There are times that we walk through in life where you just have to stop for a moment…

If you can take a moment and step back from your surroundings, you’ll realize the utter impossibility of where you are and what is happening.

I had one of those moments a few weeks ago.

If you had told me three years ago that I would be sitting in front of a group of people and telling them truthfully that I was in a happy marriage with my wife, I would have dismissed you as needing to be committed.

You see, it was a little over three years ago that I had sat down with my father and had to tell him that it was over with my wife and I. It wasn’t what I wanted, and I wasn’t done fighting, but there was absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. Truth be told, I’m not certain there was a tunnel.

I was in a marriage where each participant believed the other was 90% responsible for the mess that had been made. The problem with that way of thinking is less that it’s wrong, and more that it’s incomplete.

She was 100% at fault…and so was I.

So here we have two people who were never in love, in a marriage where each is 100% at fault for the mess, but claiming only 10% for themselves, if for a moment, we chose to be “generous”. There is no moving forward from that.

But God…

What I didn’t realize is that God had been working behind the scenes. He had brought a couple into our lives that brought us to a new church. The only reason we met this couple is because my wife had been working as a waitress to save up money so she could leave me.

This church He brought us to began its existence as a marriage ministry that outgrew the house it started in. Every Sunday at 4:00, there’s marriage class – not that I knew the first thing about it.

We had been going to this church for about 6-8 months when my wife told me she was leaving. That friend that invited us to the church asked me a perfectly innocent question.

“How are you doing?”

I paused…and before I could say that everything was fine, I told the truth instead. I told him that everything wasn’t fine…that everything is kind of a mess. I told him my wife was leaving me, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change her mind.

I was supposed to be picking up my son from his house and taking him to a piano lesson, but we spent the next hour crying and praying. After we prayed, he said, “We’ve never gone to marriage class, but we’ll go with you, if you want.” And they did.

His wife reached out to mine, and they got together for breakfast.

I went to marriage class one week without my wife, and since then we’ve only very rarely missed. There was no immediate change. There’s been a ton of work, and truly a renewing of our minds, starting with a focus on Christ instead of each other.

Two HUGE things we both needed to hear the first week we were in class together:

1. Your spouse is not your enemy. You’re on the same team.
2. You are in covenant with each other. You didn’t just say nice things in front of a bunch of people at your wedding. You committed to a covenant.

Fast forward to four weeks ago, Sunday. There we sit in front of marriage class, telling our story of how broken we were. We were a walking disaster. This probably isn’t the forum, but ask us sometime. We’ll tell you all about it. We’re not proud of it, but to God be the glory for all the change He brought about in us! But more than that, we got to tell the story of how God, with the help of a community of believers, reconciled us to Him, and to each other!
God is so good! It’s not cliché…not if you’ve seen how true it is!
Our God is a God who intervenes. He did for us, and He’s able to do so for you.
Tell me what you think is too big of a problem for God to work out in your life, and I’ll show you a God who can make a believer out of you.

Gracious Father. Your goodness and mercy pursued me when I was running away! You could have let us be, but you loved us and came after us! You loved us where we were, but love us too much to leave us there!
Surely Your goodness and mercy will continue to follow us all the days of our lives!