No Heart Left Behind: Views on Marriage

No Heart Left Behind is committed to helping couples keep Christ at the center of their marriages, allowing the Word of God and the love of Christ to be the glue that holds the husband and wife together.  We help couples remember that the marriage vows say for "worse and poorer" as well as "for richer and better".  What I am seeing today is that so many couples have forgotten their vows, and when the "worse and poorer" part comes along, usually one or both of the parties involved want to leave and look for someone new to have the "rich and better" part.  Satan is attacking our nation at the root of the family.  May we be reminded today of what God desires for us when we enter into the sanctity of marriage.

When we enter into marriage, we become models of God's love to each other for the world to see and want to know more about.

The bridegroom (displayed by the married man) is to respond to his bride just as Christ does to His church.  He is to love her sacrificially in both his words and actions.  Christ is then given high visibility and honor and has the opportunity to display His loving nature through this man by how he treats his wife so that others will want to know God more personally.  (The husband is to be faithful to his wife even if his bride is not. This shows forth the character of Christ in giving  unconditional love to his wife.  It's an awesome responsibility!)  The Holy Spirit is always available to teach the man how to do this in his everyday life.

The bride (displayed by the married woman), is to show loving, respectful ways in how she interacts with her husband (the bridegroom), to such an extent that others who don't know Christ are drawn to the type of love that pours forth from her.  Her faithful, loving and respectful ways are to stay true despite the husband's actions.  This is the nature and character of God.  It is also part of being in a covenant relationship with God and the marriage partner. The bride is faithful, no matter what-just as God is faithful!  The Holy Spirit is always available to teach the woman how to do this in her everyday life.

It must break the heart of God when He sees the awful way we treat each other and how we distort the picture of marriage that He has displayed for all to read throughout the Bible. Think about it:  when we as His living examples of convenantal love divorce each other, what does this say to the world of God's promises to the Church of His love, devotion and faithfulness to them?  And what example and message are we giving out to others of the "transforming power" that God can perform in our lives and marriages, when we ourselves are not even utilizing that power?  It's a sad testimony today that marriages are so weak and unhealthy, not to mention the number of divorces among professing Christians?

We have all known people who have expressed a disinterest in knowing Christ because of the nasty ways that Christians treat each other and those around them by living unfaithful, dishonest and dishonoring lives.  If we as people who claim to know Jesus Christ in a personal way can't act extraordinarily loving and gracious towards each other, what makes those who don't know Christ think He will change their lives for the better in any way?  What  about us and the way we live our lives will attract them to know Christ in a personal way?

We need to see marriage as a "one flesh" lifestyle.  We are to be helpers to each other spiritually, materially and physically in every way that the Bible requires us to be.  We pray you will continue to grow in that mind-set as partners instead of turning on each other when you have disagreements with each other about the differences in ways of doing things.  It is natural to have disagreements, but disagreements can be roads to learn how to find ways to come to agreement and become partners in every aspect of life-getting to know God's ways of doing things instead of our self-satisfying ways.  It is our prayer for you that if you are struggling in your marriage, you will take a look within your own heart and ask God help you become Christ-centered with your spouse instead of self-centered.

Forgiveness Versus Excusing

It impossible to overstate the importance of forgiveness - that because Christ is in us, we are forgiving creatures by our true nature, and not to forgive is to act contrary to that nature and contrary to the command to forgive throughout the New Testament. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ makes it quite clear that our sins are not forgiven if we do not forgive other people their sins against us. There are no exceptions. As C.S. Lewis states in his writing, ”On Forgiveness”: “He doesn’t say we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our own.”

In that same writing, Lewis goes on to observe that often, when we are asking God to forgive us, we are asking Him to do something quite different - we are asking Him to excuse us. However, there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiving says, “Yes, you have done this thing, but I forgive you and I will never hold it against you.” Excusing says, “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.” If one weren’t really to blame, then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense, forgiveness and excusing are opposites.

