Winning Him Without Words: 10 Keys to Thriving in Your Spiritually Mismatched Marriage Read Online Free Page B
Author: Lynn Donovan, Dineen Miller
faith.
During the past several years, women who are distraught over the faith differences in their marriage have shared almost every conceivable story with me as to how they arrived in their mismatched marriage. One woman told me that her spouse outright lied, telling her before they married that he was a believer. Many more have shared with me that their husbands assured them they believed in Christ but after the wedding ceremony, they discovered that their husband’s faith was insincere or was dead.
It matters not how we came to be in our crazy, mixed-up and unexpected marriage situation. What matters is that God desires that we honor our marriage commitment and fulfill our marriage vows through His power and His strength. We can’t do it on our own. Trust me, I have tried.
I assure you that I haven’t figured everything out about thriving in this unique marriage, but I have learned a few thingsover the many years of loving Jesus and loving my husband. My journey was difficult and there were many years of confusion, sadness and unfulfilled expectations. I shed many tears along the way. Yet the Lord redeemed every lost moment and hurt. He alone restored my marriage and my heart. I discovered that it is possible to love, live and thrive in an unequally yoked marriage. So today I will make a bold promise to you. If you earnestly put into practice the 10 principals we uncover in this book, God will honor your efforts as well.
God wastes nothing. I am proof of this statement. He took my arrogant decision to marry an unbeliever and worked through it to show me a great number of things about myself and even more about His love, sovereignty and generosity. He flipped my life and marriage upside down, turned me inside out and used everything for His glory and my good. Today, I am happy in my unequally yoked marriage. My husband and I enjoy a thriving, meaningful and love-filled relationship because of Jesus Christ, even as my husband remains a skeptic. If the Lord will do this in an ordinary gal’s life such as mine, He will do it for you too.
Is It Really Possible to Thrive in a
Mismatched Marriage?
At the beginning of the chapter, I shared my story of stepping out of my comfort zone and attending church alone. I wonder if you’ve experienced something similar in your own mismatched marriage. In the years of working in ministry with women who are walking this marriage road, I have found one common thread all of us face at some point: We are lonely.
It’s a strange paradox, loneliness and marriage. We arrive at this desolate place in our relationship, baffled by our spouse’s hostility toward our faith. We yearn for peace to return to ourhome, yet we are at a loss about how to restore it. We are bewildered, because our home should be
the
one safe place where we can be our authentic self. We had believed that we would never feel lonely and would always feel loved and accepted. Instead of safety and security, however, what we discovered was the reality of ongoing struggles that result from conflicting worldviews, opposing political preferences and clashing notions of morality.
These conflicts aren’t minor irritants in the skin of our relationship. Our core beliefs are the ideals that make us who we are. In a spiritually mismatched marriage, these core beliefs are under constant pressure and scrutiny. Arguments over faith can be frequent, and they can wear us out and emotionally wound us. After several years of living with the conflict, we may conclude that it is safer to avoid talking about our faith—it’s in our best interest to keep that part of our lives hidden. And the loneliness sets in and grows.
Isolation steals our happiness, and bitterness breeds. We love our spouse, yet navigating our unequally yoked life proves thorny. Eventually we wonder if it is possible to thrive in our marriage.
Well, today, I have a single word for you: yes.
Yes, you can thrive. It
is
possible to live out your beliefs, love your
During the past several years, women who are distraught over the faith differences in their marriage have shared almost every conceivable story with me as to how they arrived in their mismatched marriage. One woman told me that her spouse outright lied, telling her before they married that he was a believer. Many more have shared with me that their husbands assured them they believed in Christ but after the wedding ceremony, they discovered that their husband’s faith was insincere or was dead.
It matters not how we came to be in our crazy, mixed-up and unexpected marriage situation. What matters is that God desires that we honor our marriage commitment and fulfill our marriage vows through His power and His strength. We can’t do it on our own. Trust me, I have tried.
I assure you that I haven’t figured everything out about thriving in this unique marriage, but I have learned a few thingsover the many years of loving Jesus and loving my husband. My journey was difficult and there were many years of confusion, sadness and unfulfilled expectations. I shed many tears along the way. Yet the Lord redeemed every lost moment and hurt. He alone restored my marriage and my heart. I discovered that it is possible to love, live and thrive in an unequally yoked marriage. So today I will make a bold promise to you. If you earnestly put into practice the 10 principals we uncover in this book, God will honor your efforts as well.
God wastes nothing. I am proof of this statement. He took my arrogant decision to marry an unbeliever and worked through it to show me a great number of things about myself and even more about His love, sovereignty and generosity. He flipped my life and marriage upside down, turned me inside out and used everything for His glory and my good. Today, I am happy in my unequally yoked marriage. My husband and I enjoy a thriving, meaningful and love-filled relationship because of Jesus Christ, even as my husband remains a skeptic. If the Lord will do this in an ordinary gal’s life such as mine, He will do it for you too.
Is It Really Possible to Thrive in a
Mismatched Marriage?
At the beginning of the chapter, I shared my story of stepping out of my comfort zone and attending church alone. I wonder if you’ve experienced something similar in your own mismatched marriage. In the years of working in ministry with women who are walking this marriage road, I have found one common thread all of us face at some point: We are lonely.
It’s a strange paradox, loneliness and marriage. We arrive at this desolate place in our relationship, baffled by our spouse’s hostility toward our faith. We yearn for peace to return to ourhome, yet we are at a loss about how to restore it. We are bewildered, because our home should be
the
one safe place where we can be our authentic self. We had believed that we would never feel lonely and would always feel loved and accepted. Instead of safety and security, however, what we discovered was the reality of ongoing struggles that result from conflicting worldviews, opposing political preferences and clashing notions of morality.
These conflicts aren’t minor irritants in the skin of our relationship. Our core beliefs are the ideals that make us who we are. In a spiritually mismatched marriage, these core beliefs are under constant pressure and scrutiny. Arguments over faith can be frequent, and they can wear us out and emotionally wound us. After several years of living with the conflict, we may conclude that it is safer to avoid talking about our faith—it’s in our best interest to keep that part of our lives hidden. And the loneliness sets in and grows.
Isolation steals our happiness, and bitterness breeds. We love our spouse, yet navigating our unequally yoked life proves thorny. Eventually we wonder if it is possible to thrive in our marriage.
Well, today, I have a single word for you: yes.
Yes, you can thrive. It
is
possible to live out your beliefs, love your
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