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Print Almost a year ago, my husband and I started an off-shoot of our church’s small group ministry that targets marriages, called HomeBuilders. When my aunt, who lives out-of-state, heard about this group’s title, she said, “HomeBuilders sounds like Habitat for God!” Although she was being funny by playing off of the name of Habitat for Humanity, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had gotten it exactly right. What each of us as Apostolic married couples should be doing is building a place in our relationship, in our home, and in our family for God. We should be building a Habitat for God in our marriage. As most of you know, Habitat for Humanity is a great charity where scores of volunteers, both professional contractors and novices like me, come together to build a house for a needy family. If you’ve ever volunteered for this charity, you know it’s hard work and you can expect to be sore the next day! Habitat for Humanity requires that each family who receives a free house must put in hundreds of hours on the jobsite, working hard to help build their own house. They don’t have to do it all alone, but neither can they just sit back and let others do all the work.
Building is a Group
Effort Sometimes, we try to build our relationship in a vacuum without any help from godly counsel or the body of Christ. I suppose it’s possible to build a whole house all by yourself, if you know what you’re doing. But imagine how long that would take, even if you had all the knowledge and skills you needed. And how many people really have all the knowledge and skills they need to build a house alone? You might know about framing, or concrete, or electrical wiring, or plumbing, but you probably don’t know about all of those things. The question becomes—do you know how to meet each one of your spouse’s emotional, spiritual, physical and mental needs without any advice or direction? The Lord has placed a burden in my heart to see the marriages of our church healed and functioning the way He wants them to be. Paul wrote, “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it” (I Corinthians 12:26a). Our church is affected when just one of our marriages is suffering because when a marital relationship isn’t right, it cripples the ability of the two people in it to operate effectively in the body with the gifts God has given them. And that hurts not only the married couple, but those who could have been blessed by their gifts. As the Old Testament reiterates, “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established” (Proverbs 15:22). There is no shame in seeking godly counsel to help meet your spouse’s needs in order to build the home God wants you to have, specifically, “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels” (Proverbs 1:5). Although I’m an advocate of marital counseling by Spirit-filled counselors (that would be an example of the professional contractor helping to build the Habitat for Humanity), that’s not exactly what I’m referring to here. If we work together in the way the body of Christ was meant to work, we can hold each other accountable, we can encourage one another, we can pray for one another, and we can share with one another what has helped in our relationships. While one couple may have the answers for meeting emotional needs, another couple may have the answers for meeting spiritual needs. If we work together, building one another up, confessing to one another as the Bible says, and not spreading this information around, then not only will the church be functioning properly, but so will our marriage; after all, “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).
My Story Confession may be good for the soul, but no one mentions the courage you must have to actually get the confession out. In our second or third meeting, we humbled ourselves and came to the group and told them that we were struggling in our relationship and that we needed their accountability and prayers. We didn’t confess this in a way to tear each other down. It’s not near as productive to seek help by saying, “Well, we wouldn’t be in this situation if my spouse hadn’t done this or that!” Your goal here is to build a house, not tear one down! The baring of our marital soul to our HomeBuilders group wasn’t easy, but, as in all things, the Lord had His hand on the situation. After we opened up to the group, it made it easier for us to be honest and share what was going on, and it made it easier for others in the group to talk about their issues in their marriages. Our story isn’t over yet—our Habitat for God is still a work in progress. But the important thing is that work is being done and we are making a lot of progress. Through opening ourselves up to accountability, we’ve learned that we are not alone in our struggles; many other couples face the same communication issues and emotional intimacy issues that we have faced. And knowing you’re not alone can be uplifting just by itself. You don’t have to build your marriage’s Habitat for God alone because you are not alone. God wants your marriage to be healed, and He has an entire body of married believers who face or have faced similar struggles who can help you build your marriage into a beautiful place for God to dwell. Our story isn’t over yet, and neither is yours.
ninetyandnine.com © 2005, Leann Guzman ------- Leann Guzman is ninetyandnine.com’s “Family / Work Issues” columnist. If you have suggestions on topics to explore, email her at Family@ninetyandnine.com. |
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