The Unbelieving Spouse
Praise Jesus. It is a blessing to be in the will of God and to be in submission to Him. The way to walk and to stay on the straight and narrow path is to be connected to Jesus and to be humbled before Him every day. If we are not holding Jesus's hand no matter what we will be shaken, we will fall off the path. One of the easiest ways to fall off the path is by a friend or a family member, a fellow Christian who prophesies over you or who becomes a leader to you, a counselor a pastor. When you allow people close to you, they also can be used by Satan to get you off of the path.
And many Christians have been mixed up with false religion, false believers, false brothers and sisters. And they have made people their teacher. They have sought to please people rather than God. And because they have itching ears and they don't care to engage their relationship with Jesus every day. They fall off that straight and narrow path. For some of them, it is their spouse, their children, their grandparents, their grandkids. We know what Jesus said how He came to be like a sword even dividing families. Jesus talked about how He came to turn people against each other. He talked even about a mother or a mother-in-law, your own brother, your own sister, your own dad or mother, all these people over Jesus will be turned against one another. Because when we choose to be on that straight and narrow path, the devil will use anyone to try to pull you off. He will try to use anyone to distract you and to pull you back down, so that ultimately you will not make it, but you will end in hell. There is one goal the devil house and that is to bring souls to hell. And as disciples, we also have a goal and that is to fish for men, to bring men into the kingdom of God. If we are with Jesus, we need to stay in the middle of the straight and narrow path. That way we can steer clear all of the agents of Satan, all those demonic lions that are prowling ready to devour any flesh that gets to the side of the road. If we stay in the middle and we hold Jesus's hand, He is the lamp to our feet and the light to our path.
I had a few questions that I wanted to address this afternoon. And the first one is in regards to an unbelieving spouse. For example, if you are married and you are trying to follow Jesus but your husband doesn't or maybe he's religious. And you have seen the error in the way of dead religion, so what should you do as a wife? Should you follow your husband to church, or should you be rebellious and tell your husband I will not follow you? Because both of these appear wrong. So you find yourself in an area of compromise with God. The only solution for these sorts of problems is to go to Jesus and ask Him. I don't have the answer. No pastor can give you the answer. But we know that Jesus is the Way. He is the Way out of death. He is the Way out of trouble. He is the Way out of the shackles of the world. And if we just go to Him and say, “Lord, I know that you're the answer. I know that you're the Way. And I'm not sure what to do in my circumstance. I have an unbelieving spouse. Help me to know what to do to be loyal to you. O, God, and also do the most loving thing to and for my spouse.” And if you pray with humility, God is ready to help any of us. He is ready to guide us to show us the way. He is not the God of condemnation. He is not the God to just cast His judgment on us when we don't know and we don't have wisdom. But when we seek the Lord in humility and seek first His kingdom, He always makes the way for us because He Himself is the Way.
A lot of people for these sorts of things, they go to counselors and they get themselves into more trouble. Because the counselor suggests something that is against God. Or even worse yet, they go to another person of the opposite sex, and they get counseling from the guy down the street. And when their husband is not present, the wife and some other guy are counseling each other. And that is a way for Satan to get in and cause adultery. Many people have fallen into adultery by counseling the opposite sex. We have to be very careful about going to other people for advice, especially with marital problems. That's where a lot of adultery happens, and really bad things happen. Because you start to allow another person into your private life. It would be better if you worked out your relationship with your spouse directly and with God directly rather than bringing other people, other men from the church into your life, bringing them into your home when your husband is gone. Those things will wreak havoc on your family. That stuff is disastrous, guys. If you want to fix your marriage and be in right standing and right relationship with God, then you need to face Jesus Christ and face your husband. It would be better that you listen to your husband and listen to God. Because that way you will know what to do. He won't be rebellious. But when people that are outsiders start interjecting and giving you ideas on what you should do for your marriage, on how to fix your husband or fix your wife, that's when serious problems start to occur.
Jesus wants us to be one in flesh and one in Spirit when we get married. But the problem is for many Christians they get married and they find themselves one in flesh but they're not one in Spirit. They're not on the same page for anything. They're always in disagreement on how to raise the children, on if they should go to church or not go to church. They're in disagreement on how they should take care of business, how they should take care of money. And all of these things cause major problems in their life.
Jesus is the answer. If you submit yourself to Him in an earnest prayer and say, “Lord, please, I surrender my marriage to you. I come to you first for guidance. I make you my teacher.” Then the Holy Spirit will be poured out on you. He will teach you He will guide you. He will pick you up. He will expose to you on the error of your ways. And if you pray for your husband, that's the best thing you can do or if you pray for your wife. But don't go to someone for advice, because no one is capable of doing that. You know a lot of churches they have divorce programs. And they invite people there that are newly married or that are having problems in their marriage and it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy that people end up getting divorced and falling into more adultery. The answer is not church programs and mentors and and leaders. The answer is the Spirit of God, the Spirit that Jesus sends when we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
So I encourage you, if you have a husband or a wife, if you're married and your spouse isn't following the Lord, and you have differences, go to the Lord first in prayer, be slow to anger, quick to forgive and long-suffering that is patient.
