Making Marriage Work (26 page)

Many children are being raised by people other than their own family members. I went to work when I still had a small child so we could buy a house. My children went from baby-sitter to baby-sitter, but because of the Word that we have in us now, it seems that our family has recovered from that time. I’m just saying that knowing what I do now, I don’t think it was the best choice for me to work so much outside of our home. I believe that if you have to do it, God will cover you and your children. But, parents who have small children should try to be at home with them as much as possible.

God’s anointing can come on any situation. He can take something that could be a disaster otherwise and make it work out. God will cover the home of a single parent who has to work. But I believe there is a difference between having to work and simply wanting to work for love of what the extra money will buy. Prayerfully consider what you may be giving up for what you are getting.

Many families are already structured around two incomes, but be aware that even some wealthy people are still miserable because money does not make people happy. Couples who choose to keep both incomes need to work together at home, too. Laundry and household duties need to be shared by both the husband and wife in order to keep building a good relationship. It is difficult for a woman to manage both an external job and the internal responsibilities of home without help from the husband and children. Be willing to help each other through these stressful times. You may even need to humble yourself and ask for help if your spouse hasn’t noticed your stress.

I am sure many people reading this book are working mothers or even men who are holding several jobs trying to provide for the family. I certainly don’t desire to place condemnation or guilty feelings on anyone. I simply encourage you to make sure your family needs the money more than they need you. If working too much is creating a stressful atmosphere in your home, the choice to work part time might be a solution. Dave and I had years of both, years when I worked and years when I did not. I am sure our children preferred the years when I did not. Some of the years when I did not work were definitely much harder financially, but as I look back, those were the years when I really learned how to trust God for a miracle supply. Whatever you do, as long as you are being led by the Holy Spirit everything will work out fine.

PEACE IS GAINED THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Christians have righteousness, peace, and joy available to them through the Holy Spirit. The satisfaction that we are all looking for is found inside of us through knowing who we are in Christ. Happiness comes from being able to get up in the morning liking yourself and going to bed at night still liking yourself, without living under a cloud of guilt and condemnation. Peace is the reward of righteousness not of money. You can have all kinds of things, but if you don’t have peace, you won’t have joy.

The satisfaction that we are all looking for is found inside of us through knowing who we are in Christ.

People need right relationships more than they need money. If people are going to spend their lives climbing the ladder of success, they need to be sure their ladder is leaning against the right building. It is sad when people spend their lives working to acquire things at the expense of their families, only to get to that top position and find it is one of the loneliest places they could be. It is tragic to spend your life chasing something you didn’t want after all.

First Timothy 6:17 says,
As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be proud and arrogant and contemptuous of others, nor set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, Who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything, for [our] enjoyment.

God abundantly gives us all things to enjoy. There is balance only if we enjoy things without putting them before the needs of the people in our lives. While we are not to love money, we are not to think we can’t enjoy ourselves. My husband and I have more things right now than we have ever had in our whole lives. We have a lovely house, and we drive nice cars. We don’t live in extravagance, but we do live in excellence.

We have given thought to what we really want. Many times the things we think we want are the same things we don’t want to take care of. Ask God for wisdom when making decisions on whether or not to buy something that requires a lot of your time and attention.

God provided us with friends who have offered to let us stay at their vacation property any time we feel the need to get away. We know people who are willing to take us boating if we have the time to do so. God wants us to have fun, but fun doesn’t have to drive us to the love of money. If we will make decisions according to the Word of God, while trying to honor God in our lives, I believe that God will supernaturally provide many things for us that we could have struggled to have had. God has performed tremendous miracles in our lives because we chose Him over things.

SWEET CONTENTMENT

Some couples need to learn how to enjoy what they already have. And some even need to ask God to show them how to go spend some of their money on themselves. We can get fearful of money even when we have plenty. God, not money, has to be our security.

Revelation 18:10 says that Babylon, the great city of power, will fall in one hour. Babylon really represents the whole financial system in the world. We can all see there are problems in the world structure. While I don’t mean to sound negative, we must put our hope and confidence in God, no matter what happens to the economy. By developing our faith now, we know that God will take care of us and meet our needs just as He did in the wilderness for the children of Israel.

One of the ways that we try to build our faith is to look at the nice things we have but realize how much of it we could live without. It pleases me to think about how pretty our home is, but I know that if we had to live in a two- or three-room apartment again, I would be just as happy because my joy is coming from the inside of me and not from things that I have.

In Numbers 18, verses 20 and 24, God told the priestly tribe of Levi that He alone was their inheritance. The Word says, …
[They have homes and cities and pasturage to use but not to possess as their personal inheritance.]
(verse 24). We find balance in realizing that everything we have is on loan from God. He’s given it to us to use, but we are neither to possess it, nor let it possess us.

The minute we start grasping at things that become too important to us, God will start shaking them from our hand. If we will let go when He shakes it, and say, “O
K
, You’re right, God, I am getting too attached to this, or I am starting to like this too much, or I am depending on this too much,” then most of the time He lets us keep it. But if we grasp too tightly and it becomes too important to our sense of security and our joy depends on it, then God will take it away from us.

I’m glad that God looks after me that way. I’ve given God permission to bring to my attention the things that are getting in the way of my total dependence upon Him. I encourage everyone to submit themselves to God in this way. Sometimes things begin to mean more to us than they should. Everything that God gives us should be held loosely in our hands, so that He has no trouble getting it from us if He wants it. God will give us all kinds of things to use and enjoy, but He will not let them possess us.

