God’s Love Expressed Through Confirmation
This morning I’m in total amazement as I consider how the love of God is revealed to us through His ABSOLUTE faithfulness to confirm those things He wants to reveal to us or to confirm the answers when we’re seeking His will. He even confirms the things we already know, especially when we’re being challenged in that particular area of our lives. As women standing for marriage restoration, we can ALL point to the times the Lord gave us the confirmation we needed to keep standing, especially the confirmation that marriage restoration is ALWAYS His will, often coming at a point when we were ready to give up.
I’ve certainly experienced significant confirmation in my own life the past couple of weeks, as well as witnessing it in the lives of some of the women I minister to. An amazing example of that concerns the topic of this week’s Restoration Principles (posted in the FAM Fellowship section of our site), which is the power and authority we access as women when we are submissive to our husbands in obedience to God’s word.
One of the most difficult issues we struggle with when first making a decision to stand for our marriage is the natural inclination to focus on our husbands’ sin and wrong doing rather than addressing our own issues of sin and disobedience, especially as revealed in 1 Peter 3:1-6 (AMP), which you can read atwww.BibleGateway.com.I had a lengthy conversation with a woman last night in which I was trying to convince her of the meaning and significance of these verses and the power submission releases to change our husbands and lead them to the Lord, which prompted me to make them the topic of this week’s Restoration Principles. But by this morning I was reconsidering it, because I know how controversial the principle of submission is and how difficult it is for women to grasp. Then I couldn’t believe it when Creflo Dollar’s message this morning was about those exact verses, confirming what I tried to explain last night about how our obedience releases the supernatural power of God to work! Now, that’s confirmation!
Unfortunately, submitting to our husbands is not a very popular biblical principle today, and it certainly defies all human understanding and reasoning, but we have to understand that God’s thoughts and ways are not ours, and rely on the awesome promise we have in this beautiful passage of scripture from Isaiah 55:
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.”
WOW! What an AWESOME promise that is! So we have two choices. We can always rely on our own understanding, and ignore Proverbs 3:5-6, which tells us:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.Or we can submit to the power and authority of God’s word, with absolute faith and confidence that it will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent, which in this case is the restoration or salvation of our husbands. While this is a very deep subject, it’s really very simple and clear cut in terms of what the Bible has to say about it, but we go into that in much more detail in Restoration Principles, including the significance of the passages about Sarah’s obedience found in the book of Genesis.
How amazing it is to realize that God loves the woman I talked to last night so much, and that He wants to be so intimately involved in the restoration of her marriage, that He would provide such undeniable confirmation of the things we discussed, which I always remind her He will be faithful to do. When we see the hand of God working to confirm the things of concern and interest in our lives in such a way, we should feel very precious to Him, just to know that He cares so much that He would orchestrate the confirmation we need to assure us of His will and plan for our lives and of His involvement in our lives down to the smallest detail!
It isn’t available yet, but you should be able to listen to Dr. Dollar’s message from this morning by tomorrow at www.creflodollarministries.org.