Keep Thine Heart Faithful

Dear Parsiphony,

I commend and encourage you to continue on your path of obedience. I know your heavy heart. But we have to stick with what is certain and most assuredly good, mainly Christ and His love, which conquers all things. Recently I was encouraged by Luke 6:20-36. Whatever we suffer for Christ's sake is well worth the bounty of having Him.

Beyond that, it is love for our young non-Christian men that keeps us from them. God works through the means He has established, mainly by expositing Himself through the obedience of those who are His. If, when we disobey, Christ chooses to be merciful straightway, He will make sure we have no peace until we become obedient to Him again, and thus having not held our tongues we hurt both ourselves and our young men. By the mercy of God, this was my fate.

Then there is the next option, where He chooses in His sovereignty to withhold His correction, and to allow the Christian to, in folly, marry the non-Christian. Perhaps their marriage is even happy by the world's standards, because the Christian has learned to "trust in God's love" without living in obedience. But it is evident that if a Christian wants God to bless a thing (i.e., to see her husband safe in Christ), then that Christian must use the means God has established. What the unconverted learns when a Christian woman marries him against the word of God is that she is obedient in all things except those things next her heart, of which especially she should have given to God, and not to have left the other ungiven (Luke 11:42). By the mercy of God, this was my terror.

There is also the question of how to raise the children in such a home, where such a union was entered into with open eyes. God grants special grace when one who was married before becomes a Christian while their husband remains without, but what can be said for the Christian who, unrepentant, enters in? Perhaps if her eyes were blind to the unequal yoke she would have some consolation, but what justification is there for seeing eyes? Surely it will mean compromise and damnation for someone, unless sincere repentance soon follows. Perhaps they will live a happy life together, but will be separated for eternity in the next life because of her apathy. Or perhaps in the manifold mercies of God her husband will be saved. But then she shall have to live in the bitter reality that God saved her husband from the fires of hell despite her instead of through her, despite the woman who thought the happiness of her flesh more important than seeing the soul of the man who she professed in an assembly of witnesses to love safely in the bosom of Christ. Perhaps God has already led her to repentance, but the man she loves is still unsaved, and her godly character provokes a most painful and combatant relationship between them, two who should have been one flesh, and who should have raised godly seed together. In the selfishness of youth, she has forgotten her children, and her grandchildren. By the grace of God, these too were terrors to me.

My dear Parsiphony, on these grounds I do commend once again your obedience, and I would add that if Christ and God is real, then disobedience is not worth the risks involved for your young man, and even for yourself. Even utter misery on this earth is a happy price to pay for Christ forever, and some unsatisfied hopes for the present are worth eternal satisfaction in Christ. There every tear shall be wiped away (Revelation 21:4), and Christ shall not leave us miserable even on this earth, because He is with us even now, even in our hearts, a constant comforter and a constant friend. The Devil will try to tell you that you cannot live without your young man, but if he were to die, you would have to. Not only would you discover you were able, but you would continue to live simply because time progresses. Beyond that, remember that you are perhaps preserving him from eternal death by separating yourself from him.

For all intents and purposes, the Christian life is really the most reasonable life there is to live, both in terms of wisdom in this life and in the next. Though I am thoroughly convinced we wait for life after death, even if Christ were not there we would not have lost much by living this way, because happiness is uncertain and fragile, and seeking it constantly as our goal does not necessarily make us more likely to obtain or to keep it. Even if we lived our entire lives serving others in love alone, we would have lived a more fulfilling life than many. By all standards, a Christian life in obedience is most excellent, both for edification in this world, and fulfillment in the next.

In all things, remember that Christ is with thee, and I love thee, sister,
~Dinah Greyhorn