Saturday, November 27, 2010

A warrior for godly marriages

It is an exhausting position to be on the front lines of the battle for marriages, especially as a pro-marriage coach this day-and-age.  Unfortunately we live in an era that has not taught people how to be married or how to honor their promises.  Doing what "makes you feel good" is considered noble, and the pursuit of happiness is put ahead of doing the right thing.  To me, it sometimes feels as if we are swimming upstream, trying to teach couples one thing while Hollywood, the news, and the media are telling them that infidelity is in our DNA or that marriage is becoming obsolete!  


Being a marriage coach is not a popular career.  There are lots of people out there committing adultery, having emotional affairs, or being financially unfaithful...and our job as coaches is to identify where they are today (no matter how ugly the truth may be), help them identify where they want to be, develop steps to get to where they want to be, and then hold them accountable for actually doing the work!  People feel good when they are unfaithful so they don't want it pointed out to them that it's wrong and they should stop.  Other people don't like the idea that we're not licensed by the state (like a PhD or a LCSW), but as life coaches and nouthetic counselors, our credentiasl are in biblical marriage and reconciliation!  What we suggest usually is personal responsibility and some people would rather "blame someone else" than to have to look at themselves.  Doing the work to repair the damage is hard work, and most people would rather have the easy way out or have a microwave mentality.  The list goes on and on!  Everywhere we turn there is some resistance, some stumbling block, some temptation in our path to take us off course and off the focus of helping people reconcile their marriages. 


When I first began helping people back in 1999-2000 when my ex-husband left me and I was just learning myself, I knew then that it was absolutely my lifelong passion to work in this field.  I have been learning all I can ever since then, and knowing my personality type, I knew that it would be hard to hear of broken marriages and not "bring it home with me"--I actually care!  I am so grateful that my Dear Hubby joins me in this passion, and together we have gone through training and studied together.  We knew that there would be professional disagreement in methodology or differences of opinion--especially since the biblical view is being more and more watered down even in our churches!  But we did not know there would be daily skirmishes trying to get us off the straight and narrow track of showing people what the Bible says about marriage, encouraging them to obey God and do what He wants them to do, and teaching people "marriage basics" like husbands love your wives and wives respect your husbands.   


For that battle--the battle to keep our focus and keep coming back to helping the couples and speaking the Word of God plainly--we covet your prayers.  We need to keep reminding ourselves of the whole armor of God (Eph. 6) which will protect us from this onslaught--and we need to keep sharp "...the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." (Eph. 6:17b)  And with the psalmist we pray: "Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face."(Psalms:5:8)


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