<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Godly sorrow vs Worldly sorrow<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Cozy, would you share some of this with me? It sounds really interesting. Thanks!<BR>

<B>9) Do you have any anger, unforgiveness, hurt, or disappointment toward your H" Explain why.</B> Yes, I have been feeling hurt because my H was unfaithful to me, betrayed me and lied to me. Dear Lord, I confess my deep hurt and resentment over David's affair, please forgive me for feeling hurt and take this sin out of my heart. Lord, please give me a clean, pure heart, setting me free from the bondage of a broken heart. AMEN<P><B>10) Do you ever feel like you don't want to pray for your husband? Explain why.</B> No. I want to pray for him every day. If I don't who will? I promised the Lord I would pray for him all the days of my life. Dear Father, I pray that you will give me the strength and clarity of mind to pray faithfully every day and without ceasing for my husband. Thank You Lord.

Boy, did I get behind! I am writing the whole thing out for those who don't have the book!<P><B>Q. 9-Do you have any anger, unforgiveness, hurt, or disappointment toward your husband? Explain why. Even if you have a good reason for feeling the way you do, confess those negative thoughts as sin and ask God to set you free from them. I know this is hard if you feel justified in your feelings, but this prayer of confession and repentance must come first before you can begin praying for your husband with a right heart and see answers to your prayers.</B><P>I think part of my procrastination in doing this was knowing that it was going to take a while to write it all down...!<P>Yes, I have multiple feelings along these lines. I am angry over the deception that prior to our marriage, my husband was seeking the Word with me, that he made the effort to pray with me even though he had never done such a thing before, that the issue of his nudism was just a part of our differences and that he said he would never push me, that he verbally accepted my stance that the Lord always came first with me, that he understood that our lives had to be wrapped around scripture, if we wanted our marriage to be different from those before. From all these issues, I do feel hurt, disappointed and I suppose unforgiving as well. I have a hard time understanding how to respect him as the Lord says when he clings to the false god of nudism, so I am probably even mad at my heavenly Father for this learning experience! <P>Father, when You reveal our flaws to us, You leave nothing unturned. Your timing is such that You know when we are ready for it and I do find myself feeling embarassed for having all these feelings and anger even at You. I feel like a whining child full of "yeah buts"... <P>You asked me if I trusted You and I said yes and yet, my behavior has been less of trust than I would like to admit. Forgive me Father for my anger and lack of trust in You. Forgive me for carrying the sins of hurt and disppointment, for being unforgiving of Ralph for the things that have happened since our marriage. <P>Forgive my attitude of self-righteousness towards him, for failing to see his hurt as well, his confusion that I have contributed to. Forgive my pride in thinking that I am justified in my feelings. Father, You know what is best for us and You have chosen Ralph to be my husband. <P>Change my heart Father, let it be one with You, let it's desire to be obedient to You and to learn those lessons that You have for me to learn during this trial. Let me rejoice in the hardships I am enduring now, that You would be glorified through it all.<P>Let my vision for the future be as You see it, not as I would like it to be. Forgive my unforgiveness towards my husband. Give me Your compassion towards him and the strength to face him and apologize. Put Your words in my mouth and let him hear with Your ears.<P>Change me, Father! IJN.<P><B>10-Do you ever feel like you don't want to pray for your husband? Explain why. Write a prayer asking God to help you desire to pray for God's best to be poured out on your husband. ((This may be a prayer you have to pray every day for awhile, so don't worry if you haven't sensed an immediate answer.)</B><P>Phew! Gets harder and harder! Yes, there are days when I feel like my husband can just sit and rot in his deludedness. (Now is that self-righteousnes or what? ) I do feel sometimes like the time it takes to pray for my husband can be better spent for the kingdom in other ways. (Boy, I just hate it when He shows me myself in the mirror of His eyes) <P>Father, I do need Your desire to pray for Your best to be poured out on Ralph. Again, I confess my sin of self-righteousness and ask for Your forgiveness. I spend so much time asking you to bop him along side of his head and to open his eyes, that I forget to ask for Your best in his/our lives. I do want my desires to coincide with Your desires for us. I do want to be the kind of wife You would have me be for my husband. I do want Your best for Him, knowing that I benefit from that as well in the process. Oh Lord, increase my desire to pray for my husband. Let there be no doubts as I pray, let there only be the wisdom from the Spirit to pray as You desire me to pray, to recognize that Your best may not look the same as I preceive it. Let me not deviate or clarify what the "best" should look like but to be simple in prayer, Your best Father, pour Your best Father over him! IJN<P><B>11- Is there anything for which you need to ask your husband to forgive you? Ask God to show you if there is anything for which you need to repent (an attitude, action, area of neglect, and so on). As He reveals it, write it down. Write a prayer asking God to give you the courage, strength and humility, to ask your husband for forgivenss and to communicate your love and a desire to change.</B><P>I have to ask forgiveness for:<BR>self-righteousness<BR>pride<BR>lack of trust<P>Father, in light of boundry issues that I believe you have revealed to me, I don't know how to ask for forgiveness and not be taken advantage of. Father, I do desire to be right with You and with my husband. I don't want to be misconstrued, my motivations questioned or my actions to be perceived in any way other than what you desire. I don't want to accept anything less than Your best for us, to be maligned with evil, to succumb to errant behaviors that cross Your will for our lives. Help me to have the courage, the strength and the humility to ask Ralph for forgiveness for the ways I have wronged him without his expectations for that request to increase his demandingness. Help me to simply ask for the forgiveness and to allow You to work in both of us for Your greater glory. Help me to communicate the desire to change into Your likeness of what a wife should be and not into what my husband's perception of what a wife should be. Soften my husband's heart to receive my words and to not discount them, for You know how hard this will be for me. IJN, Amen!<P>Thought I would never get through it! Stretching....what a morning exercise!

