Testimony of Answered Prayer for Marriage Restoration

In continuation of our online series of testimony of answered prayers, Hadassah shares how God answered her prayer for marriage restoration.

Do you pray for your marriage? I did and I still do.

I want to encourage you and share my journey of answered prayer for marriage restoration.

It is a long journey of faith, dying to self, perseverance, patience, and learning to trust God’s promises more than we trust our circumstances.

This was just one of many nights when I was lying in bed awake, tears streaming down my face. I heard the breathing of my husband in his corner of the bed, peacefully sleeping, not aware of my pain. It’s not supposed to be this way, I thought.

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Marriage is not supposed to be this way. I remembered how wonderfully promising our love and marriage had started. Then after the death of my mother-in-law, the fabric of our relationship changed. My husband fell into the pit of depression, starting to add layers of isolation to his soul and body.

Steps to freedom in Christ.

Then another crisis hit. I wanted to have children but felt that we were on different pages, far away in our worlds.

Month after month the alienation deepened. I felt alone, abandoned and rejected as a wife and a woman. I was devastated and desperate.

Bitterness, anger, and resentment were filling my heart. Quarrels or cold silence ruled our days. Our marriage was dying.  But God…

The First Answer to My Prayer for Marriage Restoration

I started to seek God intensely and pour out my heart to Him, praying that He restores my marriage and my husband.

My husband was not a believer, so this spiritual gap between us was also a source of sadness and anguish.

I developed the daily habit to read and study the Bible, journaling verses and my thoughts and prayers, listening to the specific message of the Holy Spirit. In my deepest anguish of an abandoned woman, God spoke to me with Isaiah chapter 54.

Through these words, God helped me to shift my focus from my husband as a source and satisfier of my needs of being unconditionally loved, wanted, pursued and adored, towards God as my husband, best friend and the ultimate satisfier of my primary needs, and as the source of my blessings.

It felt so deeply revolutionary and scandalous to see God as my husband, as the ultimate provider and the One who meets my needs.

To accept and respond to this intimate invitation was God’s way to help me deal with my husband’s rejection, giving me the freedom and the ability to love him back without the burden of placing my expectations on him.

Expectations that he was not able to fulfill.

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God’s Co-Workers in the Process of Restoration

I was learning to weave my heart and thoughts around God’s promises of restoration.

In the months and years that followed God was strengthening my heart with His word, sustaining, comforting and purifying.

I became aware of one very important biblical principle – our calling to be co-workers of God in the business of restoration, not just passive recipients of answered prayers without responsibility.

No, I also had a very important part to play.

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And this was not trying to change my husband’s heart and behavior or coercing him to change. Anyway, even I wanted, I could not do this.

If I wanted a change in my husband and marriage, I needed to allow God to change me. The restoration starts with me.

I needed to submit my rights and take responsibility for my heart attitudes, words, and actions.

In His Word God defines our main responsibility and assignment clearly: to abide in Him, follow Him every day, obey Him, and love the people in our lives.

I needed to take responsibility for my heart trusting God to make the change in my husband’s heart.

I needed to take responsibility for my heart trusting God to make the change in my husband’s heart. @onthewaybg #TestimoniesOfFaith #AllRoundJesus Click To Tweet

Perseverance in Prayer

Years passed by. Our relationship and conflicts seemed to get even worse.

It was difficult to keep trusting God with my marriage. I got diagnosed with infertility and started to have panic attacks.

At the bottom of my deepest pit, I did not stop praying, trusting that God knows what He is doing to bring restoration and change.

Sometimes things need to be shaken and destroyed first before the re-building starts.

In this special season of waiting the boundaries of my faith were stretched and tested.

I was learning to hold on and persevere despite the discouraging circumstances.

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Our Suffering is Not in Vain

In one moment of desperation, God spoke to me with this verse:

“Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever – no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.” (Philemon 1:15)

Perhaps the reason my husband was separated from me for a little was that I might have him back forever – no longer as a husband, but even better than that, as a dear spiritual brother in Christ!

I longed for God to erase the separating spiritual lines and sets a new foundation for our marriage.

God was inviting me to see our separation in the last five years and my suffering as something temporary, as the price for which I could have him back forever.

My suffering and pain were not in vain.

By the grace of God, the pain would give birth to something new and good.

The name Philemon attracted also my attention and was amazed to learn that besides the meaning of “who kisses” and “affectionate”, the name means “he who shows kindness when he himself is mistreated”.

God had acknowledged that I was mistreated. Nevertheless, he was calling me to show kindness and be a Philemon to my husband.

The Answered Prayer for Marriage Restoration

Steps to freedom in Christ.

I became more aware of the gradual change in my husband. As I imagined him as a fruit that had been growing and now was reaching the point to be completely ripe and ready to be plucked.

I prayed that the Holy Spirit turns his sorrows into repentance, bringing him to a new beginning and life with God.

There was no need to preach. I said in the last years everything I needed to say.

My life and the changes in me were his living sermon and proof for God’s love and His transformative power. I was his living manifestation of God’s grace.

On the 7^th year after I started earnestly to seek God and to pray for the restoration of our marriage my husband surrendered himself and his life to God, accepting by faith forgiveness and justification in Jesus Christ. We both knew that a dramatic, invisible, irreversible shift took place.

We were experiencing both birth and resurrection – of my husband, of our hopes and marriage.

God is Faithful and He Answers Our Prayers

Some seven years ago, I thought this would be the most improbable and impossible thing to happen.

I wanted it, I prayed for it, but I could not see a chance.

But God was faithful and He answered my prayer for marriage restoration according to these words:

“Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.” (1 Peter 3:1-2)

It took a lot of brokenness and pain, and tons of God’s grace to change, me, my husband and our marriage. But it was worth it.

My life and the changes in me were his living sermon and proof for God’s love and His transformative power. @onthewaybg #TestimoniesOfFaith #AllRoundJesus Click To Tweet