When You Understand Prayer, It Is Always Your FIRST Resort

How often do you run back to the Lors in times of trouble, but quickly grow complacent in times of ease? That used to be me too! 

Our marriage breaking was what made me go running back to the Lord and to stay rooted in Him ALWAYS from that point onward. Over the years, the Lord has taught me the power of the weapons I have in Him. Weapons that ACTUALLY destroy strongholds and is DIVINE power. 

It's time to grab your weapons of warfare that are not of the flesh! It's the ONLY way to take back territory in your marriage and life.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. So this is Chelsea, Holm, your host, and we do marriage God's Way. And I think I shared last week in one of the episodes about Zach and I finally got welcomed into membership at our church we've been going to for over four years now. It was simply a case of we kept missing the classes. And then they would have introduced new members on stage and we're like, shoot, we missed it again, right? Um, but so we got welcomed in, and our pastor selects verses for us, right? Like the um the body of pastors at our church selects verses for us that kind of encapsulate, encaps, encapsulate, capture, I don't know the word, our personalities. And the verse he chose for me was 2 Corinthians 10, 4, which says, For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. Um, he said it's because I'm pretty fiery. And I said, You're absolutely right. You nailed it, as I said in the previous episode. I'm not one to back down, I'm one to double down. And when I'm walking in the spirit, you better watch out because it's not my power and authority. It's the Holy Spirit. The same power that raised my savior is the power that lives in me. So if you want to pick a fight, you better think twice because he's got an angel army, right? And so I wanted to share this with you specifically because prayer tends to be our last resort. When all else has failed, when our understanding hits a wall, when when our plans are not working out, when we feel like we are beat down, burnt out, and suffering beyond what we can handle, then we turn to prayer. And that was my walk of faith for many years. Um, it wasn't until our marriage struggles hit hard that I returned to the Lord and I have clung to him ever since. Because before that, it was, you know, probably spiritual immaturity, right? And um a lack of discipline and intentionality in walking with the Lord that I had this pattern of, you know, in good times, I still went through the motions, but I wasn't in the word studying it intentionally daily, right? As my food, as my nourishment, as my sustainment, as my strength. Right? I wasn't praying in the sense of breathing, praying continually, praying without ceasing, right? I wasn't putting myself in solitude in the presence of God, sitting at his throne, at his feet, asking him questions and listening and trusting that he would answer me through his word, through his servants around me, through the Holy Spirit just speaking to me. Right? That wasn't the case until our marriage struggles hit, when that was all I had left. I hadn't yet learned that controlling my husband was not going to work and was actually going to cause more damage than anything else. Praise God that He brought me through that and taught me that now. Um, but I came to that point where I said, I can't, God, but you can, and I am done. I can't. There's nothing left. I don't know what to do. Right? My marriage is over, and there's nothing I can do about it. Um, and it was in that brokenness, it was in that full stop surrender to the Lord that he brought a miracle, that he kept my husband and reminded him of the truth, reminded him of those verses that talk about the blessing of the wife of your youth and delighting in her, and that he could not divorce me, it would be completely against God's word, that he could not leave me to pursue the desires of his flesh, right? And what that taught me in that moment was, and and I'll tell you, even though God brought the miracle, it doesn't mean that everything was immediately healed. Absolutely not. I mean, I've still walked through healing within the last year in different aspects and capacities. As God has continued to reveal layer after layer that He wants to heal in me, as He's continued to reveal and expose areas that needed pruning and refinement. And as a believer, this is our lifelong. Jesus has not returned yet. So therefore, the good work started in us is not yet complete. And we can trust that God is doing that. But it was in those times where there were moments where I remember my husband looked at me and he was like, I don't want to be here. I don't like you, but I know that it's the right thing to do. And I was like, Yay, this is so fun. I'm having so much fun. Um, but it was over the years in our marriage that I realized, um, even more recently, that gosh, you gotta trust in the Lord. You've got to pick up your weapons of warfare that are not of the flesh. You have to pick up your weapons of warfare that have divine power that destroys strongholds in the name of Jesus. And you have to wield them in your marriage, not against your husband, but against the enemy and the flesh in the world that desire nothing more than to devour you and gnash you with their teeth and spit you out and leave you to die on the side of the road. It's not your understanding that's gonna change your marriage. It's not your knowledge that's gonna change your marriage. It's you on your knees, wife, picking up your weapons of warfare that are of the spirit. That is what is gonna change your marriage because it's gonna change you first. It's going to separate the sinew from the muscle and the bone. Okay? It's going to expose those areas that the Holy Spirit wants to do a mighty work in you and through you. It's going to enable you to get out of the heck out of the way so that the spirit can do what only the spirit can do. To create a space that your husband can step into rather than suffocating him and burdening yourself. Wife, pick up your weapons of warfare that are of the spirit. Right now, you are holding weapons of the flesh that are turned against your spouse, are turned against yourself, are turned against all of the low-level things in the weeds of offense. They're not going to save your marriage. They're not. And if divorce isn't an option, what they're gonna do is they're going to put you into a marriage, or they're gonna keep you in a marriage that is horrible. That you will suffer through. But it's suffering by your own hand and your own understanding. Understand that. It's not holy suffering, okay? Holy suffering in marriage is what prunes us and refines us. Okay? It's not at the hand of your spouse. It's the areas that God reveals that need to be healed, right? It's the patterns that He reveals that need to be disrupted. So then you can both, as one flesh, suffer for the kingdom of God, right? At the hands of the enemy in the world, not at your own devising, unintentionally. So much of suffering in marriage is what it is the product, is the produce, is the fruit of our own hands and our own understanding, right? Because we're coming into marriages, having no idea what we're doing, having not experienced what a godly marriage looks like, and in no way, shape, or form, been told that it requires you to die to yourself for two to become one flesh, for the Holy Spirit to do what you cannot do in and through both of you. Okay? So, my challenge to you today, wife, is to ask yourself what weapons am I holding in my hand? Am I holding weapons of warfare that are of my flesh, that are bringing destruction and damage upon my own head, in my own house, tearing down my own house? Or am I willing to lay it all down to pick up the weapons of warfare that are of the spirit with divine power that will destroy the strongholds both within you and in your marriage, creating the space in your marriage for that, right? And and I just want you to understand, there are so many strongholds, right? There, there's there's family of origin, right? There's generational curses, there's patterns, there's there's self-protection, there's um there's just the things, the fleshly desires and passions you have for the world, right? All of these are all channeled through your experiences. And if if you don't learn to master your flesh, you will be tossed around like the the waves in the sea by the wind. If you don't learn the one true gospel, you will be easily deceived and you will be led astray, right? You will be the pendulum that swings too far to the left or too far to the right, right? Instead of being held and kept in the love of God, instead of being surrendered together with Jesus as our Lord and Master who defeated death, you will continue to navigate under the bondage of death rather than walking into the new life in the freedom that we now have in Jesus' name. You will continue to be the old self rather than navigating in the new self. You will continue to put up with things, to allow things, to tolerate things that are not tolerable in the newness of life in Christ in your marriage. So, what weapons are you holding? Be honest and take it to the Holy Spirit and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal and to be honest with you, to bring conviction where it's needed for freedom, not condemnation, to bring the spotlight on what God is wanting to heal in you and through you, and then submit to the word and to the Holy Spirit. I will see you on the next episode.