who are without kindness to them. However, to troubled homes wherein neither spouse is violent but clearly JESUS and His Bride is not pictured in the home, I urge you to come together with this Word and begin now to practice it.  To others I am a firm believer in CHRISTIAN Marriage Counseling and in some cases — court ordered protection!  The intricate workings of marriage is far too senstive and complex for blanket advice — individual counsel is a must.  So when our marriages are not pointing to JESUS — GET HELP!

Ephesians 5:15-33 NIV 2011 ¹⁵ Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹ speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, ²⁰ always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  ²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

 Praying for These

ABBA, this is not easy to post. I am mindful how sensitive it is; how complex and tender and sore the lives of wives and even some husbands can be out there. I do not want to add pain or even cause inappropriate guilt to be heaped upon dear ones. I desire for Christian marriages to be about YOU, reflecting to the world what You intend – JESUS and His Bride — and if our marriages are not doing that, then to encourage us to get with the Program and allow You to make it so in us. And for those marriages out there that are more like our enemy than anything else I pray for help and relief and repentance and correction and safety and protection for children and spouses alike. Certainly LORD it is my heart for marriages to be saved yet LORD I am so aware that it takes THREE to make a Christian marriage – You, the wife and the husband in love with You and each other. That is what I pray, what I desire for our IDOKs and I pray it be so in JESUS Name. Amen and amen.  

I placed your names (those who sent me a comment) in a cup, my beloved gave me a (verbal) drum roll and he ‘blindly’ drew a name. And it was SUE!  Sue I will be contacting you for your address to get your book to you. I’d so enjoy a brief review of what you think of the book when you have opportunity to read it.   

Sweet blessings, my Friends!