Divine Protection Part 2

There is so much to say about divine protection.  Anyone who has spent serious time walking the Christian walk has their stories.  However, there may be some Christians who haven’t had the experiences because their walks have been short, or limited.  We all hear things, but when something is related to us by someone whom we know is telling the truth, it seems to carry more significance. It becomes real, and applicable to our lives. I have a couple more examples from personal friends about divine protection that I want to share with you, because I think they are important.

Yolanda is one of my precious friends. She’s a truly beautiful, inspiring, spiritual Christian. After a few years of the "single again" life, she started feeling really lonely. I mentioned part of her story on my “Online Dating or Not” blog.  She wasn’t meeting anyone whom she considered suitable dating material in our singles group. 

Yolanda decided that she was sick of being alone, and that she needed to do something proactive to help the Lord find her a mate. She looked at it like an unemployed person doing a job search.  She joined a popular online dating service and began vetting profiles. She shortly met a man who was outwardly Christian, unashamed of sharing his faith, who prayed, attended church regularly, who had his own ministry, and who seemed to serve God.  The first red flag was that he had multiple failed marriages under his belt, but since he was serving the Lord, she felt he deserved a chance.  The second red flag was that his divorce from the prior wife was only a few months old.  Remember, in part one, my stating divorced persons needed to take the time to HEAL??  He hadn’t done that.  The romance moved pretty fast. He wined and dined her, and as he was doing so, he’d often pray across the walls of the booths with neighboring patrons.  He was very outspoken about his faith. He had a ministry where he spoke to students.  She was very excited about the romance.  After a short time, they became engaged.

They were a few months into their engagement when she realized he had some serious issues with depression and failing personal finances, and that he still seemed to carry some emotional attachment to his prior wife.  He felt perhaps the Lord had wanted him to attempt reconciliation, rather than move ahead into a new relationship. (How selfish and irresponsible is that …… starting up a new relationship with somebody just for your personal gratification, when you aren’t sure you are done with your old one, not caring what hurt you might bring to the new woman in your life with your gutless waffling…… Can anyone say “carnal Christian” from part one?) Then he asked her if she’d be willing to WAIT on him, while he went to a neighboring state to attempt a reconciliation. If the reconciliation didn’t pan out, that would mean it wasn’t God’s plan for the old relationship to work.  Then he and Yolanda could resume their marriage plans.  Needless to say, she was devastated, because she was deeply in love.  She prayed and asked God what to do.  Within a day or two, she had a dream. If you read the Bible, or any book about hearing God, you’ll understand that God often speaks to His children in dreams and visions. 

In this dream, she and her fiancé were sailing on a beautiful sailboat in the middle of a calm, sapphire ocean, gulls drifting overhead, balmy breeze blowing.  There was a hammock on deck. Her fiancé went and laid in the hammock, and gave her the wheel. She’d never sailed a boat before.  Shortly after he laid down, she noticed some clouds appear on the horizon.  She mentioned the ominous sky to him, but he pulled his hat further over his eyes and paid her no mind.  She continued piloting as the storm arrived and began slamming the boat.  No matter how she cried, no matter how wildly the boat rocked in the waves, her fiancé would not get up and help her.  She was violently buffeted in the storm, thought she’d drowned, but later woke up, wet and alone, face down in the sand, on a deserted island. 


The moment she woke up, she knew the dream was from God. She broke the engagement. He went to the other state, to try to reconcile with his ex wife, who turned him down flat.  He then contacted Yolanda, telling her that his head was all clear, he’d asked God about what to do, and God said to renew their relationship. He’d made a terrible mistake, he really, really loved her, would she take him back and let them marry immediately?  The dream from God gave Yolanda the strength to tell him NO, even though her heart was still hurting.  I asked her if she’d prayed for God’s protection from wrong relationships before their relationship began, and she said no, but that she certainly intended to do so in the future!  

God did rescue her when she prayed, by giving her a definitive answer, but I truly believe that if she’d prayed beforehand, she would have never become involved with him in the first place.  What if she hadn’t asked God for direction, had followed her heart, let him return, and married him?  She’d have ended up married to a spineless leech, laying around on her sofa in whiney fits of depression, just as irresponsible with her resources as he’d been with his own. She’d have lost her financial resources left to her by her late husband, and would have had to carry the full spiritual and emotional load of the marriage. She would have been miserable.  THANK YOU GOD for answered prayer!

I want to share another story about a Christian friend who straight out refused to listen, due to her own selfish desires. It bought her a world of trouble.  The Word of God says in no uncertain terms that we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. There are no caveats on the end of that verse saying “except for Melissa, except for Marlene, except for Cassandra, etc.", UNLESS the owner of that Bible pencils them in for herself. I know a lot of folks who seem to pencil in personal caveats at the end of Bible verses to suit their own ends. 

Evvie began dating a man she’d met at work.  He was of a different culture, ethnicity, country, religion, age, etc.  It wouldn’t have been possible to get more unequal if she’d tried.  Her first mistake was allowing him to talk her into their moving in together.  The Bible is also pretty clear on living together before marriage. For those uninformed, the Bible is against it.  It's called living in fornication, and it's wrong for everyone.  That instruction isn’t there to KILL OUR FUN, it’s there to PROTECT us. 

