I was tired and I was ready to walk away from our marriage. Abby's husband serves in the military, which means a lot of family moves and a huge strain on their relationship. But through our podcast, Abby found hope for her marriage.
I don't believe that we would be where we are today without focus. I'm Jim Daly. Working together, we can bring real hope to more marriages like Abby's.
Give today at focusonthefamily.com slash real families. But when you give your husband true compliments, it is like putting water on a plant. I know what I'm talking about. Do you hear me? Even if they reject it, even if they act like it didn't move then. Believe me, if you walk out the room and peek back at them, they like it. On this edition of Focus on the Family, Patricia Ashley will share her remarkable testimony of how her marriage was saved and she has some great ideas you can put into practice in your marriage today. I'm John Fuller and your host is Focus President Jim Daly.
Man, I love the spark of life in her. John, I think all of us would admit if we've been married for more than a few years, that no marriage is perfect. That's the reality, not one. And when that realization hits you, the critical question is, what do you do? Do you choose to lovingly confront your spouse and work through the issue or do you ignore the problem and hope it'll go away?
And if the problem continues, then what do you do? Today's speaker has the answers to those tough questions and she's sharing with us out of her own pain from a marriage that was in terrible trouble. But Patricia Ashley and her husband Vernon ended up having a happy marriage and they were married for over 45 years up until Vernon's death in 2018.
Let's roll it. Yeah, this is a great message. Lots of humor and insights and spark, as you said, Jim.
Here now is Patricia Ashley speaking at a women's conference in Indian Wells, California, a number of years ago on today's episode of Focus on the Family. My testimony is that when I got saved, I didn't know that God was going to save my marriage. I thought he was just going to save me. And God just, it was like my marriage being saved was a byproduct of me being saved.
It wasn't as a result of anything that I did to develop my marriage or to work on my marriage. At the point where I was saved, I was sick of my relationship and my husband was equally as sick of his relationship with me. Do you understand me?
We mutually say that to people. You know, we were literally at the end. Our marriage was dead, waiting to be buried.
Do y'all hear me? I mean, when I say it was dead, and some of you all are going to relate to what I'm saying, if you'll be honest. When I say it was dead, I mean that I didn't love my husband. I didn't hate him. I wasn't glad to see him come. I wasn't glad to see him go. It didn't make a difference what time he came in or if he came in at all.
That's dead, huh? No feeling. He didn't make me happy. He didn't make me sad.
He didn't even make me mad anymore. How many of you can relate to what I'm saying? Be honest. Come on. Hallelujah.
I know I'm telling the truth. That's where our relationship was. It was dead. And along with about five years of being unsaved in the military with no one to be accountable to, we were literally at the end, burnt out. And we just had one thing in common. We both dearly loved our two children. And that was what God used to hold us together. But after a while, that wasn't reason enough.
Okay. And so I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. And as a result, I began to read my word, not knowing what God was going to do with that. And my husband, he accepted Jesus in our dining room and he began to read his word.
And we were so, our lives were so isolated. We were so divorced emotionally, spiritually, and physically that he would read his Bible in one room and I would read my Bible in another room. And as far as I was concerned, he had his Jesus and I had mine.
You understand what I'm saying? That where we at the end, I mean, we would, even after getting saved, I just, there was so after so much hurt, after so much disappointment, after so much disillusionment, and that's where my marriage was. And as we grew in the Lord and as we began to read the word, not even trying to be friends with each other again, not even trying to develop a relationship, we just started reading the word and, and, and loving the Lord and allowing ourselves to learn who Jesus was. God allowed a situation to happen in one of our friend's lives and we had to pray together. And when I found myself with my husband at the foot of our bed on our knees praying, we prayed. And as we began to cry out and pray together to the same God, little did we know that when we raised up our heads and we looked at each other, God had quickened our dead marriage. Do y'all hear what I'm saying?
He had quickened it and he had made it alive. And as a result of that, because we just both started growing in our relationship, God knitted our hearts back together. And now the love that we experience, it's different. Do y'all hear what I'm saying?
