Whenever I write about women staying with their mean husbands, I have all these "supposed" experts come out of their hiding and tell me how wrong I am to teach such things. They think they should leave these husbands and divorce them.
Mean husbands are unhappy people. This is a spiritual battle. These wives are standing in the gap for their miserable husbands and praying for their salvation. By staying with their husbands, they are sanctifying them. They may even help save their soul from hell.
Is this too much to ask? I don't think so. I remember reading these letters by a woman named Connie. There is an article from her in the recent Above Rubies magazine. Her husband was in and out of jail for many, many years.
She had six children and had to completely depend upon the Lord for her provision. Every night, she would put a place setting at the table and tell the children it was for their daddy when he came home. He was an awful husband. He neither protected nor provided for his family.
Connie still loved him, however. She knew he was her husband and was committed to him for better or worse. She prayed consistently for him ~
People laughed at me and said that he would always leave me and be in and out of prison. The prison guards told me that Jim was institutionalized and was hopeless. Hopeless or not, he was my husband. I knew I could never forsake the Lord by not forgiving my own husband. Also, as a young wife I wanted to be a teacher of women when I got older and I knew I couldn’t be divorced. I’d sing, “Keep me Jesus as the apple of thine eye.”
After many years, he came home for good. He accepted the Lord and they had 20 wonderful years together before the Lord took him home. She stood in the gap for her husband, along with many other women out there who are doing the same for their husbands. If they leave and divorce their husbands, their husbands have little chance of ever living a decent, godly life but the Bible promises us we overcome evil with good.
He promises them they can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens them. God hates divorce. The only reason Moses permitted it was due to the hardening of their hearts, an unforgiving heart. These women realize that true love forgives easily. Is it easy? No, it is difficult but we are asked to make difficult decisions, walk the narrow path, and love even our enemies.
I am confident these women will be eternally blessed for continuing to live with their husbands who they are one flesh with. God will never leave them nor forsake them. He is fighting the battle for them and He will lead them in triumphal procession. Praise be to His holy name!
And I sought for a man among them,
that should make up the hedge,
and stand in
the gap before me for the land,
that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
