How to Make Your Spouse Change When You Have Almost Lost Hope

This summer I sat on the deck watching my husband struggle with the lawnmower. After all kinds of obstacles had been overcome with great difficulty, and assorted yard and mechanical drama, he began to mow... and ran out of gas. I was rehashing struggles and meditating on things I should have just discarded (mentally). I pretty much said to myself, 'He's hopeless. Look at him!' From nowhere, like a sonic boom, and not set to a tune, came the phrase "there is hope for any man." I have compiled a list of excellent scriptures to which I turn when I think it is just hopeless to wait for my husband to change.

You know what, let me rephrase that. It may actually BE hopeless to wait for anyone to change. What we need to cling to is this: we pray for the Holy Spirit to convict the person we love, and the Holy Spirit stimulates change. WE can't make anyone change. No one can have lasting change without the Holy Spirit because how we are called to live is so radically different from how the world tells us to live. It's when I forget that it's the job of the Holy Spirit to make change that I really struggle. Because the changes I desire are so clearly out of my hands. Meditate on these scriptures:

SONIC BOOM EFFECT

"I trust in you, O Lord, I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hand." Psalm 31:14-15

"He who began a good work in ___ will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Phillipians 1:6

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away- behold the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17

"The Lord will fulfill his purpose for ___; your love, O Lord, endures forever, do not abandon the works of you hands!" Psalm 138:8

"Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the rock eternal!" Isaiah 26:3-4

Pray Jeremiah 17:7-8 over your husband:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water,
that sends out its roots into the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought.

It can sometimes be very hard to wait on God's timing. However, he knows what he's doing and instead of trying to take the wheel, we should spend our time more productively- by praying scriptures such as these. C.J. Mahaney says in his book, "Humility: True Greatness" that "waiting is an active trust in God to provide fulfillment in *His*perfect*timing* according to His ultimate purpose of glorifying his Son."

How to Make Your Spouse Change When You Have Almost Lost Hope