Unequally Yoked (Part 2d and final post.)

So I was talking with a couple the other night, and this idea of “unequally yoke” came up. As it so happens, this couple have the story where the wife claims she was a Christian when she meet the husband, and the husband was not. After some courtship, they fell in love and decided to get married. Many years pass, and the husband finally accepts Christ. Now, this Christian husband says to me that if it weren’t for his wife accepting him, and loving him, and marrying him, he would have moved on, and possibly never found Christ. So he asks me, how is it that this story can be bad? And so I thought about it, already knowing the basic simple answer, but wanted to express it better to them. Now, I must admit, I forgot most of the points made during our conversation, but I remember the major premise, and that is grace. Is this story bad? This answer is no, but not because it was good from the beginning. The story is good because God has redeemed it. Mirroring the entire Bible and the history of Creation, this story and ones similar to it, are beautiful stories of God’s redemptive grace and boundless love. Allow me to elaborate just a bit. When God called His people out of Egypt and into the Promise Land, what is the beauty of the story? Is it when Moses, face to face with a burning bush, argues that God has chosen the wrong person, that he is not qualified to do the task that God has called him? Or is it when Moses and the Hebrews, standing next to the Red Sea, the people begin questioning Moses, asking him if he brought them out of Egypt just to die at the hands of the army at the sea? Or is it when, after crossing the sea on a dry seabed, begin questioning Moses again, asking him did he bring them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? No, the beauty wasn’t in those acts, but the beauty was when God used Moses despite his insecurities. The story was made beautiful when God parted the sea (after they lacked faith and questioned,) and when He made bread fall out of the sky and water flow from rocks (after, again, they lacked faith and questioned.) The story was not made beautiful by the Hebrews’ decision to not go into the Promise Land (after God had told them to,) but when God even after this rejection of God’s guidance, He still loves them, leads them, and blesses them with bread from the sky and water from rocks. God takes our decisions, good or bad, and makes them work for His good. Look again at the story of the Hebrews: what was beautiful, their lack of faith and rejection of Him, or His continued love and grace that he lavishes on them? What is beautiful, Adam and Eve choosing an idol over God, or God using their descendents to further His Kingdom, and to bring more glory to His name? What is more beautiful, Creation continuously rejecting its Creator, or the Creator continuing to work in Creation and, in the end, glorifying His name even more by taking it from a garden to a city? Or what is more beautiful, a wife, whether out of ignorance or a known knowledge, decides to go against God’s will, or when God seeing this decision, says “I love you still, and I will still bless you, and I am going to work this situation for my glory. I am going to take this act that was not intended for my glory, and work it for my glory in the end. That’s how much I love you.” I say what’s more beautiful in all of these stories are obvious. So when I’m asked, “well what about my story, how come my spouse ended up being saved? Doesn’t that show that it was a good thing for me to do to start with?” I’ll say no, it still was going against God’s will, but God loves you and His creation so much, that He is willing to redeem your story from bad decisions, and to work it toward His greater glory.
John Piper says it this way, “God takes the very sins of the destroyers and makes it the means of their salvation. God turns things on their heads. It’s all over the Bible; He does it this way. Job, Esther, Joseph, Jesus.”

I hope these past few post have at least help you open your hearts, minds, and Bibles, and let God speak to you. I still encourage any feedback and comments. Again I say that this is what I have found to be what God wanted me to learn and heed. I do not claim to be a Bible scholar or to be stating absolute fact. I merely have spoken from the heart, and told what I feel God was prompting me to write. I pray that, as you are reading this, you allow God to speak into your life, and that you may follow where He leads you.