The Prodigal Spouse
Besides the prodigal son, there’s another parable of a prodigal in the Bible. It isn’t told by Jesus; instead it was lived in real life by the prophet Hosea. God told Hosea to marry a prostitute. He took her away from the men who had bought her, gave her a home, and had children by her. She didn’t stay with him, but instead ran away to her old life, the life he had rescued her from.
God wouldn’t let Hosea let his wife go. He directed him to go and buy her back. Only think of how painful it must have been for a husband whose wife has run away from his loving provision to have to purchase her from another man. But Hosea did it because God has done that for us.
Though she had not loved him, he loved her. Through Hosea’s story, God sent a powerful message to his people. Though they had served other gods and run away from his love, he wasn’t through with them. He loved them and would redeem them so they could come back into the safety of his love. He said, “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them” (Hos. 14:4).
Seasons of Waiting
Betsy Childs Howard
Using examples from the Bible, this book teaches us to understand God’s purpose in our waiting for a spouse, a child, a home, or healing, and to long for when Christ’s return ends all waiting.
Tragically, husbands and wives still live out this painful parable today. Lynn and her husband had been married for twelve years when she started to realize that there was something really wrong with her marriage. She didn’t suspect an affair at first because she couldn’t believe that her husband, a professing Christian, would violate his marriage vows. He was a doctor and often worked late, but one Christmas Eve, he didn’t come home at all.
That Christmas was the start of years of unfaithfulness, separations, and attempts at reconciliation. Lynn’s husband would lie about his affairs, making it nearly impossible to tell when, if ever, his repentance was genuine. Lynn vividly remembers sitting with him at a coffee shop where he asked her to forgive him for his infidelity, yet all the while she knew that his plan after leaving the coffee shop was to go and sleep with another woman.
Lynn prayed for her husband to repent. They went through hundreds of hours of counseling sessions together. She could have divorced him early on, but her heart’s desire was for their relationship to be restored and their family made whole. She didn’t just want him to stop having affairs and start living an upright life. She longed to know his heart, but he didn’t want to be known. Instead, he betrayed her again and again.
If you have been forsaken by your spouse or your spouse has forsaken God, like Lynn, you know something of the pain Hosea experienced. And you know something of the pain God experiences each time one of his children forsakes his steadfast love for some fleeting pleasure the world can offer. He isn’t just looking for good behavior; he’s looking for intimacy with us.
Satan, the Multitasker
When Satan goes after our family, he also goes after us. He loves to kill two birds with one stone. When your spouse is caught up in sin or unbelief, it is highly tempting to make that person the center of your faith. Your spiritual walk can become not about your salvation through faith in Christ, but a desperate campaign to save the prodigal you love. As time goes on, if you don’t see an answer to your prayers for your prodigal, you may be tempted to doubt.
Conversely, you may be tempted to harden your heart as did the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal. Even as you pray for your prodigal to repent, you may find yourself comparing your own life path with his and feeling pretty pleased with yourself. You may find yourself thinking, “I would never do what he has done,” even though you might not say it out loud. Beware self-righteousness. It is just as destructive to the soul as promiscuity, and far more deceptive.
When Satan attacks someone you love, he attempts to attack your faith at the same time, either by doubt or by pride. You don’t have to fall victim to his scheme. By God’s grace, waiting on a prodigal can actually strengthen your faith. One woman whose husband forsook Christ midway through their marriage told me that the sad events had enabled her to reach a turning point in her faith. She realized that even her husband’s crisis of faith was something God could use for her good. God wanted her faith to grow in spite of her husband’s loss of faith. She couldn’t just tread water while she waited for her husband to return. She grew and flourished, becoming even more dependent on God after her husband was no longer walking with her spiritually.
Lynn had a similar turning point when she started attending a church that emphasized the sovereignty of God. “I remember many times thinking, if God wanted things to be different in our marriage, he could change it in a heartbeat. But he wasn’t choosing to do that.” Rather than making her bitter toward God, this recognition brought her comfort. It helped her realize that even her husband’s unfaithfulness was something God could use for good in her life.
The very best thing you could do for the prodigal in your life is to grow in your own faith. He or she needs you to be a prayer warrior, and warriors need good nourishment. If you pursue God with all your heart, soul, and strength while you wait on your prodigal’s return, one of Satan’s favorite strategies will be thwarted.
If you’ve been abandoned by your spouse, the Accuser will attack your self-worth. He may tell you that you weren’t pretty enough or smart enough. He will remind you of all the ways you didn’t measure up. You must fight this by finding your worth in your identity as a redeemed child of God. You were so precious to God that Jesus died for you. He didn’t do this because you were pretty or smart or had your act together; he did it because he wanted you to be his.
By God’s grace, waiting on a prodigal can actually strengthen your faith.
Waiting Well While Waiting for a Prodigal
Prayer is a huge part of waiting on prodigals. We pray that they will return and repent. We pray that God will restore broken relationships and redeem the years that have been squandered. We pray, to paraphrase Augustine’s words, that their hearts would stay restless until they finally rest in God.1
People who are waiting for a prodigal go through different cycles of grief and acceptance. It is good to recognize this. While one week you may be full of hope, the next you may feel angry. There may be times when you feel weary of the prodigal. Stay honest before the Lord, and pray according to where you are emotionally, not according to where you think you should be.
You may feel shame over your prodigal, but I encourage you not to hide your situation from others. God is glorified when he answers prayer, and if others are praying for the prodigal in your life, God’s glory will be magnified if your prodigal returns. You may worry that others will judge you as a spouse, but is fear of that judgment worth cutting yourself off from the prayers of the body of Christ, prayers that could move your prodigal to repentance?
Perhaps you are a leader in your church, and you fear that people will think you are a fraud if they discover that your marriage has fallen apart. While it may be true that people will see you differently once they discover your family isn’t perfect, you will likely be surprised at new doors of ministry that will open. No one wants to unburden herself to someone who has never suffered. When you go public with your pain, you will find that others will be eager to share their own fears and failings with you.
Look for ways that God has used your painful situation to draw you closer to him. For years, Lynn feared that if she lost her marriage, she would lose her identity. But as her husband continued in unrepentance and she clung to God’s promises, her identity in Christ took on greater importance than her identity as a wife. She recalls, “God really began to show me more of who he is and who I am, apart from being attached to somebody else.” You don’t have to wait to find out how your prodigal’s story turns out to celebrate God’s ongoing work in your own life, just as he worked in Lynn’s.
As you wait for your prodigal, I hope that you will cling to God’s promises. During her years of waiting, Lynn carried around a little ringed notebook with Scripture passages to meditate on when her fears overwhelmed her. She clung to Isaiah 41:10, which she memorized in the New American Standard version:
Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
In a sense, Lynn’s fears came true in that she and her husband did eventually divorce after thirty-five years of marriage. But her fears of being alone and without financial provision fell away as God kept his promises and the body of Christ supported her. While she still wouldn’t choose her story to unfold the way it did, she says of her loss, “I know God has used it mightily in my life for his purposes.” God’s promises never fail.
Notes:
- Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3.
This article is adapted from Seasons of Waiting: Walking by Faith When Dreams Are Delayed by Betsy Childs Howard.
Betsy Childs Howard (MA, Beeson Divinity School) is an editor for the Gospel Coalition. She is the author of Arlo and the Great Big Cover-Up and Polly and the Screen Time Overload. Betsy and her husband, Bernard, live with their two little boys in Birmingham, Alabama.
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