A year and a half ago, during a particularly low point in my marriage I vividly experienced the way the holy spirit convicts. We had been married less than a year, and already we were living in separate houses, struggling through therapy twice a week.
The most recent conflict had left me physiologically flooded. You know that kind of anger where you find yourself unable to stop moving? That was me. I grabbed my memory verse cards, threw on my sneakers, and headed out to walk and pray.
Conviction of the Holy Spirit
I walked for almost two hours that day, drowning in my rage. I prayed in between reciting scriptures, never expecting to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Not after being mistreated so badly.
I felt sorry for myself. It felt so utterly hopeless. It felt like we weren’t making progress on any of the issues that bothered me most.
I found myself yelling my anger out to God. I expressed my frustrations about my bride in full, as I never could with her directly. As if he weren’t intimately aware of the situation. I told him all the things that she had done to wrong me.
That took a while. But, eventually, I ran out of steam. I rested my case, certain that God would agree and comfort me. But, in the pause that followed, I got a response from God. He was direct: “Tell me again how awful your bride is.”
Convicted by God
Just like that, He stopped me in my tracks. I was convicted by God and could not wriggle free of the implication. My anger fled. I was crushed.
I remembered what Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:31-32: “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.“
The conviction disarmed any attempt I might have had to defend myself. I am an abysmal bride. There has never been a day when I managed to love Him with all of my heart, and with all of my soul, and with all of my strength. And, I definitely do not love his children as I love myself.
In the midst of my struggle to forgive my wife, I went to God who offered limitless forgiveness to me. How perfectly rich of me to go to the God I so frequently wrong to complain about my spouse.
Thanks be to God for his patience and mercy. Praise Him for the love He proved to me on the cross. I fight this selfish pride every day, and it seems like I keep finding it hiding in new places.
Holy Spirit Conviction
My prayer for today is two-fold. First, that I become a better bride–loving Him and obeying his commands more each day. Second, that the Holy Spirit conviction would propel my forgiveness of others and make it less difficult.
I am resolved again to surrender my sorrow and pain to the cross. I don’t need to carry the burdens of bitterness and resentment and anger any longer. When the Holy Spirit convicts me, I will lay them there again.
Verses About Anger and Forgiveness
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” James 1:19-20 (ESV)
“Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.” Psalm 51:4 (ESV)
“Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’” Matthew 18:32-33 (ESV)
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