He Is Waiting For You - Encouragement Café - May 15, 2015

He Is Waiting For You

Café Menufor Friday, May 15, 2015

Today’s Special is:Hope in Marriage

Carefully prepared just for you by your friend, Kayse Pratt

Main Ingredient:

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:19

Entree:

My husband and I just got back from a three-day vacation. Toddler-free. (Squeal!) It was an incredible time. Jon surprised me by renting a convertible! We drove through the mountains with the top down, filled ourselves with yummy food, and stayed up talking without any interruptions. We had so much fun. We were so happy.

We haven’t always been. It’s been a hard road for us. We’re still considered newlyweds by some, having been married just three short years. But the trials we’ve experienced in that time have given us more insight and understanding than those years might suggest.

Those trials include some incredibly hard realities. Realities that shook our marriage to its core. Sin. All of it. From both of us. Little things and big things that threatened to rip us apart.

But God…

He saved us. He is still saving us.

It has not been a fast or easy process. Repenting, healing, forgiving… it is a slow, painful, gut-wrenching kind of hard. It is not accomplished in one conversation or twenty. It is a hundred conversations, a thousand choices, a million moments. It is humility and confession and forgiveness. It is prayer and counseling and growth and change.

It takes time. Our marriage is still far from perfect. In fact, my husband and I agree that it continually falls into the high-maintenance category. It’s just that, by God’s grace, we’re now on the same page, and we’re both working hard to maintain it. And it is good.

Would you allow me to encourage you today? Not from a soapbox, but from the couch next to you, where I sit holding your hand through the tears.

It can get better, my friend.

We serve a God of hope, of renewal. We are the daughters of the King who saves. He is waiting to bring joy out of the pain that’s marked your life. Your marriage. I know it’s hard to imagine. I know it seems hopeless. I know you’d rather crawl back in bed than bank on a miracle.

But when God steps in and brings life to something that has all but died, it’s not only miraculous… It is GOOD. In the most divine sense of the word. The kind of good you want to dance around in. And it’s worth waiting for, praying for, hoping for.

Take Out:

In the darkest days of our marriage, I was desperate for someone to tell me that we might not have to stay there forever. That healing was possible. That it wasn’t over.

I don’t know the details of your story, but I do hope you’ll let me be that person for you today. I don’t know how He will do it or what it will look like for you, but I do know He will come through. If he can save my marriage, he can save yours.

Be encouraged, dear sisters. He makes all things new.

Dessert:

Sweet Lord, I come to You now and fully recognize You as Creator. The One Who IS making all things new… including our marriages. Your desire for our lives is that we would live life and that we would live it abundantly, I can’t imagine Your desire for our marriages would be any different. Father I ask You today to begin to tear down the walls we have allow sin to build in our hearts. Those walls that have become a barrier between me and my beloved! Reunite us together! Reunite us with You, for Your word tells us that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. I ask these things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

© 2012 by Kayse Pratt. All rights reserved.

Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? Pull up a chair… He’s been waiting for you.

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