Most of this chapter seems to be similar to His Wife - page 154 states "God didn't take away miy husband's interest in sports like I prayed. Instead, He gave me peace and a new perspective on it." That three letter prayer - "Change Me Lord" is the key. <P>I wish I had done what Stormie suggested, praying for your marriage to keep the concept of divorce from taking hold, and praying to preserve the marriage from destruction. In the early years of my marriage, many many times when the going got rough, we'd yell at each other "I'll just divorce you" in anger. I feel so bad about this now, in that what I'm going through now could have been avoided had I prayed for the preservation of my marriage.<P>Leftover residue from my first marriage has clouded my current marriage. My first husband's infidelity and verbal abuse was always in the back of my head. My feet have been stuck in the past for a long time. The Lord has convicted me that I have to leave the past in the past, and focus on Him for guidance for the future. <P>Stormie's prayer is all relevant to me, especially the last sentence - so we will never leave a lgacy of divorce to our children.<P>Lord, please remind each of us to pray for the preservation of our marriages, and to continue to stand for our marriages. Remove the ties that bind us to the past, which hinders our moving forward in restoring our marriages. In Jesus Name I pray, AMEN.

Aw,<BR>I'm in prayer with you. I thank God, I praise God for all the Glory is his, My husband called home on Sunday, as he said to check on his wonderful family and to tell us he loves us. Praise the Lord. IJN amen.

Brown, <BR>That's great!!! Praise God, he is so awesome!<P>God Bless<BR>AW

"Don't take your marriage for granted, no matter how great it is. " That is the sentence that brought conviction to me and caused me to realize that I had a good deal of responsibility in the failure of my marriage. "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall". (ICorinthians 10:12) " Pray for your marriage to be protected from any person or situation that could destroy it. " There was a person and there always will be a person who will seek to destroy our marriages. If it isn't Satan it will be a lonely woman looking for a man who she can snare.<P>I have learned that never again will I be so smug that I think my marriage can never be destroyed by anything. Pride goeth before<BR> a fall and so went I!<P>Lord, forgive me for a prideful spirit. Forgive me for not seeing that there could be one who would seek to snare my husband and destroy my marriage. Help me to never again take my husband for granted. Make me a wife who will put my husband first after You and uphold him faithfully in prayer. Help me to be on the alert for anything which would seek the demise of my mariage, be it my pride or the lust of another. IJN

Taking the marriage for granted, letting resentments build up, kids, all these things I am guilty of. I withdrew when he became too critical and didn't deal with it.<BR>I went to a wedding recently (boy was that hard). A woman from my Bible study got married. Our main Preacher from our Church preached. He is very gifted with his sermons. He said that you need three things in marriage. You need love, truth and Jesus. If you only have love you bounce off each other. If you only have truth you grind each other down. But when you have Jesus and love and truth the two people become polished and grow in a marriage. I thought that was really beautiful. We do need to call our spouses on their behavior and vice versa in love. That's what I gave up doing when he became too critical. Now we know he had depression and that accounts for a lot of the problems especially how he views the marriage and his memories of it. I pray now for the chance to do it right. I want sooo much to have a chance to grow a new relationship with the man I love. The marriage was dysfunctional and I see now that it had to die, or be smashed. But I still love the person and would like to start the relationship in a new way. I pray God will give us a chance. I pray God will give us all chances to grow our marriages in the image that God sees for each couple that posts here.<BR>Father,<BR>We come before you humbled knowing that we too have made mistakes in our relationships. We pray that you, Father will go before us and restore our marriages and remind us to invite you to be in the middle of our marriages every day. Of vital importance, Lord, I ask that you touch each of us as you desire to call us to know you in a deeper way. For that is where you truely want us to be. I pray in all confidence that you will restore these marriages for Your Glory and in your will. Amen

Taj, HW - you are both so right about Taj your statement "Don't take your marriage for granted, no matter how great it is. " REALLY hit home for me. During my husband's sober years I took him and our marriage for granted. I didn't love and respect him the way I should have. I felt I was entitled to punish him for drinking so much and neglecting me prior to his sobriety. I feel a need to ask his forgiveness for this. I've been praying for the Lord to reveal to me any sins I'm harboring. He revealed it to me tonight. If my husband wasn't sleeping, I would go ask for his forgiveness right now. Guess that will be the topic over coffee tomorrow AM. <P>Dear Lord, I agree in prayer with HW in asking that You will go before us and restore our marriages and remind us to invite You to be in the middle of our marriages every day. Holy Spirit, please fill every empty space in our heart so that there is no room for the evil one. Thank you Lord, for answering our prayers. In Jesus Name, AMEN.