The commitment is different. And what we began to do is we began to go to the word after we realized we liked each other again. That's where we started at. We just, I just like you. Let's not deal with all this other stuff and let's not try to get romantic on, you know, I just like you again. I respect you again.
Come on now. You know how you can do that. You lose respect for, they lose respect for you. They become bitter and indifferent and cold and you become angry and hard and cold yourself.
You know what I'm saying? And what we began to do was we began to invest time. When we saw that God had invested in our marriage, we made a commitment to invest into it. And then we went to the word and we began to look at what the word of God had to say about marriage. Because you see, what we found out is all the way back over in Genesis, that marriage itself originated in the heart of God. It wasn't in the heart or the mind of men. God didn't just create man and woman and let them discover each other.
He made them for each other. In the beginning, man, God said it's not good for man to be alone or woman to be alone. And what we must know as women of God is that everything that God has created and said was good. Now you, those of you that are Bible students, think with me. Everything that God has created and said that was good, man by the workings of hell has perverted.
Everything. It's not good for man to be alone. God gave him a wife. And how many women are being abused by the very men that are supposed to be nurturing and protecting them? How many men are rejecting the women? He said, it's good that we bear children.
How many abortions are being performed every day in this country alone? Everything that God said was good and that was a gift, not just good, but was a gift. God gave us physical intimacy, what the world calls sex. He said, it's a gift. And look how perverted it is.
It's so perverted that it's a bad word to say publicly. Everything that's good and our marriages in the heart of God was good in his sight. The word, so what we must do if we're going to live like Christ and if we're going to have the mind of God as it relates to what God has ordained, then we must not be influenced by the world.
Do you hear what I'm saying? We need to be transformed and reprogrammed in our minds to think what the will of God is. And that's what my husband and I began to do because we had no idea of what God expected of us. The word says in Proverbs 18, 22, it says that whosoever, and this is what God says, whosoever, meaning your husband, findeth a wife, meaning you, he has found a good thing. Hey, and have obtained favor of the Lord.
So now ladies, I want you to go back home and tell your husbands, precious, call him precious. Speak faith, sweetheart. You have found a good sign in me and because you have me, I don't care what you act like, but just because you have me, you have favor in God's sight. Hallelujah. Now that's what the word say. You must say what the word say. How many of you believe in saying what the word say? That's what you got to say that you might not think he's worth it.
Come on now. Sometimes we don't. We don't think they deserve us as being good things. And some of us have been so beaten down and so criticized and so unappreciated that we don't feel like that's the heart of God. But God says, be healed today and get the mind of God. Think the thoughts of God.
Know that regardless to how your husband just don't know and you have to tell him. Now what does that do to you? It puts you in a position where you've got to be a good thing.
Meaning that his heart must be able to safely trust in you that you'll do him no harm. If we just get the mind of God, I know we got to get healed and we got to get a new attitude. But if we just say what the Bible says, the Bible says that when God looked at man, he saw that he needed a helper. And so we as females were created to be helpers.
Come on now. Now I know in this new age movement where the God is within us and we can believe it, we can achieve it and you have to make sacrifices. So honey, sacrifice your marriage, sacrifice your children and you have to achieve some of your goals in life honey.
Because when you sacrifice yourself and give your whole life to this man and to your children, they will all up and leave you one day. That's the kind of foolish counsel that we get from the world and sometimes from sisters in the church. And so it's necessary for us when we've been hurt, when we've been mistreated, when we've been misunderstood, unappreciated, all of that is real.
We must take that to the very feet of Jesus and let him heal us. And we must allow God to strengthen us and to give us his attitude and to give us his wisdom as to how we are to handle the different situations in our lives. For those of you that are married, you're going to give an account for how you were a wife to your husband.
Doesn't matter how he acts. Do you understand what I'm saying? And the one thing I learned early when I started asking God to show me, he showed me, he said number one, this man, you are not going to stand as a couple in my face to be judged for your works. You are not going to stand as a couple. You're going to stand as an individual and give an account. So now you can make a decision to unconditionally obey me as it relates to your responsibilities as a woman and as a wife.
