by Bessie Wilson
If you came to Christ after your
marriage, there is hope for your spouse. There is a lot of hope. I have
seen unbelieving spouses come to the Lord time and time again through living
with a believer. When a woman comes to Christ after she is married, and she has
a non-Christian husband, normally it isn’t long before she’s able to win him,
because the change in her is so attractive.
Quite
a few years ago, following the cultural revolution in China, Chinese graduate
students began to come to the U.S. to study. Jim and I got to know quite a few
of them, and we held English classes for them in our home. After a while, they
knew enough English that they didn’t come around anymore.
A
year or so later, one of these young men called Jim. He said, “My wife is just
arrived from Shanghai. I’d like you to teach her English, but I want you to
teach her English from the Bible.” We had not done this with the others.
“Why
from the Bible?” Jim asked him.
“She’s
a Christian,” he said.
Jim
went to their house, and he found out that this wife had become a Christian in
China after her husband came to the States to study. When she arrived here, he
found out that he had a new wife. The woman that he was married to now was
wonderful, and the one he had been married to in Shanghai had been awful!
Jim
taught her English from the Bible, but the husband had to help out with the
interpretation, and so he listened to the gospel and became a Christian. The
main reason for his conversion was that he saw the great change Jesus Christ
had wrought in his wife.
If
one spouse becomes a Christian after marriage, we can expect that the other one
will also. On the other hand, when a Christian in disobedience marries a
non-Christian, it does not work the same way. Either one spouse pushes on the
other, or the Christian decides not to push and just live like a non-Christian.
It does not often turn out well. Even if the woman lives out the 1 Peter 3 life
(winning your spouse without a word), it is a long, hard road, and the
unbelieving spouse may never come to faith in Christ.
Don’t
marry a non-Christian thinking you can convert him or her after you are
married. Sometimes, when a woman is in love with a man she knows is not a
Christian, she thinks she’ll be able to lead him to Christ in the marriage. It
won’t happen. She begins to talk to him about the gospel later on, and he says,
“You loved me the way I was when we got married; don’t try to change me now.”
I
have one friend in this situation who comes to town periodically, and we have
lunch together. I always ask her how the marriage is going. Last time, she told
me, “We think he may have come to Christ, but there still isn’t that
fellowship.” This has been going on for years and years. The same woman told
me, years ago, “Another girl turned my husband down for marriage because she
was a Christian and he wasn’t.” That girl gave him his walking ticket. “He met
me, and I was a Christian, but not close to the Lord, so I married him.”
Single
women, hear this: it isn’t enough to say, “Because I met him at church or in a
Bible study, he’s automatically in.” He isn’t. I have a dear English
friend in Monterey, CA. She was serving in India in the Canadian Air Force, and
she met a man in the Officers’ Christian Fellowship Bible studies there. He was
in the Indian army and later became a Canadian citizen. He was always at the
Bible studies, and he participated in them, so she assumed that he was a
Christian. They were married, and then he said, “Now, this has to stop. I’ve
never been a Christian; I have no intention of becoming one.”
What
was she to do? Did she have a right to say, “Now that we are married, you
should change for me”? No.
But
he deceived her!
Yes,
he did. Did she check it out with the Lord? God is faithful. If she had said,
“Lord, this man is in a Bible study, and he seems to be a Christian. Is
he?” God would have shown her. God will show you, but you have to check. Look
for how much fruit there is in his life. Find out whether he is a true
Christian or not.
Being
unequally yoked is hard to bear when it is done in disobedience, but there is
forgiveness. If you recognize that you married in disobedience, and you are
suffering for it, the first thing to do is confess that marriage as sin.[1]
When you are cleansed of the sin, then you will be able to face “what do I do
now with it.” Confess the disobedience, then trust God to redeem the situation.
So
many women won’t take the step of saying, “I was wrong.” You cannot build a
faithful life on unconfessed sin. If you were wrong to get married, the thing
to do is say, “Lord, forgive me.” Even a marriage to a Christian can be wrong
if you had your priorities screwed up when you married.
Once
you are free of that sin, then you can approach the Scripture and ask,
“Now how do I win this man to Christ?” 1 Peter 3 says that you can win him
without a word by your meek and quiet spirit.[2]
Before you go on, thank God for the cleansing. We sometimes live in a muddle
because we haven’t confessed sin, and then we haven’t thanked God
for cleansing us from that sin. Thank God, then ask Him to help you put your
spiritual house in order. Ask Him to give you the kind of a Christian life that
your husband won’t be able to resist.
[1]
Confessing that marrying was sin does not mean you should leave the
marriage. Whether you were wrong to get married or not, you are still married
for real now. When you confess that it was wrong to get married to this person,
that puts you in a place of forgiveness from which you can begin to walk
faithfully with God in this marriage.
[2]
I used to think that quiet spirit was a silent one. I’m indebted to my husband
for pointing out to me the difference between silence and quiet.
Often, we think, “I’m just going to not say anything.” A quiet spirit is a
restful one that is trusting God. The meek and silent spirit is not
found in the Scripture.
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