Steward's Portion

THE ENEMY will continually seek to attack and erode your marriage.  The attacks are easier to spot if you maintain an awareness that your divorce is a trophy Satan is fervently seeking.  He will not rest night or day in this pursuit.

THE TWO STRATEGIES:  The first strategy will be a full frontal assault.   This can wreck a huge amount of damage very quickly.  These attacks come quickly and will catch you by surprise.  However they are also pretty big and easier to spot coming.  The second strategy is tunneling. Beware the slow erosion that happens in the unseen corners.  The tunnels the enemy digs in your own private mind will catch you unawares unless you continually focus on maintaining your godly foundations and a love for truth.

From the very beginning of your marriage you will hear the lies Satan whispers to you.  I assure you they are not reality and come from the pit of hell itself.  Depending on your particular fears and weaknesses they could be things like:

• this was a mistake, God had someone else in mind for you, but now you’ve blown it.
• you aren’t good enough, you don’t deserve this man, sooner or later he’ll grow tired of you and you’ll be tossed aside.
• you’re stuck.  Whatever conflict just happened can never be fixed and you have to suffer like this for the rest of your life, God will not rescue you, people don’t change.
• have you seen how beautiful his secretary is?  He desires her more than you.  You should distrust him.  You should withdraw to protect yourself.  He doesn’t love you.
• you aren’t attractive.  You need to do X, Y, Z and then maybe he’ll love you.
• why does he always treat me like this?  Its just like X used to do.  Why did I end up marrying someone like him?  I should kick him to the curb and look for what I deserve: better!

You may find that at times of weakness or anger your husband will be pushed by the enemy to voice some of these things to you.  This can be the cruelest of all attacks and may seem to confirm the very fears that have been growing.  Stay on your toes!

THE FULL FRONTAL ASSAULT: The enemy’s game plan is to craft every angle of a situation so that you can logically draw an incorrect assumption.  First you will hear the lie.  Then if you don’t hold every thought captive and test it, you will linger on it and soon start to wonder if the lie is true.  This will often come with a flood of emotional feelings.  You will feel it is true.  You will say yes to the hurt that it brings.  Now you are wide open for the final volley to come your way, some sort of outside confirmation or confrontation. Lets look at a scenario and spot the workings of the enemy.  Yes its simplistic, but life is like this, lets learn to recognize things early and deal with them in righteousness before God.

SCENARIO: Your husband just called from work to say he’s running late and not to expect him for dinner.

THE SET UP: The enemy whispers: “He doesn’t  like to eat your cooking. Remember how his mother commented at Thanksgiving that you still have a long road ahead of you in the cooking department? Remember how last week he said he thought the chicken was overcooked?  He knows you are making chicken again tonight, coincidence???”

YOUR FIRST CHANCE: Recognize that even at this stage (when nothing has technically even happened yet!) there is a fork in the road.  You can now choose to assume that your husband hates your cooking, or you can ask him about it later.  If you decide not to ask him because you’re pretty sure its true, you’ve taken the first step in believing the lie.  The second step is equally small.  Now that you’ve reeled that thought in and started to make it your own, you now feel terrible that your husband hates your cooking.  In come the emotions, a relentless flood of disappointment and hurt, anger towards him, self hatred towards yourself and perhaps a desire to be short and snippy with him when he comes home later.

YOUR SECOND CHANCE: Your primary battlefield will be your own mind. Even if you believe that he hates your cooking you can choose to talk to him about that later tonight and see about finding a good solution.  But, if you now allow yourself to take this a step further you will think and linger on the things you could say to lash out and ease those swirling emotions: “So, I didn’t save you any of that chicken you hate to eat. You know, I don’t live my life just to slave in the kitchen coming up with meals you won’t eat.  Sorry my cooking isn’t to your liking, guess you can have cereal or fend for yourself!”

YOUR THIRD CHANCE: Now comes the actual confrontation…  up until this point you can still back down and ask God to reveal the truth to you or set your heart to ask your husband directly before you walk directly into trouble.  When your husband walks in the front door at 8pm if you attack him you have a 50/50 chance that he will give in to the enemy and be pushed to react in a way that confirms the lie.  However, if you welcome him home and then find a quiet time to politely ask him (yes, ASK him, not accuse him, not attack him, not make statements at him or for him) you can dismiss the lie of the enemy and no harm is done.   Lets say that when he comes home you lash out at him in some way over your perceived hate for your cooking and a fight breaks out.

YOUR FOURTH CHANCE: During the fight you still have the opportunity to make a u-turn.  You can stop,  apologize, and ask him if he likes your cooking.  This is something that takes practice and is very difficult.   I can guarantee that if you pick a fight based on something the enemy sent your way, the enemy will send in spiritual reinforcements on both sides and tempers will flare.   The enemy wants love to grow cold.  He desires for you to believe lies about each other and about yourselves.   He would love nothing more than to sever all lines of communications and have you both operate in continual assumption and accusation towards one another.  Oh, and as many hurtful things that you can hurl at each other in the process, all the better to him.

YOUR FIFTH CHANCE: After the fight has ended and an appropriate cool down time has elapsed (perhaps because one or both walked away during the fight?) spend time in prayer and repent.  Then spend time confessing to your spouse and forgiving one another.  Usually it will be during this time of confession that God will help you trace the origins of the hurt.   In this case, forgive your mother-in-law and cast out the lie that your husband hates your cooking.  Afterward, enter into a “council of war” discussion with one another.   These talks have one purpose: to strengthen one another against further attacks.  Resolve to ask each other about everything.  No more assuming.  No more accusing.

THE TUNNEL STRATEGY: Godly behavior is not defined by doing everything possible to avoid getting into fights. In this case if you “behave” correctly and didn’t get into a fight, but still let that lie go unanswered you have still lost.   In the eyes of the enemy this is a great outcome!   In rolling over and playing dead you’ve let the enemy transition a simple direct attack into a more dangerous long-term tunneling campaign.   That lie about your cooking is going to fester and go deep.    You will take that hurt and push it aside and try to live normally but sooner or later it will eat away at you and be a hot spot the enemy hits again and again.   The enemy wants you destroyed.  He wants you to become his captive.  He wants you to lock up your heart and stop caring.  He wants you to despair and hate yourself.   The only escape is to learn to live in reality.   It can be really painful and difficult to take every little thing you think and ask yourself, is this true?    This process should be lifelong.  I think of it as poking around for tunnels.   I know the enemy is trying to tunnel under me and breach the fort, so I will continually go poking around and examine everything.    I’m still learning about this, I hope to write more fully on this topic in the future.