4 - The Right Person

I was talking with Pete about some of the trouble he was having at home. He surprised me when he said, “Maybe I married the wrong person.”
If you’ve ever wondered if you married the wrong person, we want to try to help you stop asking that question. This book is written for couples who are legally married. If you are married, God wants you to honor your vows. Frequently, we talk to couples whose marriages have gotten tough. Once you are married, though, it isn’t useful to ask if you married the wrong person. Once a ship has sailed, if you are on it, you need to stay on it.
Which of the following most accurately describes you?
· When you married, you were following God’s guidance. You were sure then and you are sure now that you married the person God wanted you to.
· When you married, you weren’t paying attention to God. You married the person you wanted, but you can see now that this really was God’s plan.
· You used to think you married the right person, but as marriage has gotten difficult, you began to think you may have married the wrong person.
· You weren’t following God when you got married and you don’t believe He would have told you to marry who you did if you had asked Him.
In any of these cases, we urge you to honor your vows. In this chapter and the next, there are three things we’d like you to see about God.
· He is a Redeemer who fixes things that are broken. If your marriage is a mess, God can fix it.
· He leads forward, finding the right path from wherever we may have gotten off track to where He wants to lead us.
· He expects us to keep our vows, even if they weren’t His will in the first place.
If you can see these three truths, our hope is that you will quit asking whether you married the right person and will give your whole heart to making your marriage all it can be.
God Fixes Things That Are Broken – The Bible shows us that God is a Redeemer and a Restorer. If your life is a mess, give it to Him to repair. Here is God speaking in the book of Isaiah.
I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him. (Isaiah 57: 18)
There are many Christian couples who can tell you about great changes that happened in their marriages when they began to listen to God and obey Him.
Bill and Denise had a very rocky seven years at the beginning of their marriage. Bill was an alcoholic and could not be counted on for much of anything. He wouldn’t usually be home when he said he would and he had a hard time keeping a job. Denise mostly lived in pain, but at times sought comfort in an affair with another man. This marriage seemed hopeless.
Bad marriages grow from bad roots. Bill’s parents had divorced when he was six, and he had always thought of himself as a hopeless victim. He began drinking heavily when he was only a teenager. He had been sober for a while when he married Denise, and he seemed pretty optimistic then.
Denise hardly knew her real father. Her mother married her step-dad when Denise was 11 years old. Her step-dad was always harsh with her and she treated him with disrespect. Her mother usually sided with her step-dad, and Denise kept as much distance from her parents as she could. She was only 16 when she met Bill, and barely 17 when he offered to marry her. She was so eager to get out of her house, marrying someone who said he loved her seemed like a dream.
Family members dressed up for the occasion and Bill and Denise had a nice little wedding. They found a pastor to do the service. They liked him and went to his church a few times after they were married.
But Bill and Denise had no idea how to be husband and wife. They didn’t have any good examples to follow, and they hadn’t learned how to be married from anyone else. As life got tough, Bill began to drink and things got worse from there.
One day, in their seventh year of marriage, Bill was drinking and driving and was pulled over and taken to jail. While he was in the county jail, a pastor stopped by and Bill got a chance to talk with him. The pastor reminded Bill a lot of the man who had done their wedding nearly seven years earlier. He explained to Bill that God could forgive everything he had done, because Jesus had paid for his sins when Jesus died on the cross. The pastor also explained what it means to give your life to the Lord. Bill prayed with the pastor and asked God to forgive him and take over his life.
Amazingly, while Bill was in jail, Denise called an old Christian friend she had known since high school. Denise poured out her whole story of Bill’s drinking and her own infidelity. Her friend urged Denise to ask Jesus to come into her heart and forgive her sins. She did.
Bill and Denise devoted themselves to learn what God wanted them to do with their lives and their marriage. They forgave each other for past sins, and developed a solid marriage. Bill and Denise have been happily married for many years now and have been able to help many other couples.
Talk About It – How do you each view your marriage right now? Is it what you expected when you married? Do you think your marriage is like God’s plan for marriage? In what areas would you like to see your marriage improve?