Restoring Marriages Bible Study: Day 1

I am very excited that God has called me to start a Bible Study. This Bible Study is intended for wives and husbands to do together. It will take about 10-15 minutes. The purpose is to lead marriages closer to God and each other after going through a crisis. Specifically, this crisis is when a wife finds out her husband has been watching pornography or being unfaithful to her in some way. Each study will focus on a bible verse. Of course any wife or husband can do this study alone. But, ideally if you can ask your spouse to do this study with you would be wonderful. I have never conducted a bible study before so please if you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to comment below. I’m not sure how often I will post this bible study, but I will try to regularly. Additionally, there is a new page called Prayer Requests. If you have a specific prayer request and would like to write about it, please do so.

Restoring Marriages Bible Study: Day 1

Joel 2:25-26 (NKJV):

So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame.

You are probably here now because your marriage is suffering. It is not what you thought it was. It might even be dead. Maybe you just found out that your husband has a problem with pornography or was unfaithful to you in some other way. As a wife you might be hurt, angry, and bitter. As a husband you might be deeply caught in sin and lust. Now the secrets are exposed and your marriage is in deep trouble. It might feel hopeless to even try to restore it. The chances are that many marriages don’t make it through a crisis, right? After all, look at all the years that have been wasted. All the memories are just filled with pain and sorrow now. Why even try?

This all seems true and this is exactly how I felt when I was right in the beginning of my marriage crisis. There was so much damage done that all of it seemed pointless to even try. But, God made a different promise than the one I was thinking in my head. God promised that He will restore the lost years to us. He promised that we will praise the name of God! He promised that we would no longer be put to shame.

Can you even imagine that? Can you imagine that all the years you lived in sin and didn’t follow God could be given back to you in some way? No, we can’t go in the past and change anything. We only have right now. But, God has our future. He knows what will happen if we follow Him. Through His amazing blessings, He can restore those lost years to us in ways we could never imagine.

How can we do this?

We can do this by placing our trust in God. We can tell God that we commit our marriage to Him today. We can give ourselves to His will. It starts with one simple decision to follow life God’s way and not our own.

What does this look like?

For wives this might mean to stop thinking about the past. When I say that, I don’t mean to just forget everything. That’s impossible to do. But, we can control our thoughts. When we get stuck in anger and pain over the past, we can choose to think about something else. God promised that He would help us to do this. This means giving your husband a second chance. This is of course with boundaries, but God wants us to give him another chance. It’s what He does for us daily.

For husbands, this means making a commitment to your wives. It means to make a plan with your wife on how you’re going to defeat lust or unfaithfulness through the help of God. I am a wife so I can only speak from the things that my husband shares with me. The thing that helped him greatly was to pray every morning before he left the house and read his bible. During this time, he put on the whole armor of God. This is found in Ephesians 6:10-18 for further study. There are many strategies to defeat lust. To read further on this please visit Covenant Eyes. They have great information on this. I would also like to offer any husband that has specific questions, needs advice, or help may e-mail my husband. Please send it to Hopefulwifetoday@gmail.com and put question from a husband as the subject.

For husband and wife in marriage this means to lovingly work together. It is a lot of work to get through a crisis. We have to purposefully be loving, kind, and patient with one another. Each marriage will have different things to work through. Things that meant a great deal to me in my marriage might not be as important to you. This is why you have to be open and honest in your communication with each other. If you are hurting or struggling with something, talk to each other. Just take the time to talk and listen. Don’t become easily offended when you are listening. God made each of us so differently and we have to choose to try to understand our spouse’s perspective. Lastly, pray over your marriage every single day.

Dear Wonderful God,

We come to you today to pray for our marriage. We want to restore it and we want it to work, but we can’t do it without You. You promised in Your Word that you would restore the lost years, that were eaten away, back to us. We ask that you would do this God. We know that we have to make a commitment to follow You. So, please come into our hearts today and show us what that would look like in our marriage. If we have to make some adjustments or change our attitudes, please help us. Help us to let go of old selfish ways. Help us to embrace the changes that you will bring forth. We thank You God for this marriage. And we thank You for this second chance.

We pray all these things together, In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

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