Whether you are male or female … single, married or widowed … Scripture tells us that the Lord is our Husband. What does this mean and why does Jesus take this title?

How do you help someone grieving when they’ve lost someone they love? In the 1920’s, etiquette books recommended visiting the home of someone grieving and lifting broth to their lips. Today, in 2011, how are we to help?

Swell

How does someone cope with losing a spouse? Joyce Carol Oates lost her husband of 47 years in 2008. Early one morning, she walked in on her husband having breakfast much earlier than usual – not his normal routine. He was pale, his voice was hoarse, and he was feverish. She forced him to get in the car and rive him to the Princeton, New Jersey, emergency room where at first the diagnosis was pneumonia and he was expected to be home in a few days. But her husband never returned home, dying a few days later. All of a sudden, Joyce Carol Oates was a widow and thrust into the world of a widow – a world of guilt, loneliness, insomnia, helplessness, disbelief, regret and grief so intense you want to die and follow your beloved to the other world. Oates writes, “My husband died, my life collapsed.” How does someone cope with losing a spouse? How do any of us copy when losing someone we love?

Welcome to HAVEN Today, I’m Charles Morris sharing the Great Story that’s all about Jesus and a program called “The Lord My Husband”. How does one cope? Well, you cope if you know Jesus. You don’t have to line up your pill bottles on the kitchen sinks, like Joyce Carol Oates, when on her worst days, she pondered the thought of taking her life. But if you have Jesus – be you man or woman, boy or girls, the Bible says the Lord is your husband. When you grieve and lose that one you love, you don’t have to be alone. You don’t have to consider taking your life. Jesus is there and He is your husband. If you missed our programs the beginning of this week with a widow named Meriam Neff, we have those programs available on our website, haventoday.org. You can also read about her book From One Widow to Another which we have as our thanks for your gift to HAVEN Today. We want to send you a copy today as our thanks for your gift to the ministry. God to haventoday.org or call us after the program at 1-800-654-2836. HT opens with the music

OPENING SONG

The Lord Your Husband here on HAVEN Today and I’m CM. Now this may sound a little unusual, especially if you are a man. I certainly think it’s easier for a widow to understand. Stick with me as I share how the Bible teaches the Lord is our husband.

He is in fact the husband we ALL need. We have so many unique relationships in life. Each one fulfills a special place – a special need. Husband, father, brother, friend. Even in our mixed up world we know when there’s a relationship gap and we know it makes a difference.

But . . . do we know the Lord who fills our relationship gaps?

Do we, as believers, understand all the aspects of the relationship we have with Him? Do we understand what it means that he’s our husband?

Father, brother, friend -- Each of these relationships is unique and each one of them tells us something deep and wonderful about who the Lord is for us – about the different facets of the relationship we have with him.

But I don’t think there’s any more amazing and mysterious than “husband”.

The Lord is my husband.

What exactly does that mean? How can I get hold of it and understand what it says about his love for me?

The theme runs through the Scriptures all the way to the closing chapters in Revelation and the promise of the New Jerusalem to come. The whole unfolding revelation of God to his people that starts in Genesis culminates in a wedding feast – the bridegroom is the Lamb and his bride is his people. But it’s Isaiah 54: 4-5 where the Lord actually uses the word “husband” to describe himself and his love for us.

“Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your husband — the LORD Almighty is his name — the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. “

The Lord makes this promise as a consolation to a widow who’s afraid, who’s feeling shame and grief and rejection. I think that’s a clue about how to understand this relationship the Lord has with us. Widows have a special insight into what it means to have a husband – they learn it in the school of grief – they learn it by losing it. And in that loss they really understand what a deeply consoling thing it is that the Lord is their husband. I’ve talked to many widows who tell me that Isaiah 54:5 transformed their grief. They knew the Lord was whispering to them – very gently, very personally – comforting them in their loss with this wonderful realization: “Your Maker is your Husband.”

Let me share what a 30-year-old family friend of mine shared with me. This is from her prayer journal a few weeks after her husband died:

“Lord, I’ve just realized what I lost in losing Tom. It’s not just him, the person that he was, the missing him. It’s the identity he gave me. It’s the partnership I had with him as I traveled through life.”

“He gave me the identity of “wife.” Now I’m no ones wife. I feel uncherished, uncovered somehow. I was “one who was loved and chosen and claimed and protected by her husband” Now who am I?”

“And I’ve lost the partnership of marriage. I’ve lost the deep security of knowing I’m part of a union of two, that I’m not traveling through life alone, that I’m doing it together in the security of the unbreakable bond of marriage.”

“But death has broken it and I’m crashing. Do you know what this means to me, Lord? How can I handle the fact that the unclaimed, lonely, status I thought was behind me forever has come on me again?”

The answer to her prayer was written in her journal, too:

“Your Maker is your Husband.” Thank you Lord! Thank you for speaking these sweet, sweet words to me -- for filling the emptiness with your presence and your love. You love me with a husband’s love. You chose me. You protect and cherish me. You’ve given me your name. You’ve united yourself to me with an unbreakable bond of love. And death can’t break it. “

The school of widowhood taught her what it meant that the Lord was her husband.

Octavius Winslow talks about these schools we attend – these circumstances that teach us new and wonderful things about the Lord.

He wrote:

“Look how many different names God has, and how many ways he relates to us! He speaks directly to our circumstances and teaches our hearts to love him more. Think for example of how precious it is for a Christian woman who has lost her spouse to hear: “Your Maker is your husband.”

