Forcing God’s Plan and Creating an Ishmael
You know what marriage is “supposed” to look like. When you first get married you imagine having someone to enjoy life with, someone to share dreams and goals with, someone who is always there for you for support and companionship, someone who knows you more than any other and loves you anyway. You hope for your spouse to care about the things that are important to you. You hope to be able to work together in parenting your children. And you commit to staying married no matter what comes your way.
Commitment is a good thing when it’s what God is requiring and when your spouse is, indeed, as committed to the success and joy of your marriage as you are. And commitment is, of course, what is intended for marriage. But sometimes when we know what it is “supposed” to look like and what is “supposed” to happen, we find ourselves doing what Sarah did with Abraham when she knew that she and Abraham were “supposed” to have a child that would be the father of many nations: She tried to force it. She started to think that maybe God was taking too long to make happen what was “supposed” to happen and he was running out of time because they were so old and it would soon be too late for them from a biological perspective. Yet God had planned something unexpected (and even impossible, as Sarah was past child-bearing age) in order to ensure that it could only have been done through faith in God.
Trying to force God’s plan
Now you might be thinking that, in light of that, you should continue to wait for your spouse to change or for your marriage to get better, because God can do the impossible. And maybe that is what you are supposed to do. But you better get clear on that, because it’s only when you abide by God’s plan that good things happen. If you assume that God has plans for your marriage to work out, and you try to force it, it could lead to disaster. Like Sarah and Abraham, you could find yourself in an embarrassing situation (Abraham having sex with his wife’s servant just to try to fulfill the promise, and everyone knows about it).
And, like Sarah and Abraham, their attempt to force God’s plan to happen before its time led to a whole people group who not only reject God but are vehemently opposed to the descendants of Isaac (as God said regarding Ishmael, the son born of the slave woman, in Genesis 16:12 “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’) We see that happening even today with the Muslims, the descendants of Ishmael.
Your attempt to force your marriage to be something that it will not be can lead you to an Ishmael situation filled with embarrassment, disaster, and hostility.
And that isn’t the only time that Abraham had tried to do things his own way and manipulate different aspects of God’s plan for him. Two times, once when they went into Egypt and once when they went into Gerar, Abraham told Sarah to be sure to say that she is his sister so that they wouldn’t kill Abraham to take Sarah as a wife. He wasn’t trusting that if he told the truth that God would protect him and Sarah. As it was, his attempt to control the situations put Sarah in an awkward situation at best and in danger at worst.
The consequences of creating an Ishmael
And your attempt to control your marriage or your spouse can put you, your children, and your spouse in a sort of danger, too. For example, trying to force your marriage to work without your spouse’s commitment to do the same could further enable your spouse’s selfishness and allow your spouse to get the benefits of a marriage without having to put in the work to maintain it. This creates a relationship that isn’t mutual and can lead to resentment and a bad example for any children you may have. It also deteriorates your ability to discern what is appropriate in a relationship and lowers your standards of morality so that, at times, you may find yourself calling “evil” “good,” lying to yourself and others about the state of your relationship, and making your spouse an idol who is the near-constant focus of your attention.
Now you might be thinking “I’m not trying to control my marriage or my spouse - I’m just trying to make it better.” But if your spouse is not invested in making things better, then any attempts that you continue to make are ways that you are not submitting to reality and, instead, are trying to force something to happen that you can’t make happen.
Reasons that God’s plan might not go how you thought it would
So you might be thinking “why would God not want my marriage to work?” Well, there are reasons. We see times in Scripture that God gives people what they want in order to prove a point. Here are some examples:
In 1 Samuel 8 the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel the prophet and said to him, “appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” But when they said this they displeased Samuel and Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to listen to the people and give them a king, but he told them to warn the people and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights (their sons and daughters, the best of their fields and vineyards and olive groves, their male and female servants, the best of their cattle and donkeys, a tenth of their flocks, and they themselves will become his slaves.) He adds, “When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Perhaps you wanted to be married and you did not listen to what God was saying about his plans for you, and now you find yourself crying out for relief from the spouse you have chosen and feel as though God is not answering you. The men of Israel did this in Joshua 9 when they are not supposed to makes treaties with the people around them; yet, when the Gibeonites came to them and showed them “evidence” of their integrity and honesty (lying in order to “prove” that they were not a people group who lived near them so that they could make a treaty with the Israelites), the men of Israel inspected the evidence and made what seemed to be a logical decision, but had not inquired of the Lord. In the end, it turned out that they’d made a treaty with someone with whom they were not supposed to make a treaty, and when they had a chance to choose between being faithful to God’s command to wipe out the nations in Canaan and being faithful to their treaty with the Gibeonites, they chose to keep their treaty with the Gibeonites, believing that since they’d made the treaty before God that they had to keep it. Perhaps that’s an analogy for your own marriage. You’d inspected the evidence of your spouse’s character and made what seemed to be a logical decision but you hadn’t really inquired of the Lord. And now that you are married, rather than being faithful to God, you are choosing to be faithful to your vows to your spouse, thinking that since you made those vows before God that you have to keep them, even though that may not be what the situation warrants. [Read my article on covenants and contracts]
Or maybe you thought that you were choosing whom God had for you, but now it isn’t turning out the way you thought it would. The prophet Elijah can relate: he was doing the work that God had called him to do and ended up saying to God, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” His obedience to God wasn’t turning out the way he thought it would, either.
Perhaps, like Saul in 1 Samuel 13, you inquired of the Lord but didn’t get a clear answer from him before you made a decision. Maybe you got tired of waiting for his answer or you felt pressure to make a decision. When Saul didn’t wait for God’s answer, God told him the consequences of his impatience: “now your kingdom will not endure.”
Or like the Israelites, the people to whom God had chosen to be a husband, whom God had clearly led into Egypt through the tragic and then fantastic circumstances of Joseph’s life: they believed that God had taken them to Egypt to be well-taken care of in the land of Goshen (and they were, for a time) but they ended up becoming slaves. But when God led them out, they went out. So don’t assume that God intends for you to stay stuck in a situation just because he led you to it. Sometimes God allows us to become slaves (so to speak) so that, when he brings us out from slavery, we give praise to God, trust him, and are led into a better land.
Or maybe it seems like you’re in your “Promised Land” but your spouse isn’t loving, honoring, or cherishing you like they promised to. Remember that even Israel, when they were in the Promised Land and did not remain faithful to the Lord, God gave them a certificate of divorce and sent them away (see Jeremiah 3:8)
God’s love is not for your marriage. He didn’t send Jesus to die for your marriage. His work in your life is not to preserve your marriage. God’s love and work is for your relationship with him (God) and for your spouse’s relationship with him (God). And, more important than whether your marriage works out, God wants you to grow in your relationship with him (God). And that sometimes comes by way of loss, suffering, and difficulties. James says “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
So don’t be like Moses who, while he was living in Egypt, assumed that he knew God’s plan and took action to begin working it out on his own only to find that he was fleeing for his life, spending the next 40 years in the desert. God may not want you to be the savior of your marriage. He may not have the same plans for your life that you do at all. Sometimes things that seem counter to God’s intentions are what can bring him the most glory and do the most good. Other times he’s calling you to persevere but in an unexpected way. So don’t create an Ishmael out of your marriage. Just seek God for what he is doing in your situation, trust him even if it doesn’t make sense, and align with what he’s doing. You might just find that….. Hope is not found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation…..
Wondering whether you’re creating an Ishmael? Schedule a Breakthrough Session below.
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