I, too, wish I had read Stormie's book a long time ago. I have only recently been able to turn all this over to God. Perhaps if I had let Him handle it instead of trying to fix everything myself, things could have been different. Maybe I could have found the strength to stay and not leave my H. I just couldn't handle knowing he didn't love me and didn't want to be with me. I have found new strength and hope in prayer and in fact, letting God show me the way. My only problem is my concept of "time" and His sometimes aren't the same .

Janie,<BR>So good to hear from you again! I can fully relate to "my concept of "time" and His sometimes aren't the same". I'm so impatient, I want everything fixed right now, I want this wonderful loving relationship with my H that I feel we should have.... but it's so slow in happening. My H is cold and aloof so much that I find it hard to believe him when he says "I love you". I need to be patient, and let go and get out of the way so God can work on him. I get frustrated about how long its taking and start fretting about everything my H doesn't say or doesn't do. I need to stop it and just pray harder. <P>Its not to late though Janie. I heard so many times those words, "I don't love you, I don't want to be with you, leave me alone, maybe you should go find some goody two shoes in a suit and stay away from me" from my husband. He doesn't say these anymore... and he is home. If there's anything specific you would like us to pray for please tell us. It is an honor to be able to pray with all of you ladies for restoration of marriages. God bless you Janie.

Have heard many of those same things from my husband too. What I am realizing is that it is a defense mechanism to protect his fear of abandonment, his fear that I will leave him (as everyone in his life has, his perception), his sense that he isn't good enough for me and can never meet my expectations. He wants me to prove him right and my job is to prove him wrong, to learn to detach enough to allow his verbage and emotional enough to let him know that I am committed to him and to our marriage. Maybe that is why the requests he makes of me are increasing in intensity, to so totally gross me out that I will leave. Interesting thought. How can my husband have any regard for me when he doesn't seem to have any for himself? Seems this takes us back to the Ephesians verses. He doesn't know how to love himself and he certainly doesn't take care of himself or his body. All the more reason as wives in difficult circumstances that we need to take captive every thought and compare it with the grace and love we receive from the one who first loved us in our iniquity. Guess you can tell God is talking to me about grace in the last 24 hours.

SueB, interesting. Things your H says so closely parallel what mine says. There have been many times I felt like you, that he thinks that he isn't good enough for me and can never meet my expectations, or make me happy. In fact he has said those exact words, but said them very angrily. He would say this very often when he was involved in his affair, I think to try to ease his guilt. It is such a struggle for me to understand all of this, not to let it upset me, and to keep striving towards being the kind of Christian wife God wants me to be. <BR>Lately I feel like I have failed so much in our marriage that it will never recover. <BR>

