Feeling Helpless in Your Fight for Marriage Restoration?

Feeling helpless? The good news is it’s just a feeling because the children of God are NEVER helpless! And as soon as you come to know this, that feeling will leave!

How can we feel so helpless when we have been given DIVINE weapons? I’ll tell you how. Because we lack the knowledge of what they are, forget we have them, fall back on relying on what we know works, and lack direction on how to use them.

We look for what we know and are familiar with. What weapons our flesh uses because they bring the results we want. Those weapons can include intent to control the outcome by manipulation to serve OUR purpose, not God’s purpose. Like, making our relationship restoration higher and more important than God’s relationship restoration with our spouses. 

When we do realize that we are fighting with the wrong weapons, we then try to use our spiritual weapons on the wrong thing, our spouses. I was hurling scripture and “this is what God says and God wants” at my spouse left and right only to have everything get twisted and bounce back at me. 

The battle our spouses are in is NOT CARNAL, it’s a spiritual battle for their soul. So the weapons that are carnal won’t work, we need spiritual weapons to fight the spiritual battle. MORE importantly, we need to understand this is a battle that the SPOUSE needs to be engaged in. That was highly impressed upon me over and over by God as each day I tried to slay everything that was happening around him. I tried to defeat his rebellion, his stubbornness, his pride. I tried to heal his hurts, his bitterness, his unforgiveness during my warfare prayer times.

God had to teach me how to load my unfamiliar weapons and fire at the RIGHT thing.

The first was belief. I had to believe in spiritual weapons and overcome fear, doubts, and unbelief. This was a daily struggle and battle, especially when I didn’t see the weapons hitting the target and what appeared to be the giant getting bigger. I would often get discouraged and not realize that I had fallen back into unbelief as it would slowly creep in and overtake me. 

 Next was faith. Without faith, my weapon lay immobilized. I had to make sure that my faith was resting upon the right thing. Jesus and His love and desire for my spouse. I had to be fully assured and confident that my weapons of warfare were rooted and grounded in the motives and heart of Christ, not the motive and heart of Sheila who wanted her husband back. Again, a daily struggle and heart check. 

Each time I entered into warfare for my spouse, I had to first get MYSELF right in the head and heart. I had to go before the Lord and empty myself of ME, my anger, hurt, pride. I had to choose to walk in love and forgiveness and lay down any victimization, blame or self-pity. I had to acknowledge and accept that God expected me to be imperfect, upset, hurt, and angry and didn’t condemn or look down upon me for any shortcomings I had.

Then I was ready for Kingdom Business!

To pray from the direction the Lord gave me, not from what I wanted. I had to take a lot of notes and refer back to them often as I prayed to keep me going and centered in the right direction because I very much wanted to pray MY way, not the Lord’s way.

The Lord’s way was targeting the right directive! Notice I didn’t say enemy. While I am sure the enemy played a big role in influencing my spouse, it was my spouse that opened the door and let himself get influenced, it was up to my spouse to repent and close it and keep it closed. And that is what God showed me as to why my weapons were not working correctly. I was firing at the wrong target.

When I realized I needed to pray for my husband’s heart to open to God and desire Him, it kind of deflated and disappointed me. It was much more exciting for me to fire my weapons at the enemy, at the other person, and the sins he was committing because I understood all of that. But because I had no real heart knowledge of loving God and desiring a relationship with Him above all else, I found it extremely hard to get excited about praying for my spouse to love the Lord with all his heart, mind, and soul. Especially since I shunned love. 

But God would not relent on this. He was adamant that I prayed for my spouse to come to know God’s love above all else. To have a knowledge of Him, desire Him, and have fear of the Lord. I prayed for God to touch and heal his broken past, childhood wounds. The pain and hurt he suffered from being rejected and hurt by his mom. As time went on, God revealed deeper things that were in need of healing that had nothing to do with me or my marriage. These were the strongholds that had led my husband to open the door to the enemy. I had no choice but to pray for my husband’s inner man to hear the call of His Father and seek Him…….not me…….but Him! So I had to fake it till I made it.

I had to pray and ask things that I believed in my head, but not my heart. Ask in faith so I could load that weapon, target things that I really didn’t want to target at first………fire……..and do it again. Consistency was Key.

We tend to fire our weapons, see nothing happens, lay it down, and try our carnal worldly weapons again like talking to our spouse or sending someone to talk to them. OR we just give up and don’t use ANY weapon at all. We can get hurt and feel rejected by God believing that he doesn’t care, is blessing the spouse and taking their side while we suffer.

Expect to NOT see your spiritual weapons work the way you anticipate. The results are not going to be what you demand. God’s ways are higher and more complex. Your prayers are NOT of this world so you need to get out of expecting to see things happen right away in the natural. Our battle is in the spiritual realm, defeating strongholds, so that is where the changes happen first!

We often give up before the battle even gets heated because we are looking to see progress toward what we want. But instead, we see things getting worse in the natural and believe our prayers are not working.

You must not give up and be persistent and keep knocking. Through your persistence, you will come to know the Lord and depend on Him. It will fine-tune your ears and teach you how to hear His voice and take directions. It will reveal your heart to you and motives and help you lay down your fleshly desires and pick up His will.

Learning about the weapons that God has laid out for your specific case is KEY. They are divine and meant to pull down the strongholds that are built around YOUR spouse and where they need assistance to be free. To have access to know what these weapons are, you have to be willing to put God’s relationship first, above your marriage, above your restoration, or you will be praying with the wrong weapons.

I will share what some of the strongholds were that surrounded my spouse and the weapons God gave me to use in prayer.

My husband had a stronghold of rejection toward his mom. He held a lot of hurt, anger and unforgiveness towards her that manifested toward all women. I had to pray for healing in this area. For God’s love to come and heal the places that rejection had damaged him. To where he felt unloved, unworthy, undesirable.

He had other strongholds in regards to fear of man and fear of responsibility. All this revelation came when I was ready to put down what I wanted and pick up God’s plan for my spouse which was to restore my spouse to the Lord FIRST, reminding myself daily “Sheila, this is not about you.” All these strongholds he had are what interfered with his relationship with the Lord, which is what was ultimately the cause of our marriage troubles.

So, here is a quick recap.
Our weapons come when we first believe and use faith to activate them. We must know where to target our prayers by laying down our agenda and being ready to pray for what God wants above all else. You must be consistent in your prayers and expect to not see your prayers answered in your time, or the way you want. Remember, God’s goal is the spouse’s repentance so their souls will be saved or come back to Him. God is willing to let your spouse completely go to the ends of their efforts and experience everything they need to experience in order for them to fully understand a life apart from God is not going to bring them what their souls long for………..Him.

 Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger