Healing

---

Can God save a marriage? Emotions are very powerful. They prove to be either very supportive or very devastating. From my point, I think a young wife can come to a point when she feels she needs to prove her husband and her marriage.

"Have I married the right husband?" she ponders.

Marriage progresses through defined stages, the experts advise: initial infatuation, growing awareness, disillusionment, and ultimately, acceptance or rejection. Disillusionment normally arrives within seven to ten years. Ours certainly arrived right on schedule. I don't know if some marriages progress without these rocks, but I know we experienced ours. I found this extremely humbling. Little did I realize, on the other side of the rocks lies open sea.

HE: I could not understand my wife's change in emotional attitude towards me from a supporting partner. I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. I remember sitting on the front steps in the dark night trying to pray. My heart hurt inside my chest, and I could barely breathe. I sat very alone and very frightened.

HE: I made an appointment with our pastor. He talked with me. He prayed with me. Then he received a phone call. It was a final call from my wife. She was already on her way to the airport with the kids. Then, my pastor shockingly confessed his heart to me. His wife, too, had just left him the day before.

HE: My wife took the kids and flew home, back East. As I drove the river drive to our empty house, I was in a state of shock. On the way I resolved to stand and prepare for the worst. If she divorced me, I would not fight her. She is the wife God gave me and those are my children. Everything I have is hers in God, and I would continue to surrender our finances and possessions to provide for her. I would not be forced back on my conviction to her. And I cried.

I learned well-meaning religious friends actually advised my wife to leave her husband. An angry person will tend to accept friends who support her feelings. Spiritual Christians, on the other hand, have a different attitude. They know honest examination may come later. That's when true friends believe in healing.

HE: On the third morning, I packed the boxes alone sitting cross-legged on the dining room floor. Initially, I decided to pack up the house and return back East to attempt to restore the relationship with my wife. The house was a mess of half packed boxes from room to room.

Suddenly, I realized the powerful presence of Jesus with me. He sat there, also cross-legged, on the floor opposite me. I shared my hurts with him and cried out my heart to him in long repentant prayer. I strangely felt my hurting heart in my chest.

"I'm taking out your heart of stone,"
Jesus spoke to me in my spirit.

This was no longer just a spiritual experience! Now I actually felt my heart physically coming through my chest like a fist-sized rock. I physically felt the stone coming out. I could also feel a deluge of the Holy Spirit's anointing presence all through the house.

"I'm taking out your heart of stone,"
Jesus repeated.
"I'm giving you a New Heart."

As the stone disappeared from out my chest, Jesus replaced it with a live, fresh, beating, New Heart.

"I'm giving you a New Heart," he said,
"I'm giving you My Heart."

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE