I Run to You: Faith to Turn Back to God and Your Spouse

Do you believe that God has a destiny for you to fulfill in life?

Do you believe that God is on your side?

Do you believe that God is helping you, regardless of failures, sins, or loss of faith?

Do you believe that you can change today? That your marriages can become completely different? That your faith can be revived? That your emptiness can be filled?

Doubts and unbelief will consume our minds and hearts, until we are willing to run to God. That’s when transformation occurs.

A New Way of Thinking

19 I will give them a desire to respect me completely, and I will put inside them a new way of thinking. I will take out the stubborn heart of stone from their bodies, and I will give them an obedient heart of flesh. 20 Then they will live by my rules and obey my laws and keep them. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 11:19-20 (NCV)

What we need is a new way of thinking. Some circumstances will never change. But our hearts, our belief in God, and our attitude always can change. Today, if you lack desire to seek God or desire to love your spouse, God can put a new desire inside of you. God can give us a new way of thinking.

God can take out our stubborn hearts of stone, and give us a new heart. But this is only possible if we are willing to turn to God.

Our belief and our faith drive what we run after, and every one of us is running after something. We are pursuing, chasing, thinking, wishing, working, dreaming about a life that we believe will satisfy us. Faith is about believing, working and dreaming about a life that will please God. And every day, we are making choices about what we will run after.

• What are we running after?
• Are you running to God?
• Are you running to our spouse?
• If not, then what is stopping you?

 Faith = Running to God

Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;   apart from you I have no good thing.”

Psalm 16:1-2 (NIV)

Running to God means choosing to get our security from God instead of other things. It means that our marriages and our ability to love one another is depending on God alone. Faith makes us see a whole new world of how God is leading us towards a great destiny.

Faith opens our eyes to new possibilities versus the same old perspective.

Faith changes us and changes our hearts. And if our heart changes, our whole world changes.

Faith is about trying new things and not being afraid of how many times we are going to fail or how we will look to others.

Faith is also believing that if we abandon God and pursue false gods like money, achievements, possessions, or attention, we will lose our faith. And when we lose our faith, our marriages will collapse and we will feel stuck.

Make Decisions

Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more…

Psalm 16:4

When we lose God, our marriages become stuck in bitterness, unbelief, unhealthy patterns, and stuck in the past because we have lost our faith in the power and the goodness of God.

If we are going to have the kind of breakthroughs we want, then we need to be willing to admit the truth of where we having been running to that has taken our faith and our heart from God and from our spouse. Running back to God and our spouse means we must rebuild our faith in God.

God Makes Us Unbreakable

5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Psalm 16:5-8 (NIV)

Don’t allow disappointments, failures, or heart break to make you settle and no longer dream. Faith in God makes us unshakeable and unbreakable…

We Run When We Are Free

Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

Luke 9:23-27 (MSG)

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.

Psalm 119:32 (NIV)

Freedom comes when we have a great relationship with God that makes us free.

3 Convictions To Be Free

1. Get Faith

1 Peter 1:7 – Faith is the most valuable thing we need for marriage and life.

2. Make Decisions

Romans 4:18-21 – Admit the true condition of our faith to God and to our spouse… and don’t quit.

3. Take Action

2 Peter 1:5-10 – Faith is not enough…you must exercise your faith.