Ouch SueB, the things you say I see in me way too often! I have to read it again so that I can absorb it more... <P>AW... Go to my church's web site.. cedarhome.org and when you get to the main page click on audio and look for the message from May 14th on Mothers day... You'll find the message based in II Cor. 7:2-16. It was real eye opening to 'see' what Godly sorrow should look like... It made me realize that all I have seen in my husband is worldly wisdom.... Now at least I know what to look for if there is to be a reconciliation......<P>I have to get to the next questions and the next thread.... <P>------------------<BR>Jesus is the only answer!<BR>His blessings, Cozy

Have to share:<BR>Still haven't gotten to accomplish 11 yet, but Pastor this morning gave me some good insight. One of my sins was/is agreeing to something in order to placate my husband and get him off my back. That desire for peace and harmony. The Holy Spirit then convicted me of how wrong this was and I went to him and told him that I was wrong for having the wrong motivation for agreeing to the request and for him to please forgive me...which he hasn't...the insight that Pastor further brought to me attention, in light of H's complaint that I broke a vow and didn't care how that impacted him, was that I did break a vow and I didn't seem to care about his feelings about it. I was more concerned about what God thought about it at the time. I do need to confess to my husband that I did break this vow and that I was uncaring in only wanting to placate him rather than truly caring about his feelings and loving him enough to be honest with him and to be firm in my faith that our marriage was worth more than a thing such as this. I was self-centered in only wanting relief from the harping. I failed my husband in this area. For that I need to confess and ask for forgiveness. <P>The other important piece that finally sunk in today, in this process for the otters also struggling, is that when we do apologize and ask for forgiveness, our spouse may not forgive. Our job is to do the asking...that is all, the end and we have been freed from that bondage. What the other person does is their responsibility. They may choose to forgive or not. <P>In this process of humility and working to make our words and actions agree, we must also think of how we want to change in that area, identify to our spouse what we plan to do differently and to ask for help in this area so that we can accomplish change here, thus showing that we are repentent and our words and actions match.<P>It is important to note whether our action is in line with what we apologized for, that is, if I apologize for breaking a vow, then what action will I take to make sure that doesn't happen again. My husband's thinking, that if I was sorry about such and such then I would be repentent by running around nude, has nothing to do with the behavior that I apologized for.<P>In this process of chapter one where we work on taking the log out our own eyes and pray for the Lord to change us, God challenges us in ways we had not thought of before. This gives me much to think and pray about, and if I think about it, really does increase communication as it challenges us to be clear and concise. <P>I really do plan to get to the next batch of questions...yuo guys will be at the end of the book and I will still be in Chapter 1! God has much to teach me here.<p>[This message has been edited by SueB (edited May 23, 2000).]