One of my greatest desires in life was to be a wife, a godly wife.I’d been married in my early twenties, but it was before I came to know the Lord.I soaked up just about every marital teaching I could get my hands on. Articles, sermons, advice columns, you name it!However, the desire became unhealthy to the point of fixation and idolatry.The thoughts and mind games consumed me to the point of holding me hostage.
John 8:44 tells us that the devil is the father of all lies.In my mind and heart, I believed that my life carried no value as a single person. Being married meant acceptance while being single meant rejection. Being married meant success; being single meant failure. One day, while out for a drive, I was thinking about marriage. I heard the Lord say, “Marriage will not deliver you.” The Lord went on to teach me that it wasn’t marriage that I really wanted. What I really wanted was freedom from my past pain. I wanted love, acceptance and connection.I didn’t know how to find those things in Jesus Christ. His death afforded me the freedom, love, acceptance and connection that I thought marriage would give me. Three specific scriptures helped me with this:
1. 1 John 4:16 NKJV – “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” Love.
2. 1 Peter 2:9-10 MSG – “But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.” Acceptance.
3. Psalms 27:10 NKJV – “When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take care of me.” Connection.
Believing and trusting in God’s word is true freedom. God wants to give us the desire of our hearts.This doesn’t just apply to marital statuses. It applies to every area of our lives! I sincerely started delighting myself in the Lord because I wanted HIM and nothing else. In godly fashion, He stayed true to His word. In previous issues I wrote about my late husband Christopher.God gave me a beautiful husband and a beautiful marriage for almost six years. This past June was the one-year anniversary of his death. Early in the grief process, thoughts of failure and insignificance tried to return and hold me captive.But God! Because of the foundation I built in those years of “delighting in the Lord,” I wholeheartedly believe it’s helping me in this time of widowhood. There IS freedom in Christ and that undeniable freedom will carry you through every season of life.Like the old saints said, “He’ll keep you…if you want to be kept.”
New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Tamara DeBose enjoys encouraging others through writing. She has weathered many of life’s challenges. It is her desire to remind others to never give up on Jesus and His love. She resides in Florida with her children and grandchildren.