How's that? That's real tight, but it's right. Listen, I remember one day reading a book by this woman and I believe the title was Me Obey Him. And it was a little book.
I think it was 99 pages. God couldn't send anyone to me to tell me or teach me the principles of submission. I was that strong willed and that self willed and that determined. So God allowed me to pick up this little book and this little book is a hammer, okay? When I read the book, I fell on my face when I got through the last page and I cried out, I said, oh God, you don't know him.
Come on now. I said, listen, if I do what this woman said, he ain't going to have me doing all kind of crazy things. But God took me back and he said, listen, I wrote this book and what she's sharing from her book is as a result of what she got from this book and heaven and earth will pass away, but I will not change my mind. And God really brought me to a point. He said, it's not an issue of your submitting to him.
It's an issue of your submitting to me. He said, cause when you can submit to me, you won't fear submitting to him. Do you all hear me? And he said, when you submit to me, I can change his heart. Come on now. He said, now certainly if I could clamp the mouths of the lions, he said, if I could do that. And he said, if I could open up the Red Sea and let the children of Israel cross on dry land, who is this little man?
Who is he? Come on now. Now ladies, look, I don't want to paint an ugly picture of my husband cause he is so precious, but he's a man, man. Do you all hear what I'm saying?
And being in the military, he's a military man and they believe in order and structure. And I told him God gave me to him to balance his life with me. But listen, when God dealt with me, I watched God change his heart and God began to soften him up.
And do you know when God began to show me me, and that's what we need to do. We need to talk to ourselves. We need to say self, shut up. Self, sit down. Listen, you get you a friend, get you a sister to be accountable to a prayer partner that would like to invest in your marriage.
I believe that we should choose people that that's committed to our husbands. If your girlfriend will sit and help you criticize your husband, get rid of her or stop her. Stop her.
I'm serious. Stop her. And I think we should understand each other. We should let each other bleed. You know what I'm saying? In a safe environment. But don't bleed on a woman if she is not committed to the success of your marriage.
Come on now. Don't bleed on her cause she gonna do one or the other. She's gonna put your marriage asunder or take your husband. She'll do one or the other.
I know I'm telling the truth. If she lets you continue to criticize your husband, you know, and I would sit and listen to women and I do it now because you know what? We need to do that. I think that's why so many marriages are falling apart now. It's because women don't have those circles that they can move in, that they can, we're so busy with our job. We go from work to home. We have to cook. We have to take care of the kids, get ready for the next day.
Some of you all commute 20 and 30 miles and some probably more. And you don't really have the energy and the kind of time that God requires of you to invest into your marriage. And so the first pressure or the first trauma that your marriage experience, it starts to fall apart.
Because you don't have that network. You don't have that support group. But God would have us to network in a safe, godly environment where you can leave here feeling, I'm committed to the success of my own marriage first. And then begin to ask God to give you someone that's committed to the success of your marriage. They will encourage you. And you'll know that they'll be disappointed if you don't stand firm and do all to stand. That's having someone in your life that's committed to the success of your marriage.
Praise God. You can't be married by yourself. You need someone to help encourage you. And that's what the older ladies used to do. I remember my mother telling me when my husband first left to go in the military, I didn't want to leave Alabama and follow him. And my mother said to me, honey, you better go with your husband. You better go with your husband. Stay there.
Work it out. Now listen, my mother gave me this counselor. I didn't think it was so wise, but I didn't understand what it meant at the time.
I later learned. She said, now listen. She said, when you beg it hard, just roll over. I said, what?
Come on. I said, she need to break this down and interpret this. I don't understand what that meant. But what she meant was, look, when it gets tight, when things don't go right, you be committed.
You stay in there and you work it out. And for those of us that are born again, pray through, pray through, but be committed to it. Listen, it says that we're to leave in cleaves.
The word says that in Genesis 2 24, that for this reason, you will never be fulfilled in your marriage if you don't leave and cleave. Some of us still have emotional ties. We still have soul ties with mom and dad. Come on now.
We do. Now, my husband was the youngest child that his mother had. She called him her million dollar gold piece. Now can you imagine what position that put me in?
