My husband is a drug manufacturer and got me into drugs as well
Question:
I'm a woman in my thirties with several beautiful children. I'm married. My husband and I are from different countries and very different cultures. We met in my country and immediately started seeing each other. He accepted me with my children and treats them as his own. Within three months we got married. I then learned that he is a drug manufacturer and a hardcore addict. I was very disappointed when I discovered this, as I truly believed that he was God sent. I continued to remain in our marriage as I trusted that God will change Him. I had a good job at the time. He suggested I leave my job as I don't need to work because he will take care of us. I did just that.
While unemployed we spent most of our time together. He often used and I eventually joined in -- a decision I would live to regret. I hate his lifestyle, and we'd often have huge fights about it. He promised me that his going to quit, that he just wants to make money to start a company here and settle in my country. I believed him and after almost 10 years nothing has changed.
I've been to five rehabs and always relapse. I often tell him that my relapses and his addiction of 25 years stem from his disobedience to the word of God. God entrusted His children to me because He trusts that I will teach them about Him, and mold them to follow Christ. I feel so humbled to be chosen by God to do His will. I'm a born-again Christian studying for my degree in ministry. I completed my first year and still have three years to go. I love people and serving them. It has always been my heart's desire to teach the word of God, but because of my decision to remain married to my husband as per the word of God, I feel limited. How can I save souls when the manner in which my husband puts bread on our table causes my brother to stumble? I feel like a hypocrite. I minister mostly to addicts and orphans as I too am an orphan.
I love being a part of the kingdom of God. It's where I belong. I love my husband, and I refuse his lifestyle. I fail to believe that our union was God's plan. I feel as though my husband is a huge hindrance in my life. I pray every day that God must deliver him but nothing has happened yet.
Either he is going to have to turn to God, or I'll be forced to divorce him. Our environment is toxic. He cooks, he uses and every time I fall off the way and relapse. I've been made new in Christ and I'm not supposed to be living as I did before Christ. Is this because I'm keeping company with my using husband that I keep relapsing?
Our lifestyle is insane as I'm studying ministry, meditating on the word of God daily and my husband is doing the total opposite.
I need an answer from God. Please can you help me? How can I expect God to prosper my children through the pain of others?
Galatians 6:7 "Be not led astray; God is not mocked; for what a man may sow that also he shall reap."
I pray for a response. God bless.
Answer:
What I notice is that you selected your husband, marrying him when you barely knew him, all based on your emotional response to him. You called it a leading from God, but clearly, God would not approve of his sinful life. However, because you wanted it so badly, you assumed that what you wanted is what God was wanting.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil" (Proverbs 3:5-7).
Instead of using God's teachings from the Bible to guide your life, you leaned on your own understanding. Yet, you blame God for your bad choices when you say that God sent this man into your life. You further blame God for not changing your husband, but God gives all people free choice. In essence, you are asking God to take away his choice. Your husband has made bad choices and you followed him. "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful" (Psalms 1:1).
I'm glad you are trying to turn your life around. However, your choice of career is again contrary to God's teaching. "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church. Or did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it you only that it reached? If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord" (I Corinthians 14:34-37). It is fine to work with addicts and orphans, but this doesn't translate to leading a church or addressing a congregation.
Follow God completely. "Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). Yes, your husband needs teaching and I Peter 3:1-6 talks about how to best accomplish this. In regards to his sins, you cannot support him in those and you need to keep your family separated from his sinful behaviors, which is a large task.
You are asking others to solve some big problems that you willing chose for yourself when you were younger and naive. Those problems don't have easy solutions, which is why God has repeatedly warned us not to go that route. For now, focus on doing what is right in God's sight. Everything can't be solved, but you can at least reduce the damage.
Question:
Hi Mr. Hamilton,
I am in total awe at your prompt response; in fact, I didn't think I would get a reply. May God continue blessing you.
I totally agree with you, I married a man I didn't know. Prior to meeting him, I had just lost my family and I lost my job due to drinking and drug use. Instead of my praying for God to forgive me and help me find another job as I had children to support, I'd pray for God to send me a man with money. I remember clearly how I would pray about how tired I am of not having as I grew up in poverty. In my prayer I even said I don't care if he is a drug dealer, as long as he had money. Not long after these prayers, I met my husband, and I believed that he was God sent. Yes, I trusted that God would change him. My late grandmother often told me that if I don't put attention to how much I love money and alcohol and prayed for my deliverance. I would be led into dark places, and it happened just as she warned.
This has been the hardest ten years of my life. I thought growing up in poverty, enduring daily abuse from my uncle, and being abandoned by my mother was hard. But I've grown to learn that was nothing compared to where I've been for the past 10 years -- raising my children with blood money, causing my brother to stumble so that I can eat. My friends say it's not me as I don't make it he does, yet I believe I'm a part of it as we are married. We've been using drugs since we met and it's been miserable. All I want is to serve my God, yet I keep returning back to him as it's a sin to divorce, but in this environment, I stumble over and over.
I'm also very heartbroken to learn that it's against the word of God for me to be a minister as this has always been my passion. So female ministers like Joyce Meyer are wrong? I want to do the will of God, yet I keep relapsing. Should I move to a safe environment away from drugs?
I'd also like to add that my children have different fathers. At 17 I found my abuser dead and I remember how happy I was for myself, yet sad for my grandmother's pain. It's after his death that I rebelled. I met my first boyfriend just after my abuser died, I then had my first child. He then left me for another woman. Several years later I met my first husband. He was a hardcore addict, and I knew it, yet I chose to get married to him and have a child. Our marriage didn't last long, I left him as his drug abuse escalated. My current marriage is my third and we have a child together. I've always made my own choices and never choices based on the word of God.
I really need prayer and guidance as to ending this pattern of sin. It's not what God had in mind for me. I need to be consistent and committed to my decision to follow Christ, yet I battle. This is awful.
Answer:
There will always be people teaching their own desires instead of following God's word. "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (II Timothy 4:3-4). Women preachers are just one aspect of people turning against what God taught.
You are not required to support a husband who is violating God's law and leading you astray. In fact, to support his criminal activities would make you guilty of the crimes he is committing. "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them" (Ephesians 5:11). Submission to a husband is qualified as being "in the Lord;" that is, in accordance with Christ's teachings. "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:22). If your husband is leading you astray, then your faithfulness to the Lord must come first.
Another problem is that since you did not divorce your second husband because of his fornication, you do not have a right to another marriage. See: I need a dumbed-down version about divorce and remarriage.
