With all this political talk this week – that I am sure will continue and clog up social media from now until the end of January 2013 – don’t worry – this post has nothing to do with politics.
One of my sin problems I dealt with as I got older and remained single was my pride in my independence. I would say all the time “I love being single! I can come and go whenever I want, spend my money, cook whatever I want, etc. I worried about me.” I was so independent. That is actually one of the things that people in my life told me would be the hardest for me and would make marriage very hard: my independent spirit. I won’t say that the transition to married life and being in close relationship with someone else, especially my spiritual head, leader of our home, hasn’t been tough some days – but God has been very gracious.
One way I see that I still need work is when I am trying to solve problems, fix things, live the “spiritual” life on my own. I can be dependent on my sweet (yet human) husband, but I find far too often I live my life independent of God. I got this reality check when I met a sweet, decade+ friend for breakfast recently. She is also a pastor’s wife; so there are similar struggles with life in the ministry and marriage. I slid into the booth at Panera, looked at her, and said, “Ok, I need some honest wisdom. How did you do ____________?”
This was her answer: “I prayed. Some days all I could do was sit on the couch with my Bible and read. I had to depend on God.” That was definitely my takeaway from that time with her and I’m thankful that God used the Spirit in her life and her experience to convict me of sin in my own heart.
So, as I’ve been thinking about what this might look like as I continue going down this road of marriage and the Christian life, here are some thoughts:
1. God is most glorified in us when we are most dependent on Him. Yes, I stole the title from this blog post from the Resurgence. So good! Please read it. God wants to be glorified in our lives and will be when we place all of our hope and trust and dependence on Him.
2. I can’t make it every day without Him. I am realizing that with my new role as a mother of a little boy and a wife to an amazing, godly man – that I can’t just live life on my own. I need God to direct my words, be in my actions every day, force me to put a smile on my face when I may not feel like it, worship even when there is “pain in the offering”, be steadily rejoicing and counting the trials as joy (James 1).
3. God is good and can be fully leaned on. E will not always be there for me. I am going to the mountains for 4 days with a friend in 2 weeks and I can’t bear the thought of being without my hubs for that long. Thank goodness for cell phones and facetime. I don’t look forward to not being able to wake up with him in the morning or talk about our days at the time when we crawl into bed. But, without E with me, God will still be with me. He is always with me. He is dependable. The Psalmists talked about this often and I love reading these when I am tempted to lean on anything but God:
Psalm 66:5 Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.
Psalm 59:9-10a O my Strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress. My God in his steadfast love will meet me.
As single women – don’t get too stuck in your independence that you are afraid to trust your heart to the one kind, gentle, masculine man that loves Jesus and that God has created for you. Wives, don’t fully depend on your husband for everything you need and forget God. I’ve learned (am learning) both. God is gracious.