I couldn't top that if I wanted to. And that was the way she treated him. Like he was her million and she let me know when we were dating.
That's what she called it. And a large amount of our struggle in our relationship was because there was a soul tie between he and his mother. And that thing had to be broken, but it wasn't until we got in the word that we realized that I was now his wife and his mother was his daddy's wife. Hallelujah. Come on now. Come on now.
And so what we had to do that we had been married and saved a long time before we realized this, what we had to do is on one of our trips back home, he had to go to his mother and he had to say, he had to go to his father first and ask his father to forgive him for having a place in his mother's heart that only he should have had. Now I'm not talking about sensuous or anything like that. I ain't talking about being perverted. Y'all understand what I'm talking about. Okay. But he had to go to his mother and say, I want to ask you to forgive me for taking that place and requiring that. He said, and I want to release you now back to your husband and I want to be your son, one that will honor you, but you, I release you back to your husband. And he had to do this in front of me and his dad and his daddy was a glad brother. Give me my wife.
Come on now. But do you know what healing took place between he and his father? And that was how that was broken. And God began to use my husband to minister to his mother and use his mother to minister to him. It got godly. On that note, we're going to have to step in here and wrap up this part of a great presentation from Patricia Ashley on today's episode of Focus on the Family. Jim, she has been so honest about the struggles in her marriage and the hope she found in doing things the way God recommends.
We're going to hear more from Patricia next time. Isn't it amazing that when we as individuals start to seek God wholeheartedly, we see benefits not just in our spirit, but in our relationships, our work, and even our health. And I just love the fact that Patricia Ashley didn't demand that God rescue her marriage. She just began seeking the Lord with her whole heart. And then her husband got saved, their marriage got saved, and even her husband's relationship with his parents improved. That's what we talk about in terms of the Christian life. When you live it out, the benefits are there. That is really true. And I hope Patricia's story has motivated you as a listener to take that first step toward making things right with your spouse and just watch and see how God can work in your marriage.
Well, you know what? Someone has to take that first step. That's the hardest part. We can talk all day long, but if your heart doesn't open up and you don't reach out to your spouse, nothing is going to change. Let me just say, if you are in an abusive situation, it's important that you get to a place of safety for yourself and your children, but keep praying for your spouse and for their healing. You know, strong marriages make for healthy families where children can grow up in a safe and loving atmosphere. Here at Focus on the Family, we want to do everything we can to help couples improve their relationship like Patricia Ashley talked about today.
And boy, this past year has been very tough on marriages. Our counseling team is seeing that in the calls we receive here every day. So let me remind you that we are here for you. Call us if you need help. And if you feel that your marriage is in real dire straits, ask about our Hope Restored Intensives, which have an over 80% success rate two years later as we survey them. Just call 800 the letter A in the word family to set up that consultation or seek additional help.
Again, that number 800-232-6459. And let me encourage you to join the team. This is under God's direction to save marriages is something close to his heart.
So be part of it. Make a gift to Focus on the Family today. It only takes $30 to help us save one marriage. Can you do that with us?
I hope so. And when you make a donation of any amount, we'll send you a CD of this program featuring Patricia Ashley with extra content as our way of saying thank you. And you can reach us by calling 800-A-FAMILY, 800 the letter A in the word family, or follow the link in the episode notes to donate to the work of Focus on the Family and request that CD with additional content. And when you're online with us, be sure to look for our free marriage assessment, which is a quick online quiz to help you identify the strengths and perhaps some areas of growth in your relationship. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for this Focus on the Family podcast. Take a moment and help us out by giving us a rating and sharing about this episode with a friend.
I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. When a woman discovers her husband's struggle with pornography, she needs a practical plan. The latest book from Focus on the Family, Aftershock, by professional counselor Joanne Condi, will help you through the seven steps of self-care. And you'll learn how to deal with the emotions involved in the discovery of your husband's addiction. Let Joanne Condi's timeless wisdom give you hope even while you're in your own season of Aftershock. Learn more about Aftershock at focusonthefamily.com slash store.
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