Balance is one of the keynotes of our ministry and it has brought favor into our lives. First Corinthians 7:31 teaches us to continue to be close to God through all conditions of life, even, …
those who deal with this world [overusing the enjoyments of this life] as though they were not absorbed by it and as if they had no dealings with it
. … We need the Holy Spirit to keep us free from all anxiety and distressing care in order to promote and secure our undistracted devotion to the Lord. (Verses 32-35.)

This means that even if we are in the busy, decision-making process of building a new house, we are not to get absorbed by it. We are to continue to walk with God as if nothing else is happening. I use this example because of an interesting experience we had when we bought our last house. People kept asking me if I was excited about our new house and I honestly wasn’t. I had a joy because I knew it was something God was giving me.

For years I had prayed to have a quiet place to study since our house was on a highway where the noise of traffic disturbed my desire to sit outside and meditate on the things of God. There were no trees at our previous house to remind me of the natural things God had made. So for years I hoped for a different house.

Now God has given us a house with a little lake and all kinds of trees surrounding it in a beautiful setting. I have a comfortable feeling down inside because God has given us this desire of my heart, but my emotions aren’t caught up in it. When we first moved in there, I walked around for days saying, “Thank You, God, we really appreciate this.” But my greater joy was still in the fact that I knew Him, and not from what He had given us.

There is nothing wrong with having things, but if you have things to be happy, you will never be satisfied.

There is nothing wrong with having things, but if you have things to be happy, you will never be satisfied. If you must have that new house to be happy, if you must have that new car to be happy if you must have that new furniture to be happy, if you must have that new dress to be happy, you will be looking for happiness your whole life.

HAPPINESS COMES TO THOSE WHO GIVE

Finally, and even foremost, if you want God to bless your finances, you must operate on God’s financial plan. The Bible says that believers should tithe by giving a tenth of their income to the Lord. Malachi, chapter 3 is clear on this subject. There are some who argue that instruction from the Old Testament does not apply to believers today, but the New Testament never does away with anything in the Old Testament. Jesus came to fulfill the law and to give us the grace to keep it. God did not do away with the Ten Commandments, but He did give us the grace to keep them through Jesus Christ.

The Bible clearly teaches us that we should tithe and give offerings besides. If you are not tithing and giving offerings you are missing out on God’s best for your life. Because Dave always knew to tithe, we have been tithing ever since we got married. In all the years we have been married, through raising four children, Dave has only been out of work for a total of five days and we have always had the money to pay our bills on time. God has always blessed our finances, and I am thankful that Dave knew to tithe when we got married.

Don’t let the devil deceive you into thinking that you cannot tithe. He wants to rob you of your inheritance as a believer, and one of the easiest ways to do so is by causing you to either love or fear money so that you hoard it or crave it. James 1:22 says that if you hear the Word, but don’t do what you know is right, then you are deceiving yourself by reasoning that is contrary to the truth.

If your marriage is struggling because of finances, ask God to loose you from whatever bondage keeps you from tithing. Be honest with God and tell Him, “I’m not tithing because of this, or I’m not doing it because I’m afraid to, or it is because I don’t want to.” By being honest with God and asking Him to establish you in His truth you allow God to help you out of the financial rut you are in.

Malachi 3:10,11 says,

Bring all the tithes (the whole tenth of your income) into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove Me now by it, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

And I will rebuke the devourer [insects and plagues] for your sakes and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine drop its fruit before the time in the field, says the Lord of hosts.

God doesn’t need our money, but He does want us to be givers. He knew that there would be great temptation to love money, which is the root of all evil. Proving our willingness to let go of its security opens the floodgates of heaven to pour out blessings upon us. It is so important that we as believers stay in a giving attitude because love gives to others.
For God so loved the world, that he gave
… (John 3:16
KJV
).

If we won’t give our money, there is no hope of ever giving ourselves. If we can get to the point where we can give money away when God says to give it, we are finally growing out of our habit of selfish, self-centered living. Giving our money is an outward work of love, and love is spiritual warfare against the devourer.

Sometimes one partner in a marriage believes in and desires to tithe and the other one does not. Many women ask, “What am I supposed to do if my husband refuses to allow me to tithe?” First let me say that God does not rejoice in things given under compulsion or force. I doubt that He would want a tithe on a family income from someone who does not mix their faith with their giving. God asks us to give for our benefit, not His. He wants us to sow seed so He can bring a tremendous harvest. He is not trying to take something away from us; He is trying to get something to us. We must first be of a willing heart and then our actions are acceptable. Even if a person does not want to give their money away, but they are willing to do so in order to obey God, that is a starting place. Eventually their heart will change.

If a man is married to a woman who does not want to tithe, he would normally have liberty to do so anyway since he is the head of the household. If a woman is married to a man who does not want to tithe, then she should certainly not do it behind his back. She can give from what she has as her own, or what she has control of, or earns. If the man allows the woman to take care of the finances and he basically does not care what she does, then I believe she is free to follow her heart. Very few men would totally forbid their wives to give anything at all, but if you happen to be one of the few, then give of your time, talents, or other things that your husband has no control over. Pray for his heart to soften. Even if he cannot believe in the principle of sowing and reaping yet, pray that he will give you permission to tithe. Then you can release your faith for your family’s finances to be blessed. One thing is for sure, God sees your heart, and He will take care of you if your heart is where it should be.