FAQ: What if we Started our Marriage all Wrong?

Last week I encouraged you to look back on how God brought you and your spouse together.  But what if you weren’t following God when you married?  In fact, what if you started your marriage all wrong?  Does God give us a pass and allow us to walk away and start over?

Aside from the marriage statistics that reveal second and third marriages have even greater chances of failure, there are many reasons to stay together rather than walk away.  In J. Waite’s book, The Case for Marriage, comprehensive research findings have staggered the thinking of many.  In studying unhappy couples – and we mean unhappy – scholars sought to know how many of these couples remained miserable if they stayed in the marriage.  Five years after reporting their unhappiness in marriage, seventy percent of the unhappiest couples testified that they were “very” or “quite” happy in their marriage.  Only 12 percent of very unhappily married couples who stuck it out were still unhappy.  Though good marriages go bad, bad marriages go good!

Bottom line:  No matter what brought you together, if you put your trust in God right here, right now, and determine to do marriage God’s way…there is hope for you. 

Here is a testimony that illustrates even a couple who started out all wrong, can turn things around:

My husband and I rushed into our relationship, rushed to move in together and rushed to get married - never acknowledging our issues until after we were married. Before I found your book, we were actually at the point where we were thinking  our marriage was a mistake. When I brought your book home I told my husband that this would be “the last straw to making our marriage work" and asked him if he would read it with me.
 Well we began your book, and I can see changes happening in our marriage, and in the friendship that my husband and I have together. It is an indescribable feeling to be reading a passage in your book and be like "Wow - is that me?” or “Do I really act like this?” So Thank You! Thank You! We are beginning to have the marriage that we always wanted to have with each other!!!

Does your marriage feel hopeless?  Don’t give up!  Rely on the Lord to show you what he wants you to learn through this time.  The couple in the testimony above were teachable…asking themselves, “Is that me?  Do I really act like this?”  What does God want to teach you during this tough season in your marriage?  It’s not too late if you put your hope and trust in God!

~Emerson