So here we go. This is it. Bring your family issues right up
to the line here, and let’s get some stuff out in the open. Let’s
get specific. Let’s put a bead on the bull’s-eye where the real
source of your family strife and discomfort and unmet needs
are originating from, and let’s show him the kind of resistance
that a steady dose of prayer is able to exact against his
demolition plans.
Is it your marriage? Then quit trying to be the Holy Spirit
in your relationship, responsible for poking and prodding that
husband of yours until he finally sees things the same way you
see them. I’ll admit I spent some of my first years as a married
woman convinced that my primary spiritual gift in life was to
change Jerry... in Jesus’ name! It’s taken me nearly two
decades to begin realizing I was wrong. Changing Jerry, as it
turns out, is not my spiritual gift. Nowhere in 1 Corinthians 12,
or anywhere else in Scripture where the divinely infused gifts
of God’s Spirit are listed, does “improving thy husband”
appear as even a footnoted selection. And if we didn’t know
this to be the case from its obvious absence among the catalog
of spiritual gifts, haven’t we all discovered from exhausting
experience that the Holy Spirit all by Himself can do a much
better job of it than we ever could?