When I was single, I heard that it was hypocritical for a married person to try and connect with God when they had unresolved issues with their spouse. Trying to make conversation with God when none was going on in your house was deceitful and phony.
So after our wedding, I truly believed that God would henceforth “see both of us or none of us.”
And of course, like most newlyweds, we had a ton of adjustments to make, which provided a perfect hotbed of messiness.
When we hit bumps on the road (there were many and seemingly unending), my communication with God would come to a grinding halt. That also opened another can of worms. Since I never had those kinds of “communication issues” with God as a single person, I found myself blaming and resenting my husband for interfering with my spiritual life. I also felt that God was angry with me for not journaling, praying, and fellowshipping with Him as I should.
So for the longest time in those early days, I had many issues on my plate, with no idea how to solve them, feeling that the very Person I could go to was “unavailable”—till I could sort myself out. It took a long time to begin to understand that I could go to God, right in the middle of messiness.
3 things I learned . . .
1. I could tell the devil off.
When stormy times hit, the devil would jump in and pour a large cauldron of condemnation over my head. I would hear him repeat the lie that I already believed—that praying when going through a crisis in marriage was hypocritical.
God, in His mercy, began to show me that I had a bad case of guilt and condemnation going on. I needed to get free. I needed to renew my mind with the word of God whenever I began to feel helpless and fearful. I needed to take up God’s truth and stop giving the enemy a foothold in my heart and marriage.
God assured me that He would never stop loving me, just because I fell short. He loved me anyway, through my sin, my conflicts, my infantile attitudes, my marriage adjustments. He had not left us to fend for ourselves, to return when we had grown up. He was right there with us.
2. God was interested in the condition of my heart.
After I learned to tell the devil off, I had to learn how to actually connect and pray in the midst of a storm in marriage. Because stormy times were the times when I felt least saved. The conflicts would ignite haywire emotions and reactions—anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, shock, etc.
So it could not be “business as usual” with God. It was more of a very wobbly, hesitant, and fearful walk to the holy of holies … And God didn’t seem to mind it.
He told me that He was after the condition of my heart, not the many things on my large plate.
Prayer time was a re-modeling session on the “Potter’s” wheel. Dealing with my anger, my pain, and disappointment. I found that God would point out where I had gone wrong. He would call me back to trust, to faith in Him, to hope and belief.
3. Prayer time was for strength, not for show.
The more I got better acquainted with myself, the more I realized that I could not, by my own strength, choose the God-kind of commitment or the God-kind of love by myself.
I was too selfish, too willful, too proud, too egotistical, too eager not to turn the other cheek.
Thus, I began to appreciate my times of fellowship with God even more. I began to see that it was not for others (to be seen as a “good Christian” – never mind the fact that our conflicts were private!).
Fellowship with God was for me.
David, the shepherd king said, “I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13)
When things on earth were breaking down, that is the perfect time to seek heaven’s intervention. To search for a Rhema word to shore up my hysterical soul. To dig deeper and be changed from the inside, as opposed to trying to fix everything else around me.
Question – Have you ever struggled to involve God when life or marriage feels hard?
Written by Ngina Otiende
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Worthy Bible Studies
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