Okay Sister, reality check here. You made have made mistakes as you are as human as the rest of us, but you did not twist that man's arm and force him to put that bottle to his lips. Own what is yours, sure, but once you ask for forgivenss then that part is done. The Lord tosses it away, He washes you whiter than snow and remembers it no more! Satan is the one who throws it back in your face. He wants you to forget the grace you received. Heard an interesting sermon on the road today. Based on these verses:<BR>MT 18:23 "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. [24] As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents* was brought to him. [25] Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.<P> MT 18:26 "The servant fell on his knees before him. `Be patient with me,' he begged, `and I will pay back everything.' [27] The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.<P> MT 18:28 "But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.* He grabbed him and began to choke him. `Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.<P> MT 18:29 "His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, `Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'<P> MT 18:30 "But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. [31] When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.<P> MT 18:32 "Then the master called the servant in. `You wicked servant,' he said, `I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. [33] Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' [34] In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.<P> MT 18:35 "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."<P>He talked about how important it was was for us to understand the depth of the grace received and how we also need to give that grace to those who have harmed us. Why else would Jesus give us such an example? If we trash the forgivenss He gives us and in turn do not forgive others, we will be the ones who lose. I thought of myself and those of you who have been violated through infidelity. Some have mentioned the difficulty in forgetting, though they feel they have forgiven. This speaker asserts until we forgive others as Jesus forgave, remembering no more, we really haven't understood the grace and forgiveness we received. If Satan brings up the memory, rebuke him and remind him that the Lord has washed it away. Call out frequently to the Lord.<P>I just was traveling down the busy highway and was slowing down for a red light when I noticed off to my left cars were moving even though the light was red for them. Coming at me was a car on the wrong side of the road. I looked at the driver and realized the woman was having a seizure. I said "oh dear Jesus!" and her car seemed to somehow miss my car. I jumped out of the car and started chasing her, telling others to get out of her way. She ran into a truck and that finally stopped the car, still seizuring. I prayed Lord help her!" The driver of the truck came running over and I yelled at her that the woman was seizuring. The driver turned out to be an EMT emergency technician and we got the woman out of the car and to the ground. Fortunately a fire truck happened to be driving by and saw the commotion, so they came to help. I have no idea how the woman is doing, but I praise God that only a couple of cars got bumped and that He provided the help needed for her. We limit God so much. <P>Each and every day is a new one, a gift given to you, a clean slate, yesterday's gone and tomorrow is too far away to worry about. 9 years ago, my husband was going to an AA meeting. The Spirit of darkness came over me and I knew that if he left, he would never come home and I begged him to stay home. He kissed me and said, " We will have all day together tomorrow". He was killed in an auto accident that night. Don't lose a today, make every moment count! I love you all.

The verses you shared SueB were from my "In Touch" devotion by Charles Stanley. Forgiveness is something that God expects to come from the heart. As believers forgiving in its infancy comes easily because we don't want to disobey God's command. Too often that is intellectual forgiveness and not from the heart. Thats OK at first for I believe obedience often is a mental assent to obey. The problem comes when God begins to lead us to a deeper forgiveness. I truly believe that that is where we struggle in the recovery stage of our marriages. You are so right SueB that we need to refuse to listen to Satan's reminders for it needs to be left at Calvary's cross. God forgives and that settles it!<P>Our forgiveness of self is just as precarious. We need to do the same and leave our confessed sins at Calvary. My H is unable to do that so far. He is living in such a way that he is seeing himself as unworthy to be of value to the Kingdom of God. I know he needs to forgive himself before we will complete our road to recovery.<P>Rootbeer, let yourself off the hook. Don't allow Satan to make your testimony of God's grace in your life ineffective. We are all responsible to a degree for our marriages, some greater then others. BUT that doesn't matter for it all is under the blood of Jesus when we come to him and confess. It is finished! Those are Christ's words at Calvary.<P>Please pray for my H that somehow he can see the depth of God's forgiveness for him. It would be a double tragedy if he couldn't begin to be a testimony for Christ after God has forgiven him so much.<P>

Taj, You made some good points. As I have been sitting here this afternoon thinking about the afternoon's events and my reminder that I need to cherish today, I have been trying to figure out what I could do to show love to my husband in spite of our differences that would make an impact in some way. After your message and pray request for your husband, I remembered that you said you had Neil Anderson's Released from Bondage book. I remembered all those verses in the back of the book that identified our significance in Christ and an idea is forming in my mind that somehow I want to take pics of my husband and I don't know what else yet, poetry maybe and make some kind of poster, identifying those significant verses in relation to my husband- a valentine poster of sorts. I know I need to focus on the positive. There are parts of our husbands we love with a passion and I guess I am feeling that I need to bring that to the forefront instead of the 2 x 4 behavior that has been so prevalent lately. Maybe if it is written that Fred is chosen to bear fruit, Fred is the salt and light of the earth, Fred has been redeemed and forgiven for all of his sins, that the good work God has begun in Fred will be perfected....those type of statements interwoven into a collage. What do you think?

The statement hit home here, Taken my marriage for granted. I have seen the mistakes I have made and I'm trying to correct them. God did open my eyes. I wish they had been more open before. The prayer in chapter 1 Help me see potential problems before they arise. I should have been praying this among other things before this affair. God has really opened my eyes. Thank God.