The second topic that I want to address briefly is prophecies. Now since the time I have been on the internet, I have seen many prophecies of Christians fail. I have seen some prophecies come true. But most of them I've seen fail. And these are from Christians that are more dedicated than most people that I've ever found. There are people in church of course. And there's people that are outside of church that are Christians. But then there's the sort of people that really believe in God, they believe in dreams and visions, they are dedicated to do what's right before God. And those are the sorts of people that I've seen have visions and interpretations to dreams that are false. We have to be very careful who we allow to speak into our life. So what I have found that works for me when I've been following the Lord is to ask Him always for confirmation. So if there is someone that says I had such and such a dream, I had such and such a vision, I believe such and such is going to happen, because God Himself told me I take that with a grain of sand or grain of salt, however, you say that I don't take it as absolute Truth. Because I don't know how many times people have said they've heard from Jesus Himself and Jesus confirmed it. And then it has been an absolute lie. I don't know if the people themselves think that what they're saying is true or if they are 100% deceived.
But I do know that people's hearts are easily deceived by many things that they hear. So what I do is when someone gives a personal prophecy or a public prophecy about something that's going to happen is I just pray and I say, “Lord if this is true, confirm it and if it's not true, may I forget about it, because I don't want to apply or think about anything that's false.”
And I'm telling you this has been the sure way to test prophecies. You know people can say, “we’ll go to the scripture for certain prophecies.” There is no scripture that's going to to prove if it's true or false. Some things that the Holy Spirit told me there was no way I could confirm that from a bible verse. It's like when Abraham was told to pack his bags and leave, he couldn't have gone to the bible, there was no a scripture that told him to leave Mesopotamia. He had to trust in God. And the same when the Holy Spirit spoke to me and called me to leave my old town. There wasn't a bible verse I could go to to test to see if that was from God or not. I had to believe in my heart and trust that this was of the Lord from the voice of the Holy Spirit that I've learned to accept as God compared to the voices that pretend to be God that I have learned in time to reject.
So if you have been around Christian people for a while, especially people who believe in dreams and visions, prophecies, words from God, interpretations all that sort of stuff, instead of just taking something to heart, if someone says this is the person you're going to marry or this is what's going to happen in your marriage or you're going to have to move or turmoil is going to happen in your life or whatever the case may be, instead of accepting it, because it might as well have come from a demon, but you don't know that, and also you don't want to reject a prophecy if it did come from the Lord, the best thing is just to pray and say, “ Lord, if this came from you, confirm it. And if it didn't, let me forget it.” And the Lord can always confirm His message. Because He is the Way and He's always making the way for us.
The devil is always making traps for us. And often the devil has used people to prophecy a lie about something and often he's used a Christian or a dream. One time it was even my own mom who was a true believer and she was in the Truth of Jesus, but she had this false dream or this false vision about me. And I knew not to take it as from God.
When we keep our eyes on Jesus and when we stay in His hedge of protection, and we stay humble before Him, He keeps us on that straight and narrow path, we can test all things. We can test visions and dreams and and words of God. We don't need to immediately say they're not true. We know that also from the scriptures that we are not to despise prophecies, but we are to test all things.
The question is how do we test. A lot of Christians think that the way to test all things is in the scripture and that's where they get sideways. Because the Pharisees did the same thing. They tested to see if Jesus's prophecies were true from their scriptures. And what did they find? They found that the son of God was a blasphemer, that He was demon-possessed, and that He was worthy to be put to death. And so they brought Him before the the Romans and they accused Him and they hung Him up on the cross.
So that is where the scriptures got the religious racket. That is where the scriptures got the religious Jews. And that is also where the scriptures get these Christians today that are unwilling to test, if prophecy comes from the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit. If you're constantly going back to your idea of the scriptures, you're going to be wrong every time.
Jesus Christ is alive. He hasn't promised us the bible to guide us. He hasn't promised us a prophet to guide us or a dream or a vision to guide us. But as we know from the scriptures and from the voice or the mouth of Jesus Christ, He promised the better gift of the Holy Spirit to teach us all things, to lead us, to tell us of things to come and to bring to our memory the things that He has already taught us. If you are willing to make the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ your one and only teacher, He will lead you and He will guide you into all Truth, and you will not fall off the straight and narrow path. But as soon as you let go of Jesus's hand and try to be guided by your scripture knowledge, by bible interpretation, by prophets, by pastors, by gurus on the internet, and all these supposed words of God and and dreams and whatever it may be, you're going to get yourself so worried and confused. And you're gonna stunt your faith, the faith that you can't even walk forward or tell anyone about God anymore. Because now you don't even know if you're hearing from God or the devil, you'll be so mixed up.
The sure way is to clear your mind of everything that people are saying disconnect from the world and be connected to the Holy Spirit. Be connected to the holy Ghost and listen to Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When we stay close to Him, we have life, because He is the Life, He is the Way and He is the Truth.
May the grace of Jesus be with you.
