i just thought God would fix it..
Many in our Christian communities have a mistaken idea that their job is to sit while praying and wait for God to fix the problem.
I don't feel that is Scriptural. I feel that I need to pray during a running stride while using the means God gave me.
This concept is found all over the Bible, and summed up with the "he who does not work should not eat" concept. When God gave Canaan to the Israelites, he didn't tell them to just sit and wait while they prayed; he told them to get out there and conquer the land. Do you think the woman in Proverbs 31 would watch a calamity bearing down on her household without getting busy to defend her home? Also, in the 2nd half of Isaiah 28, God speaks of the Israelites having gotten themselves into a covenant with death. He didn't say sit and pray so I can deliver you - he said take a stick and beat it out.
My conviction on that was developed after spending 25 years on my knees for a marriage that wasn't meant to be. Afterwards, I educated myself on all the things I could have done that might have turned it around (how to beat the death out with a stick), and I could see a number of things I could have done that might have changed the course of the marriage, humanly speaking. I desperately wanted to do anything possible for those 25 years but just had **NO** idea what that could be given my misunderstanding about what the Scripture teaches on marriage. I didn't find some really great resources about what to do if you are in a covenant of death (horrible marriage) until it was too late for my marriage.
I went through about 3 years of radical studies to re-align my filters/understandings with reality and now I can see how my earlier understanding omitted so much Scripture in application to marriages. The marriage verses aren't the only portion of the Bible that advises on relationships - the whole Bible teaches
a! lot! about the marital relationship. For example, do the verses about an angry man in Proverbs say "unless he is your husband"?