13 Here is another thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, weeping and groaning because he pays no attention to your offerings and doesn’t accept them with pleasure. 14 You cry out, “Why doesn’t the Lord accept my worship?” I’ll tell you why! Because the Lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her, though she remained your faithful partner, the wife of your marriage vows.
15 Didn’t the Lord make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his.[a] And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard your heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. 16 “For I hate divorce!”[b] says the Lord, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,[c]” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”
I can remember teaching my daughters how to drive. All the rules of the road and the do’s and don’ts of driving take some time to master. I remember speaking about little things like paying attention to the gas gauge. If you start off on your journey and don’t have the gas to get there, you might get stranded. If you don’t pay attention to the gas gauge, your car might run out of gas and stop working. Then Dad gets a frantic call from a daughter stranded on the road, not knowing why the car stopped working.
The people of Israel did not have cars, but they were stranded nonetheless, stranded in life, wondering why things were continuing to get worse. The Bible says they covered the Lord’s altar with tears, weeping and groaning about life, saying, “Why does the Lord not accept my worship?”
Maybe you are in the same spot. You have been crying out to the Lord with weeping and groaning, and you feel like all of it just falls to the ground with nothing changing. What if the Lord just told you why things are not going so well? Would you listen?
Too often, we seem to want all the benefits of being a Christian without being devoted to Christ. It is like driving that car, which is so cool, but never putting gas into the tank. You cannot have the joy of driving the car without the discipline of paying for gas.
We also plant or sow worldly things hoping to get godly results. We yell at our kids and expect them to respect our instruction. We spend uncontrollably and expect to be financially sound. We disregard our devotion to the Lord by not reading His Word daily and praying, yet expect to hear the Holy Spirit guide us in all areas of our life. Or, like in our verses above, we are unfaithful to our spouse and expect our marriage to be fruitful.
In turn, we find ourselves at the altar of the Lord crying out to God to fix things when we have messed them up and refuse to turn from our wicked ways. “Why does the Lord not accept my worship?” When we are living like the world and acting like the world, we cannot expect to be godly in all we do. If you don’t put gas in the car, you will eventually run out of gas and be stranded. When this happens, we often complain about everything else but the way we acted.
Today, realize that your behavior in your marriage has everything to do with the health of your marriage. In fact, it could be one of the reasons that your prayers are falling to the ground. God wants you to be devoted to Him and His ways first before the healing comes. It is called walking with humility. It takes eating some humble pie sometimes to admit your errors, but when you do, you will start to hear the Lord.
The Lord does not want you to divorce your wife or divorce yourself from hurting situations. He wants you to trust Him in all things, even that no-win situation you have gotten yourself into. Yes, He can even make that work for good because you have humbled yourself before Him. Don’t try to get out of your mess through the world’s ways, divorce, bankruptcy, or excommunication from people. Rather, get on your knees and give it all to the Lord, and watch Him work while you begin to commit yourself to getting to know Him every day. When you do, it will be like a country song being played backwards, you get your wife back, you get your truck back, and best of all, you get a flourishing relationship with the Lord back. Now that is a worship song.
Prayer: Father, help us realize the faults we have put our trust in. Help us realize the worldly ways we have put our trust in, replacing You, Lord. I pray that we cast aside all that is not of You and begin every day with a commitment to follow You in all of our ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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