Two very significant and important verses of wisdom and instruction for all of us to rely on as we stand for the restoration of our marriages are Proverbs 3:5-6, the meaning of which The Amplified Bible makes very clear, because it says Lean on, trust be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths.

Unfortunately, one of the most consistently harmful things I’ve seen men and women standing for marriage restoration do is lean on their own understanding, because that causes a lot of totally unnecessary problems and misery, and it ALWAYS makes our situations worse, and NEVER better. And we’ve really had some great life lessons about that in the fellowship in the past week through some awesome testimonies and praises revealing that reality for some prodigal spouses was far from that believed by their wives.

So we have to remember that the devil ALWAYS does his best to convince us that the very worst case scenario possible is reality; yet almost ALL of the time, nothing could be farther from the truth. As we’ve come to say it in the ministry, there are facts and there’s the truth, and no matter what the facts are, the only thing that counts is the truth and power of God’s Word. And since Satan always tries to make everything look so much worse than it is, we have to learn to avoid that pitfall by focusing on the positives and ignoring the negatives. And we all have to choose whether or not we’re going to magnify the things that glorify the Lord or the things that only tend to magnify and glorify Satan’s plan and purpose, which we certainly don’t want to do. So no matter what we see and hear, we have to TRUST the Lord with all of our hearts as we do our very best to acknowledge Him in all we do by walking in accordance with what the Word teaches. And THEN we have God’s assurance and promise that HE will make a way where there seems to be no way and that He WILL show us the way to go!

Therefore, we just can’t minimize the importance of understanding that what often “appears” to be a negative really isn’t…a very good reason to avoid the pitfall of leaning on our own understanding. So in addition to not wanting to discount the truth and power of God’s Word and that His thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways, because they are so much higher and different than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), and that God PROMISES to cause ALL THINGS to work together for our good when we love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28), another good reason why we can’t afford to lean to our own understanding – is that more than likely, the explanation and understanding we come up with based on the facts, or what APPEAR to be the facts, will just about ALWAYS be wrong! And that’s why most of the FAM Fellowship members who have talked to me a few times have probably heard me say that it makes no sense to try to make sense of something that makes no sense!

Posted Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 11:57 am in Seeds Of Faith.