What Are the Odds?

It’s been a while. Our youngest son got married and many other events made life a bit crazy for a few months. You are always on my heart and in my prayers, though, even when I am not blogging.

Over the past few months I have been struck again and again with how much divorce has become an acceptable solution for society at large and for the Church specifically. I am so tired of hearing that, of course, it isn’t God’s best and it is too bad that it had to happen. I am also growing extremely weary of hearing that I don’t understand the circumstances and that there was no other alternative.

I do not understand how this side of the cross there can be any difference that is irreconcilable for a Christian. Jesus paid the price with His blood for all sin and to reconcile us all. When He lives within us, how can we ever believe that the differences between us cannot be reconciled?

The problem is the Church has lost its will to fight for marriages.

When circumstances seem more powerful than victory in Jesus, we have forgotten that in Him we are more than conquerors. When we allow another human being, who is probably following what the enemy is saying, to tell us what our future will be, we have forgotten that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.

When we give up and give in and accept the destruction that Satan has brought into our lives, we forget that at the cross he was stripped of all power. “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” Colossians 2:15. Jesus said, “ALL authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Hope is the key. When you have no hope, you cannot have faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for… “ So many times we have been told, “Don’t get his or her hopes up. You don’t know that God will heal that marriage.” I say if you don’t get people’s hopes up, there will be no stand for the healing of the marriage. That is where the Church is today. No hope and no faith when it comes to marriage healing.

Let’s face it, the odds are against you. If you simply go by statistical data, your chances of seeing your marriage healed are bleak. But statistics are only natural reports. They only reflect what others have experienced and most of those others did not have hope or faith that anything could change.

For centuries missionaries have carried the gospel to the corners of the earth. What were the odds of meeting a Christian in those places before they arrived? Probably pretty low odds of that happening. But they were willing to pay the price, to go, and to give their very lives to see those odds change. That is the only way it can happen.

Are you willing to buck the odds? Are you willing to allow God to flood your heart with His vision and your life with His power? Are you willing to swim upstream while others float by you in total defeat? Standing isn’t easy, but it is the only way to see victory. Jesus paid the ultimate price to give us a victorious life. That includes our marriage. But we must be willing to stand in the gap and fight the good fight of faith. Love, Marilyn

“There was a little city with few men in it; and a great king came against it, besieged it, and built great snares around it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city.”  Ecclesiastes 9:14-15

“Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7:14

Author: Marilyn Phillipps

Married 49 years, we have three children and six grandchildren. My initial career of nursing prepared me to work with marriages that are wounded and in need of healing. For 35 my husband and I have led 2=1 International, a ministry to marriages and families around the world. We have seen miracle after miracle when many had given up hope. View all posts by Marilyn Phillipps