He Will Never Leave You Or Forsake You

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.””

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭31:6, 8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Two times in 3 verses, God said that he will never leave us or forsake us. If you are a believer, you cling to that promise. There is nothing we could ever do that would cause him to turn his back on us. This gives us courage. It should take away our fear. 

“Leaving” is a physical act. “Forsaking” is an emotional act. Regardless of what we do, God will never turn His attention away from us. ~ Jimmy Evans 

Marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride. Does our spouse feel the same about way about us as this promise we receive from Christ? Does our spouse know that no sin or shortcoming would cause us to leave or forsake them?

When our spouses disappoint us, and they will, do we emotionally turn away from them? Do we literally turn our back and protect ourself from further pain? How do we react when our spouses act like a wretched sinner that Christ died for? 

We are all a bunch of wretched sinners that are not worthy of Jesus to continue to turn his face toward us. Why does he continue to turn toward us and pursue us? How is this possible? We don’t even love ourselves at times. 

When our spouse doesn’t even love themselves, the last thing they need is for us turn away from them. If we could find the strength to continue to turn towards our spouse, even when they don’t deserve it, we will be a part of the healing process. I know you may say, “But you don’t know how messed up our spouse is.” 

This something that we won’t understand until the day we stand before our maker.  God will have the words that we long to hear. 

“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. “

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭25:21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I want to hear that one day in the way I treated Mark when he disappoints me. And when I disappoint him, I hope and pray that he doesn’t turn his face away from me. That is the point of marriage. In a mysterious way, we growing closer to the Lord until the day we see him face to face. 

There is No Growth Without Change

There is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. We fear these losses, even if our old ways were self-defeating, because, like a worn out pair of shoes, they were at least comfortable and familiar.

Every change involves a loss of some kind: You must let go of old ways in order to experience the new. ~Rick Warren

I love this devotional by Rick Warren. Pair of old shoes. Yep those shoes are comfortable and familiar. After 40.5 years of marriage, our marriage was comfortable. But God asked us to grow, to change, maybe lose some habits. Ouch! No, Lord, I’m comfortable. But we jumped out of our comfort and went to a marriage retreat. I have written several blogs about the sessions. But the telling part was what would we be willing to do to actually change?

I absolutely love this small detail that we have changed. The speakers, Les and Leslie Parrot, called this, “sharing withhold. “ I told Mark we were going to rename it because I can’t ever remember what it’s called. I am going to call it the two positives and 1 negative. At least once a week, we have done this and it is a game changer. I love it! It seems so small and insignificant. But isn’t that the way change often happens...beginning with a small thing?Bad or good change?

The reason it’s called “withhold” is because we “hold onto” a negative feeling about something that happened. There is power in holding onto that thought. It grows and grows and becomes larger than life. We will remember this action or the words that our spouse said and festers like a infection that does not get air or any way to get healing. 

By the same way, sometimes we hold onto a compliment that we noticed about our spouse and we keep it inside because they are not worthy of our praise. Oh my goodness, the compliment may have been the breath of life that our spouse needed to hear.

So here is how it goes...at least once a week one of us say, “How about two positives and one negative?” One goes first and says one positive, one negative and end with a positive. The negative can get sandwiched in the two positives. Here is the wonderful part, our spouse can only say “thank you” for all comments. If they have something else to say, they must wait thirty minutes to address any of the comments. You can guess, after 30 minutes, it will rare to even remember the negative.

This simple act is like a fresh rain on our marriage. It washes away the infection that had been hiding under a rock, waiting for an opportunity to bring it up in the worst way and the worst time. Cool thing, your spouse can not justify the negative for 30 minutes. We love to justify, don’t we? But this exercise gives us time to think about why our spouse said this...why this was important enough for our spouse to mention it. If we are wise enough to be quiet for 30 minutes and think about what they said, miracles may happen that we did not anticipate. Love this tiny change in our marriage that will help us grow our marriage for the next 40 years. I love you, Mark Cooper(aka Superman). 

Jesus Can Heal Anybody

At a marriage conference I went to last weekend, Michael Todd, pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, OK, was the keynote speaker. John 9:1-3 was the topic.

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

There is so much truth wrapped up in this story that I have missed most of my life. The disciples were analyzing the man’s problem. He had been blind from birth so obviously he did nothing wrong to earn this blindness. It must have been his parent’s sin. To have been born blind seemed like a punishment for something. However, Jesus says, “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Are there times in your life, maybe even your marriage, that you try to decide why are you being punished? You may think that perhaps your problem in marriage is caused by your sinful choices and that may very well be true. Maybe you put the blame on someone else like your parents got a divorce and so you did not have a good example. Or you just blamed it on your spouse. They never changed and you counted on them to become more mature or less selfish. Plenty of blame to go around.

Once we pull this story away from being about blindness, we may relate to it in a different way. There was a huge problem and the disciples wanted to place blame on someone or something. Once we place blame, we try to make plans on how to solve that problem.

But now we can hear what Jesus says in a different light.

Jesus says, “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” 

Wow! Maybe the punishment is not a punishment at all but a way to provide a platform for Jesus to be amazing, transforming, and miraculous. Pause for a minute and read that again. This crisis that you are going through may not be punishment for what you or someone did. Maybe this can be viewed as a way to open our eyes up to “see the works of God displayed in our life.” Our eyes are temporarily blind to God’s power. But they can be opened.

Okay, here is the good part.

“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.” Verse 6

(The speaker brought this to life. He actually took dirt and spit in the dirt and put it on a guy’s eyes. Literally!)

What does this make you think about? How would you feel if the doctor told you that the cure for your problem was some dirt? What if he put some dirt in his hands and literally spit in his hands? I know you would have his license taken away. 😄😄😄

On the other hand, what if you had terminal cancer and this really was the cure? You would do anything. When Jesus took dirt from the ground and used his own saliva, that guy could have heard the spit with those blind eyes. (We heard it from the audience.) Other people in the Bible received their sight with a spoken word. Jesus used a really messy treatment...dirt and spit.

Brings us to a question...how bad do you want your problem cured? Is it worth getting really messy and embarrassed? If it is not a simple fix, do we decline the offer to have our sight restored and our marriage restored? If it involves hard and messy work, do we say ,”Never mind. I would rather keep my blindness.”

Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”

‭‭John‬ ‭9:1-3, 6-7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Notice that Jesus did not walk him to the pool to wash off his eyes. I bet it was a moment or two of total silence when the guy had to find his way to the pool. The speaker made a great point here. When God is silent, it’s like the teacher of a class and we are taking a math test. It is total silence in the room. God is waiting on us to be obedient to what he told us to do.

This blind guy got released! Jesus did not see the guy as the “blind guy.” He saw him as a guy who had the potential to see. He doesn’t see our marriages as too far gone. He sees us as two people who could receive release from our blindness. And he would get all the glory because the impossible just happened!