Trouble often arises when what we call asking God’s forgiveness really consists of asking God to accept our excuses. As Lewis points out, what leads us to this mistake is that there is usually some amount of excuse in our prayer, some “extenuating circumstance”. We are all very anxious to point these circumstances out to God when we ask for His forgiveness. We are also very anxious to point these excuses out to others we have sinned against when we seek their forgiveness. We even make up excuses for some one who has sinned against us when we are forgiving them, saying they did it because they didn’t know any better, or they didn’t mean it, or they were going through a bad time; to acknowledge that the person acted in an intentional manner toward us is just too painful to consider.

When we engage in this activity of making excuses or accepting excuses from others, we fail to acknowledge that no matter what the excuse was, the fact remains that the sin is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. If we forget that what we did or what was done to us is inexcusable and therefore, must be forgiven, we come away with the idea that we have repented and been forgiven or have forgiven another when all we have really done is satisfy ourselves with our own excuses or the excuses of another. We must acknowledge the inexcusable wrong that we did or was done to us and then ask to be forgiven or grant forgiveness to another.

Lewis suggests two remedies to help avoid the pitfall of making and accepting excuses instead of seeking and granting forgiveness. First, remember that God knows all the excuses much better that we do. There is no possibility that He will overlook our wrongdoing, and we are only wasting time talking to God about all the excuses; we must get to the inexcusable sin that is left. Secondly, we must truly believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety and excuse-making comes from not really believing that God will forgive. Lewis states: “Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin that is leftover without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.”

Our prayer for you today at No Heart Left Behind® is that you will come to know that God is a truly a forgiving God. May you look at the cross and be reminded of this every day!

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, 
Look full in His wonderful face, 
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim 
In the light of His glory and grace. 

The solution is so simple, the promise so true. But do we listen? No! We see the stack of bills on the kitchen table and feel yet another anxiety attack coming on. Or we “awfulize” the future: "Quit my job?! What if I can’t find something else?" "Move?! What if I can’t make new friends?" "What if . . . what if . . . what if . . ."

The Evil One just revels in planting these seeds of doubt in our vulnerable imaginations. He loves to see us strangled and impotent with fear. If we don’t counter his lies with the Truth, those seeds can take hold, distort our perceptions of reality, and ultimately, keep us from walking through the doors God opens for us.

Fear is a circular trap: It leads us to inaction. Inaction leaves us bereft of experience. Lack of experience leaves us without information. A lack of information leads us to still more fear. The cycle continues to repeat itself, thus bringing about emotional paralysis and self-defeating behavior. 

Fear is Satan’s favorite “weapon of mass destruction,” as nothing keeps us from experiencing God’s provision like irrational fear. Fear can even sabotage our own healing.

The story in John 5:1-9 is a perfect example of this. 

. . . Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool . . . Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked (John 5:1-9, NIV).

Why do you suppose Jesus asked that question? The man had been crippled for 38 years. Why doubt the sincerity of the man’s request? We don’t know the crippled man’s entire story, but later, in John 5:14, Jesus catches up with him and scolds, “See, you are all well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” Jesus didn’t name the sin, but his patience with the man was tested somehow. One can’t help but wonder, 38 years by the pool and not once could he get near the water? 

How many people do you know who day after day whine and complain about their miserable lives, but never seem to take steps to improve them? Friends come alongside and suggest possible solutions, but it’s as though their ideas never register. Meanwhile, the litany of excuses and blame-casting go on, ad infinitum. They blame their parents, their ex-spouses, their bosses, their friends—everyone but themselves for staying stuck in stale, unhappy circumstances. They can pull out countless excuses for why they don’t take charge of their own lives. But the root of their problem is fear—and the fruit of their fear is missed opportunities, missed miracles, missed joy.

When you choose to stay in the role of victim, you never have to accept responsibility for your life—never have to face your fears. Perhaps the crippled man by the pool had managed to garner sympathy, even routine handouts from sympathetic passersby. He’d learned to identify himself over the years as a pathetic cripple. This man had grown quite comfortable in his role as victim. No doubt, he was fearful of the implications of his healing. After all, if he were healed, who’d feel sorry for him? He might even have to . . . find a job!

Our prayer for you today at No Heart Left Behind Ministries is that you begin to identify your fears that keep you paralyzed, just like the man at the pool of Bethesda. Replace your fears with faith-faith in the one who saved you from sin and death. 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, 
Look full in His wonderful face, 
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim 
In the light of His glory and grace.