Friends are very important—and it is very important in marriages like ours that our friends be females. With male friends there is too much chance for emotional or physical adultery for women who are spiritually single.
Several years ago, I had an experience in which I was tested in regard to my friendships. I volunteered at a local, faith-based charity where the formerly imprisoned were recruited into a program to mainstream them back into productive lives. It was a marvelous agency and every day I saw God’s transformational power in amazing ways through these folks. My husband and I were new to the community and his job kept him traveling frequently. I had lots of spare time to help. I had taken on a major project—the agency’s first gala—so I stayed busy while I was in the office/store. was here that I met David. He was tall, well dressed, educated and brilliant. It's here I would like to say, "not your typical ex-con," but I don't think any of them are typical anymore. He was very articulate with the tiniest hint of an Eastern accent and he had a chip on his shoulder that rivaled the Rock of Gibraltar.
David worked as a salesperson and during the time when there were no customers, he brought his Bible and studied it alone for hours. There was an amazing change that started in David. The anger began to be replaced by contentment and the chip on his shoulder dissolved into an intense care and compassion for the people around him. I came in one day with a myriad of tasks to complete in a hurry and he directed his care toward me. He became my assistant for the gala. What a gift from God! I could never have achieved such great results without David. His transformation inspired me to get into the Word of God and dig deeper. I began to see God changing me too, making me a new person again after following Jesus for over 30 years!
After the gala, our home was scheduled for a kitchen renovation. It was often difficult for the formerly incarcerated to find work, so it did not seem unusual when David and many others asked me to call if we needed help. He painted and did odd jobs for me. I have always been careful when service guys came to look a little (okay, a lot!) unkempt and I did this with David too. He continued to serve me like a willing servant. He was a perfect example of the kind of wife I should be! He was such a blessing, praying for me, listening to me, sharing the Word of God with me, listening to Christian music, taking on every task “heartily, as unto the Lord.” He prayed openly for me and always asked for follow-up on subsequent visits. His prayers made him suddenly very….attractive. Yikes! Eventually, I confessed to him that as a wife with an unbelieving spouse, I was concerned with the appropriateness of our friendship, or worse yet, what Satan could do with both our lives and friendship if we were not careful. We agreed that we must be “above reproach.” After that, he brought an assistant. When the job was done, we sold the house and moved.
During that time, David provided for me what my unsaved husband could not—spiritual support. Though we were still above reproach we spoke frequently by phone until the last call. I told him I needed to stop communicating with him and like a good friend, he finished my sentence, “because our friendship is getting in the way of your primary relationship.” The tie with David was severed. As a spiritually single woman, there was no logical place for a relationship like this to go except to sin. He was a single man with many friends and I was just one of them. He was very understanding, but I grieved the loss of my friend, my spiritual support for weeks after.
We have an enemy who stalks us like a prowling lion and seeks to destroy us. Our enemy will use attractive, God-fearing men to fill our intimacy-starved souls to lead us to commit sin and destroy us, our marriages, the lives of our male friends and indirectly our children and the legacy we will leave them. Don’t be deceived. We the spiritually single cannot risk the outcome of an intimate relationship with a male other than our husband.
I knew God had allowed me to experience temptation of biblical proportion. Others in my family had failed in similar situations. I know because I was born an illegitimate child. But when faced with the same temptation, God allowed me an escape of equally biblical proportion through an out of state relocation. I had been sifted. On the other side of that experience has come the blessing of greater intimacy with my husband and a deepening of my commitment to him and to God. My dearest friends came alongside me and listened and encouraged me. I am a stronger person because of that experience.
Have you ever had a connection with a male friend that was difficult in your marriage? How did you solve that problem?
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