When it comes to trying to change my husband's mind on an issue, I have learned to leave him in God's hands. When it came to wanting more children, I simply shared my desires with him, then prayed. I couldn't convince him on my own. God had to change his mind if we were going to have more.
Just like with me, God uses that radio station in RM's life, too. A preacher will come on or a show on marriage will be the focus, and the next thing you know, he walks in the door with a completely different perspective that only God could give.
With baby five, it took him listening to Alistair Begg. He spoke on how men should love their wives. Begg never knew RM was listening. He never told him if there is someone out there whose wife wants another baby, you should be listening! No, God spoke to my husband personally and told him, "I am the one giving your wife those promptings - you should listen to her. That's how you can love her." He came home and said, "Ok, let's have another baby!"
Well, it happened again a couple days ago, but I didn't know it. For a while, I've been convicted, like I said yesterday, on a couple of very small things, but I know the way to get out of debt is little by little. We love our good coffee, a more expensive coffee. We also enjoy treating ourselves now and then, date nights, which we had been really good in denying ourselves, but we started to cave and, well, once you start, you think to yourself, "What's the difference?" But it really bothered me. I would talk about it with him. But I couldn't get him as determined as I wanted him to be!
Then, yesterday, all extra spending just stopped. He decided we're going back to so-so coffee and the indulgent date nights are on hold, for now. We'll still have them, but they'll be free. Just like that the little things I'd been talking about were no longer an issue. He was now as determined as I was once again. I couldn't understand. I asked him, "Why? What happened?" He said, "I'm doing it for you." At first I thought he meant that I was so weak that he had to step in and make the decision for me, but as I asked him more he said, "I heard someone speak on the radio about their relationship with their wife. He thought they had a pretty good relationship, but then he thought, maybe there is something I can change. I should ask her. So he did. Apparently, without hesitation, she quickly gave him, not one, but two things, he should immediately work on. That's when it hit me. We have pretty good relationship, right? Surely there isn't anything I need to work on? Or is there? Then, it occurred to me - you want to get out of debt so badly, but I don't stop spending in those areas that bother you. Suddenly the motivation to stop spending was there immediately."
That was it. He was motivated out of love, by God's prompting, not me nagging. I think it is another huge step in our debt-reduction snow ball and a great lesson for all women to let God work in your husband. Our job is to communicate our concerns, in love, no nagging, and then to pray, sit back and watch God work. It was amazing!
We shouldn't have been surprised that we'd fallen off the rails a bit. Barry Cameron spoke on this in his book. Once you make the decision to get out of debt, at least 3 things will happen:
1. You are going to get discouraged. When I look back on the first year of our serious debt attack or at least on this past year of blogging, as we've been really at this for many years if you include the building of the house, etc., then many, many of my posts were on discouragement and how the Lord was bringing me/us through those dark times. Cameron said, "You're going to see other people buying new cars, buying new clothes, and putting additions on their homes. Your neighbours are going to come back from Cancun after a week of vacation and those kinds of things will discourage you," Uh yeah. Vacations had to be my biggest struggle - perhaps still is. I cannot tell you how many people have been on serious vacations, around the world and back it seemed in the past year alone that we know personally. It's been out of control, nuts! It's as if all the vacation packages were on sale, or free...that's how many people seemed to travel in my life this past year. Clothing? Yes - it seemed everyone I knew was wearing the newest things. Cars? It appeared no one except us was driving a clunky old van around. Additions? Our house definitely seemed older than it ever had.
BUT, in all of that discouragement, we learned many things and powered through it, learning to change our perspective and to be happy for all those who had an opportunity to travel. To be happy for those who wore new clothes or had new vehicles or who were able to afford renovations. As our perspective changed, those things stopped bothering us. We were grateful for all we had, for all we were able to do, that we even had clothes, or vehicles, and that even we were able to get some renovations done. Our farm is a vacation to some people! We are permanently on vacation! So, we hit discouragement with gratitude and all of that changed.
2. You are going to get distracted. Yup, that happened to us, too. Cameron said, "There are going to be some things that come along and you're going to find yourself rationalizing...The distractions will come, and if you don't watch it, your rationalizations can be pretty convincing and you'll get clear off track and the devil will get you right back in that same bondage again." For sure that happened to us. In such a short time, we allowed ourselves some indulgences thinking, "It's just this once." But suddenly we were indulging all the time. Not in every area, but here and there. Enough to add up to a significant amount, but so small if you only do it once in awhile, that it didn't seem to matter - clearly that's how Satan works - you deceive yourself! Reading this section of the book was a great encouragement to us to get back on track, even in the small things, like good coffee, and to stay on track....for the long haul.
3. There will be detractors. This is a shocker. If you tell someone that you are trying to get out of debt, you would think you had horns growing out of your head. Try it and see what happens. It's weird. I think it might be because it is such a personal, silent, not-talked-about issue. No one wants to admit they are in debt. I don't like admitting it. We're calling mortgage-debt "debt". People who have a mortgage don't consider themselves in debt, but they are! We're calling them out on that perhaps. We have other debt in credit cards, etc., that we're also working on obviously, but that's also a taboo subject. We had one guy tell us he was quite happy to have a mortgage and enjoy vacations with his family. He was comfortable with his debt. We are not. So talking about it makes others uncomfortable and they actually think it is strange for us to make our children sacrifice. Cameron says, "Be prepared for that ahead of time so you can stay on target with your goal of getting out of debt and being free from financial stress." We've never said debt is a salvation issue. It's not. We've never said it is sin. It's not. But, it is definitely viewed in Scripture as negative or a curse. We are simply trying to be free from that burden and so we have to stay on track even if we have detractors.
I'm so grateful that my husband and I are on the same page. We always were, but the two of us were caving, rationalizing and quite frankly I justified the indulgences because I figured he was the head of our home, if it didn't seem to matter to him, I was ok with it, too....but it just wouldn't sit well with me. I was kind of using "the weaker sex" argument as my cop-out. I was very glad that he got strong for the two of us. I needed him to put his foot down and he did.
"Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money LITTLE BY LITTLE makes it GROW." I'm convinced, once again, that it is the little by little principle that is going to change our financial picture. I'm super excited to see what God is going to do. God clearly doesn't need me. He re-convinced my husband with no help from me - God stepped in. He wants us to be obedient in all things. Just like I wrote yesterday how Jacob obeyed in almost everything.....I think that could have been the beginning of the downfall of the Israelites.....I sure want to make sure we, too, are obedient in everything. "He who knows what to do and does not do it, to him it is sin." I hated that verse for awhile, as clearly, treating yourself here and there isn't really sin, but to us, it was. "Quench not the Spirit." Another awful verse. We were quenching the Spirit big-time. No more. Now I can read those verses with a clean conscience! They really annoyed me before!
Life-changing radio - that's the tag line for the radio station. I couldn't agree more. That radio station will get a big thank you card from us someday! You never know what we will hear when we step into our vehicles and what major life change it will bring just from driving around on a simple errand.
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