One day when I was fishing in Florida, it was getting late in the evening. I was tired and decided to take a rest. I closed my eyes, laid down my pole, propped my feet up, and drifted off to sleep. A short time later, I was startled awake by the sound of heavy traffic.
Oh no, I’m in the middle of a highway and I’m about to be killed! Then, I remembered I was in the boat. Because I didn’t put out the anchor, I had drifted more than two miles in the bay underneath Interstate 10, where cars were rushing overhead.
When you lose hope in your marriage, you drift as I did on the bay. Emotions, circumstances, and myths are the winds that move you, not truth, which is the foundation of hope. Hopeless faith and hopeless marriages are always vulnerable to ruin.
One dictionary defines hope as “the happy anticipation of good. “W. E. Vines, A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Original Greek Words with Precise Meanings for English Readers (McLean, VA: MacDonald, ND), 572.
Hope motivates us to make positive choices in life and marriage and to be in right relationship with Christ and His people. God’s Word says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). When you lose hope, your soul is like a boat lost at sea without an anchor.
There Is Still Hope for Your Marriage
Jesus, who sees into the depths of the human heart, knows what it takes to restore hope in a person’s life.
Remember the story of how He met the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4? Jesus knew who she was, that she’d had multiple husbands, and that she believed religious myths. He knew that her attitude about the past was seemingly hopeless. I wonder if the tape she played in her mind went something like this: “There’s no hope for me. I’ve made too many mistakes and I don’t deserve to be helped.”
But after this woman spent time with Jesus, hope filled her thoughts. Though He instructed her to change the way she lived in the past, He loved her as a sinner and accepted her as a person.
And she came right up out of her deep ruts of bad thoughts and emotions.
She even ran to tell others about her interaction with Jesus – “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (v. 29). Spending time with Jesus can have a huge effect on our thinking, attitudes, and behavior.
Don’t allow anyone, including the Devil, to convince you that the health and security of your marriage has nothing to do with your thinking, attitude, and beliefs! Truth that is based on the teachings of Jesus and the Bible is truth that can completely transform your heart, life, and relationships.
