The Right Weapon Aimed the Wrong Way

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 2Timothy 1:7 (KJV)

Some years ago I committed myself to partner with a minister friend of mine that was struggling in her marriage. Her husband was one of the most caring and compassionate men that I’ve known and his wife, my friend, had a very strong personality that was a little hard to take at times, but she was a very committed person. She spoke her mind, and was known to be a little inflexible. I personally understood her heart more than most people I think, and I saw how her qualities were very useful and needed in her particular faith community. She was very well respected, and saw neither the necessity or benefit of changing the way she operated both in her vocation and her personal life.

This woman had been raised in the faith. Her family was devoted to God, and they reared her in Christian discipline. She learned to pray at a very early age, and it was a habit of hers to pray for hours. There was hardly ever a time in her life where she had prayed about something and it didn’t come to pass. So quite naturally when it came to her husband and marriage, she expected the same type of results, but he was not cooperating with her plan. He was not falling in line in the way she had grown accustomed to everything else working in her life.

The more he pulled away the angrier she became, and this was a new phenomenon for her. For the most part people had always acquiesced to her point of view and realized the benefit of her counsel. She was wise beyond her years, saw what most overlooked, and had learned to be incredibly persuasive. When her husband refused to buy in and demanded that she make some changes in their home life, she was incredulous. Uncontrollable anger was a place she had never visited; never had to in the past, but this was a situation beyond anything she had ever encountered. They had been together ten years. They were best friends. How could he all of a sudden deviate from the script? She did not want to respond in anger towards him, she told me, but found herself for the first time not able to control her emotions.

He felt powerless in his pursuit of trying to get through to her. Nothing was landing, and she felt completely justified in her point of view. As things began to grow worse, she rallied her family and friends to pray with her to save her marriage, but still felt no compulsion to make any personal adjustments. We couldn’t understand what was happening. This was the go-to couple for counseling and support. Their marriage was a benchmark for many, and no one ever thought for one moment that their marriage wouldn’t last.

When he moved out and found his own apartment, I couldn’t understand it. By this time, his wife and I were putting in long hours of prayer, and we were hoping for a miracle. Back then, I thought I knew it all. Like my minister friend, I had never encountered a problem that much prayer didn’t resolve, so quite naturally I was at a loss for why we didn’t receive the results we both expected. I thought, here we are, two serious prayer warriors joining forces, surely we’d receive something on the level of the Red Sea parting, but it didn’t happen.

She was devastated beyond words, and so was I. My faith was shaken, and for a long time I couldn’t figure out what went wrong. Well, as the months progressed, I continued to grow in the Word, and ultimately began to understand a little bit about prayer and why we did not see the results we expected. I knew that in my own personal life, God had never said ‘no’. There was sometimes a right away ‘yes’ and often a ‘wait’, but there was never a ‘no’.

As time lingered, I saw the inflexibility of my friend more clearly, and I realized that it had become an increasing stumbling block in her life, one that she flat out refused to see. It was cloaking itself as religious principle, but really it was a fear of change and a fear of not being in control. Her husband had presented her with an opportunity to go higher in her relationship with God, higher in faith, and higher in the unity of her marriage, but she saw it all as an attack; and what’s worse is that she brought all of us into a situation that caused many people to be negatively impacted in some way. This was a classic example of not praying effectively in the Will of God. Prayer is very definitely the right weapon to use in any situation, but it can be aimed in the wrong way when we we’re not in alignment with God’s Will and Word.

Hosea 4:6 tells us that we can be harmed, and destroyed even, without an accurate knowledge of God’s Word. This is in part what happened in my friend’s situation. We had some knowledge of God’s Word, probably more than a lot of folks, but we did not have enough to truly back our faith. The mind-and-heart-set of repentance, forgiveness, and change are required to pray effectively; and although my friend believed that she did, really she did not know the Will of God for her situation. She did not pursue it. She wanted what she wanted, and that was that.

God always, always, always wants the best for us. He wants the best for my friend, and He wants the best for her now ex-husband. She and I spent a lot of time praying for him to change and for his eyes to be open to the blessing of what he was giving up, but I don’t recall us ever praying that her eyes would be enlightened, that she would see the error of her ways and make changes that would comfort her husband’s heart and help him to grow in God’s Will and purpose for his life.

As with all of us, my friend had entrenched habit patterns that had served her well in some areas, but were becoming a noose rather than a lifeline. You and I cannot change these by ourselves, and this is sometimes what we think and believe. Jesus Christ said in John 16:8 (NLT), “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.”  It is the Holy Spirit that convicts us, and he knows all there is to know about us. He knows our thoughts and motives, and when our hearts are not in the right place, he will help us to grow in Christ if we will allow him.

You and I cannot do what he, the Spirit, can do for us. We don’t have the strength and power to change ourselves, but God does. Through our commitment to Christ, we can invite Him to work in our hearts and lead us to the change we so desperately need in order to make our lives a thing of beauty. When we kick ourselves out of the driver’s seat and allow Jesus Christ to take the wheel, we can then pray with humility and surrender our will for his. This is really the only way to pray with faith, and to witness results that will always be in alignment with the Father’s Will.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.