“You go to special schools, “ he says “to get special knowledge. We learn about the special relationships we have with God in special situations. If you’ve lost your husband, that sorrow becomes a school where you learn a more dear and close relationship with the Lord. He becomes your portion. He’s your husband. He understands your loss. You’ve lost the man who listened to you or who had the right words to say, the man who worked so hard for you, who shared your life, the arms that embraced you.”

The Lord has become all those things to you.

But that’s not just true for widows – he has become all those things to each of us.

There was a very personal reason why Winslow understood how widows feel. At the age of forty, his mother, Mary Winslow, moved to New York from England with her ten children. A few weeks after she got there her infant daughter died. Before the little body had even been buried she received a heart-stopping message -- her husband had also died.

Years later, Mary wrote a letter to her children describing what she learned in that school of sorrow and insecurity:

“My very dear children,”

“The Lord in his wonder-working providence, has brought us as a family to the beginning of another year. Truly of all the families on earth we have reason to say, ‘Goodness and mercy have followed us!’ Look back with me to 1815. At the very moment that I was weeping over the corpse of a darling child, I received word that a still heavier calamity had fallen – I had become a widow. I was bereaved of a fond husband and you of an affectionate father. With very little finance, living in a foreign land, all the present and future concerns of a large young family had been given over to my care. None but God could know the deep anguish of my heart. I felt I was going to sink under my load of suffering. Everything was dark.”

“One whole night I passed wrestling in prayer – a night that become forever memorable. Everyone in the house was asleep except your widowed mother. I paced my room crying out for help and comfort from Him – who alone could give it. I tried in vain to grasp some divine promise. When dawn came I was still wrestling with God.”

“It was then a voice spoke to my innermost soul, so blessed that I couldn’t mistake it. Its promise was so divine, its comfort so real, and its assurance was so explicit that I was left with no doubt about whose voice it was.”

“I will be a father to your children.” Those were the words. I felt in an instant that God was with me – with me in my room. I felt assured that he had seen my sorrow and had come down himself to comfort me. I felt assured that God would not only be a father to my fatherless ones but also a husband to their widowed mother.”

No wonder Octavius Winslow, son of Mary Winslow, he knew what it meant that the Lord is our husband and our father. He grew up knowing. The Lord will provide for you and for your children and he will love you with an everlasting love.

“There is a sacred place in the heart of Jesus Christ only for you.”

Those are Octavius Winslow’s words. He knew them to be true. And we need to know them to be true.

You’re not just one of a crowd of people he loves. The Lord has an intimate, unique love just for you, a very personal, individual love just for you.

He wants you to know that you can take Isaiah 54 and make it your own:

“Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your husband — the LORD Almighty is his name — the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. “

Widowhood isn’t the only school where we can learn what it means that the Lord is our husband. You don’t even have to be a divorced woman or a single mom. The Lord is talking to anyone who knows what it’s like to feel abandoned and unloved – unclaimed and un-cherished. Do you feel that way? Then he’s talking to you. He’s talking to anyone who feels ashamed and afraid and alone. Do you feel that way? Then he’s talking to you. You’re in a very privileged situation – a private school -- where you can experience the full significance of these beautiful words. You can hear him speaking personally, telling you that your situation has changed because your Maker is your husband!



The Lord Almighty has married you! Maybe you feel too ashamed to be his wife, too sinful. But the Lord has swept all that away in his love.

In Hosea 2:14-16 the Lord is talking about his wayward people. They’ve turned away from him like an unfaithful wife. In fact, the Lord had the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute as a shocking demonstration of what his people had become. Their unfaithfulness to him was brazen and shameful. But then the Lord had Hosea buy her back and bring her home and love her like a husband. He wanted us, his people, to understand what kind of husband he is to us. Listen to what he says he’s going to do:

“I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’

The promise in Isaiah 54 that the Maker will become our husband was fulfilled in Jesus. The promise in Hosea that the Lord would allure his shameful, unfaithful people and make us love him as a husband was fulfilled in Jesus. When we see him going to the cross to die for us we’re seeing the love not only of a savior and a shepherd – we’re seeing the love of a husband. And it’s meant to allure us with its passion and love. It’s meant to win our hearts.



You see the relationship the Lord is teaching us to have? We’re no longer to call him master, he is, “My husband.” He brings us into the desert places so we can hear him speak tenderly to us. He swings open a door of hope; he makes us sing because of his love…

And he makes us fruitful.

In a marriage there’s a physical union – right? And it’s out of that act of love and oneness that children are conceived. The marriage bears fruit – to use the bible’s language.

There’s an analogy we’re meant to see. We have a spiritual union with the Lord – he’s united himself to us in a spiritual oneness. That spiritual union of love is not meant to be barren – it’s meant to bear fruit – fruit that can be seen in our lives. We don’t just obey the rules. We don’t just do good deeds. We bear fruit because we’re united with the Lord. The power of his life is at work in us.

Paul was getting at this wonderful reality in Romans 7.

Rom. 7:2-6 “By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. . .
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”

You see the distinction Paul is making? The Law is like a husband who just makes demands all the time. But we’ve died to the law – in his own body, Jesus broke that bond. Now we belong to another. And we serve in a new way – by the Spirit. It’s an obedience of love. The Lord is our husband. Our union with Him bears fruit for God.

These are deep truths. Lord, would you teach them to us? May we learn them and live them.