After a season, they began making marriage plans.  Friends advised her against it.  Several people told her that they felt he was hooking up with her to acquire citizenship.  She ignored that.  Christian friends (my voice was in there somewhere) gently reminded her that the Bible tells us not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, and as he was embroiled in a pagan religion from birth, that certainly qualified as unbelieving. She ignored all that.  Her reasoning was that they were so terribly in love, he would never have such ulterior motives as to use her for citizenship purposes.  She also reasoned that if she continued witnessing to him, and convinced him to attend church with her regularly, that he would convert to Christianity in very short order.  He’d then become a missionary, carrying God’s Word to his home country, making tremendous strides for the cause of Christ and leading his entire family to the Lord.  She was determined to have him, and nothing would dissuade her.

They married, and things seemed OK for a couple of years, although the times he was willing to attend church with her could have been counted on one hand.  Her plans to “convert” him fell completely flat.  She wasn’t able to pray with him, or share her faith with him, because he had nothing but contempt for Christianity.  His schedule was very strange, he often worked late up into the night, with other activities going on that she wasn’t allowed to know about or be part of.  This meant that she spent many evenings alone. She was locked out of most of his life.  She wasn’t allowed to meet or associate with any of his friends at all. He insisted their relationship be kept secret in his workplace. He told her his ethnic friends and co-workers wouldn’t understand. In his culture, the parents chose the spouse, and inter-racial marriage was frowned upon.  He refused to tell his family overseas that they were married.  He somewhat participated in her life, but always seemed uncomfortable around her friends and family. 

About 3 years into it, things began to crash and burn.  They had horrible fights, and her daughter started getting angry over the situation.  She was miserable and on the brink of a nervous breakdown.  She was sharing her trauma and drama with all of her Christian friends, and begging them to all pray for her.  She was frustrated over not having a spiritual leader in her home, frustrated over having no one to pray with, share her faith with, or build dreams with.  She felt stuck and hopeless. Her misery continued for a couple more years.  She found out that he was having an affair.  She stewed over that for a few months, then she moved out and filed for divorce.  

He made a fabulous salary through his work, but their divorce settlement yielded her next to nothing. The judge did not favor her.  After a couple of years, the resources she'd been granted in the divorce played out.  She finally ended up losing everything, and moving into the home of a friend.  Before their divorce was even final, his family arranged a marriage for him with a woman of his own culture.  The ink wasn’t even dry on their divorce papers before he was remarried. Thanks to Evvie, he was able to remain in the U.S. to continue working and making his fabulous salary.  He lives in a very fine home, while she is dependent on help from friends and family for her sustenance and a place to live.

She was a Christian.  She loved God.  What happened? Shouldn’t God have protected her due to her Christian status?  

What happened was that she voluntarily stepped out from under the umbrella of God’s divine protection.  In effect, she threw His protection in His face, telling Him that she knew better than He did what was best for her life.  She rebelled against God’s laws and precepts, adding her own caveats to the Bible.  …..except for Evvie, ….. except for Evvie, ….. except for Evvie.  Adding personal exceptions to God’s Word for yourself never works out well for you.  She refused to listen to the wise and loving counsel of her Christian friends.  Her own free will got her into trouble.  What she thought she wanted ended up being not what she wanted at all.  I am confident that when she enters into her next relationship, she will pray and ask God’s direction about it first.  Her requirements for a new man will be very different. 

God ALWAYS knows what’s best for us.  God is always faithful.  There are times we don’t understand why He allows the things He does.  I still can’t tell you why my husband died a very painful death from cancer when he was only 55 years old, I still can’t tell you why my first husband molested our daughter and derailed her life.  I’ll probably never know why, in this lifetime.  I just have to accept.  We live in a fallen world, which is under Satan’s thumb.  God doesn’t cause the bad, Satan causes the bad.  However, if we are committed and willing, God can and often does turn what Satan meant for bad into something good.  And, lest we forget, there is always eternity to look forward to. Life on this earth will only be a grain of sand on an endless beach in comparison with eternity.

It is not God’s desire to frustrate the children of men.  God wants good for us.  His word even says in Genesis “It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a helpmate for him”.  God didn’t design us to be single. It even says in Proverbs that a man who finds a virtuous wife has found a good thing. Those of us who wish to find the perfect mate just need to wait on His plans to mature.  We just have to trust Him.  Trust His time.  Trust His plan.  Make ourselves ready to travel in the direction He wants us to go, prepare ourselves for the future He sets before us.

 I’ve been single (again) for 5 years now.  I won’t even pretend that I like it one bit.  I won’t pretend that I don’t grumble about it sometimes, too.  I am praying daily that I don’t fly into impatience and step out from under God’s protection and encounter some awful disaster, like my friend did.  It might be lonely underneath “the shadow of his wings”, but here I plan to stay, and wait on HIS PLAN, however long it takes!

I hope the road my friends have walked has given you food for thought, and impressed upon you the importance of waiting on God’s will and God’s time.  I hope you also realize the importance of working on yourself, to grow in the Lord, and be all you can be.  Until next time, may you safely remain under the shadow of His wings!!!