Picture this, you have been invited to church during the Easter holiday. You typically don't attend church, but this time you take someone up on their offer. You pick out a couple of nice "Easter outfits" for your children. You select something pretty for yourself and your live-in fiance, partner does the same.
It seems all so nice, the way your family looks, the Easter decorations along the way as you drive to church, and even the people you meet, but something is about to happen in less than an hour from the time you and your family make yourself comfortable on those chairs at the church. There is a feeling that arises in the pit of your stomach -- a heaviness of sorts. You feel hurt, sad, maybe even angry and the tears begin to fall. Something that you heard the speaker say at the church motivates you to want to make some major changes in your life. So you feel moved to walk down the aisle and your family walks behind you to accept Jesus and begin a walk on the straight and narrow.
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Now everything seems wonderful since you have accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. You have opened yourself to the one true creator of the Universe. But with that, there are problems (lots of them) the ones you detect since your acceptance and the ones you don't have a clue are on their way. No one in the church will encourage your current lifestyle living with someone unmarried. No one will tell you about how Jesus will work on you one day at a time in his time. Rather, they will tell you everything that you are doing wrong and what you need to do to make changes in your life not in God's time, but theirs! Be careful listening to those who are already married, those who are single, and those who are so heavenly-minded they are no earthly good. It is very easy to tell another what to do when one has already mastered certain areas of his or her life.
The more people tell you about what you are doing wrong, the more guilty you will feel and the more you will want to make changes that are often rushed and without thought just because you fear what may happen if you don't. I have personally rushed to clean my own life up in what I thought was God's time and I caused many problems for myself and others due to guilt.
I encourage anyone who has given their life to Christ in the midst of your sin to allow God to work on you. Be patient with yourself. Don't start changing your life just because someone tells you -- change is a process, take one day at a time! A man who hasn't been thinking about marrying his live-in girlfriend will not suddenly marry her because someone tells him -- God has to work on his heart and it may happen overnight, days, weeks, months or years from now.
A woman isn't going to just start being a wonderful woman just because someone touched her in church and told her to stop cussing her family. Both Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit work together to help anyone who has opened his or heart, in their time, not other people's time.
You have to be careful listening to people who claim to be working for God telling you to leave your partner and children and do right by God. God doesn't break up families, people do! God doesn't tell you that you are to pack up everything and walk out the door without giving you direction and assistance along the way. He doesn't tell you to abandon children that came into this world before you were saved. He doesn't tell you to drop the woman or man you got saved with and start going out with men and women who are much more mature in Christ than you. Look at the many examples in the Bible of how men destroyed their own families and robbed themselves of the blessings of God by making unwise decisions, because they thought they heard from God or had been too impatient to wait on him.
Please remember, God doesn't break up families, people do!
