God has been at work tremendously in the last few days with my wife and I. We saw the counsellor together on Friday and it was good.
On Saturday night I got called in to run one of the video cameras at church on the weekend, and my wife was planning on being there with friends who aren't saved. We planned to go to Sunday mornings 2nd service together. Anwyays I noticed she came in alone on Sat night.
We connected after the service and she ran up and gave me a hug. We looked at joining a small group for a special series we're doing at our church right now, and we were looking into whether or not to go to one together or to do a separate mens/womens thing.
Well, I had a good friend who pretty much runs the video department a few weeks earlier and he had been praying for our marriage and had talked to someone who is the marriage/couples pastor at our church, and who runs an 'edge of committment' pre marriage course for couples looking to get married. My friend steve said that the guy who runs this course would let us do it for free.
So as we're looking at signing up for small group and which group/s to join, the guy we were talking to asked where we lived, we admitted that we were living in separate locations. He then said we should forget about doing the small groups and do the 'edge of committment' stuff, which started the next day, even though we were married.
So yesterday we attended the first class, and we went through the PREPARE questionairre. My heart was sinking as I saw that the only thing that was now holding our marriage together (i.e. keeping our marriage from divorce) was our Spiritual walk and faith.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together as a family. We picked up my daughter (step-daughter), and we went to lunch and played together, and we discussed some of the answers we shared on the PREPARE worksheet. It was very good.
Later we drove out to Hoover Dam, and then back to my car which was still parked at the church. As we sat, God started opening up my broken heart to my wife. I further identified struggles I'd been having, feelings of spiritual oppression and attacks on my mind (which we both have been going through), and how I was just longing to be loved. I led in prayer that God would give me a heart of flesh and not of stone...
As I was about to head home, I leaned in to give my daughter a kiss and she gave me like 10 kisses in rapid succession all over my head. It made me smile, then my wife did the same thing, and for the first time ever, I felt truly loved by her. My heart broke wide open, and I fell in a heap of blubbering mess to the ground.
She had put her finger on something, the lie that satan had been propgating in my life for years. That I wasn't loved. I'd been running on an empty love tank for almost all of my life. Something happened inside of me, that I am still scratching my head over.
As I drove home, I literally felt like I had had a heart transplant. My chest felt like it was 10 pounds lighter, my heart was no longer under stress, and I felt transformed, and washed clean.
I'm still waiting to see the evidence of the outworking of what God appears to have done in me. I'm still a little nervous that maybe it was a flash in the pan moment, but I am praying it isn't, and that I can explore the question of my own love hunger with the counsellor next time I see him...
In Christ,
Dean.
On Saturday night I got called in to run one of the video cameras at church on the weekend, and my wife was planning on being there with friends who aren't saved. We planned to go to Sunday mornings 2nd service together. Anwyays I noticed she came in alone on Sat night.
We connected after the service and she ran up and gave me a hug. We looked at joining a small group for a special series we're doing at our church right now, and we were looking into whether or not to go to one together or to do a separate mens/womens thing.
Well, I had a good friend who pretty much runs the video department a few weeks earlier and he had been praying for our marriage and had talked to someone who is the marriage/couples pastor at our church, and who runs an 'edge of committment' pre marriage course for couples looking to get married. My friend steve said that the guy who runs this course would let us do it for free.
So as we're looking at signing up for small group and which group/s to join, the guy we were talking to asked where we lived, we admitted that we were living in separate locations. He then said we should forget about doing the small groups and do the 'edge of committment' stuff, which started the next day, even though we were married.
So yesterday we attended the first class, and we went through the PREPARE questionairre. My heart was sinking as I saw that the only thing that was now holding our marriage together (i.e. keeping our marriage from divorce) was our Spiritual walk and faith.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together as a family. We picked up my daughter (step-daughter), and we went to lunch and played together, and we discussed some of the answers we shared on the PREPARE worksheet. It was very good.
Later we drove out to Hoover Dam, and then back to my car which was still parked at the church. As we sat, God started opening up my broken heart to my wife. I further identified struggles I'd been having, feelings of spiritual oppression and attacks on my mind (which we both have been going through), and how I was just longing to be loved. I led in prayer that God would give me a heart of flesh and not of stone...
As I was about to head home, I leaned in to give my daughter a kiss and she gave me like 10 kisses in rapid succession all over my head. It made me smile, then my wife did the same thing, and for the first time ever, I felt truly loved by her. My heart broke wide open, and I fell in a heap of blubbering mess to the ground.
She had put her finger on something, the lie that satan had been propgating in my life for years. That I wasn't loved. I'd been running on an empty love tank for almost all of my life. Something happened inside of me, that I am still scratching my head over.
As I drove home, I literally felt like I had had a heart transplant. My chest felt like it was 10 pounds lighter, my heart was no longer under stress, and I felt transformed, and washed clean.
I'm still waiting to see the evidence of the outworking of what God appears to have done in me. I'm still a little nervous that maybe it was a flash in the pan moment, but I am praying it isn't, and that I can explore the question of my own love hunger with the counsellor next time I see him...
In Christ,
Dean.
