Sacred Influence by Gary Thomas Read Free Book Online

God who has kept you from starvation. What good did it do you to be spared an early death from hunger, only to watch your son die from disease? You confront Elijah and tell him exactly what you think of him and how you wish you had never laid eyes on him.
    Elijah takes your son into a back room, out of your sight. A short while later, you can’t believe your eyes — your once-dead son walks straight into your arms! You’ve never felt joy like this — and in a spontaneous gush of praise, you cry out, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth” (1 Kings 17:24).
    Suddenly it gets very quiet. You realize you’ve just insulted the man who saved your son. Now you know that he is a man of God and that God speaks through him? Only now you believe him? What have you been eating for the last several months? From where do you think that flour kept coming? Who told you, against all reason, that the oil would keep flowing? And yet, still, it takes this for you to believe his words?
    What happened to the widow so long ago continues to happen in many marriages today. Elijah’s miraculous provision for this woman became commonplace. What once seemed like an extraordinary occurrence — flour and oil that never ran out — soon became a common blessing, so expected that it ceased to be noticed, much less appreciated. After a week or so, it was just the way things were.
    Sadly, many women view their husbands in this very way. Their spouses’ strong points become so familiar that the women no longer see them, much less appreciate them. But when one weakness rears its ugly head, all else gets blotted from memory.
    Husbands, of course, pick up on this. In a poll of a thousand men, just 10 percent of husbands — only one out of ten — believe their wives love them more than they love their wives. We think we’re much happier with you than you are with us. 1
    Blinded to the Blessing
     
    On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Lisa and I watched several interviews with women widowed as a result of those attacks. “What has changed most about your perspective in the past year?” one interviewer asked. The first widow to respond said, “The thing I can’t stand is when I hear wives complain about their husbands.” Every woman nodded her head, and then another widow added, “It would make my day if I walked into the master bathroom and saw the toilet seat left up.”
    Their words have a profound ring. The little things we allow to annoy us seem trivial compared to the loss of blessings once taken for granted. In the face of their enormous loss, these women no longer cared about the little irritations; instead, they had to face the big, black hole of all that their husbands had done for them, suddenly sucked out of their lives forever.

    “Sarah” lives on the East Coast. (For various reasons, I’ve made this a composite story.) She attended one of my “Sacred Marriage” conferences and had gathered with several women in a small group between sessions. One wife started boasting about the beautiful backyard rock garden her husband had built over a three-day weekend. Sarah seemed unusually quiet until she finally held up her hand and said, “Please, stop! My husband spent all last weekend on the couch, watching a golf tournament. I don’t need to hear about how your husband spent those days working in the yard!”
    Later, I spoke with Sarah one-on-one.
    “How large is your house?” I asked.
    “A little over two thousand square feet,” she said. “And it has a nice yard.”
    “Wow, that sounds great, especially with three small children. You must feel fortunate to be there.”
    “I guess so,” she said.
    “Where do you work?” I asked.
    “Oh, I don’t work,” Sarah replied. “My husband makes enough for me to stay at home with the kids.”
    “That’s fantastic!” I told her. “Do you realize that 65 percent of the women in your situation have to work