Mauri and I fell in love with each other's spirituality before we
really started to love one another. She was good for my spirit
and helped me grow closer to God. We are very different in many
ways. I have always been a little bit of a perfectionist, and have
always had a fettishness for cleanliness. Mauri is more of a free
spirit, as my mother says, and some of the things that bother me do
not bother her at all. These have been areas that have hindered
our relationship with one another, as well as our relationship with
God. However, I've mellowed a little, and she has gotten better in
some areas, so we tend to be a little more in sync now than we were
when we first met. But it has not always been easy. After our
marriage we continued to have many growing problems, but I feel
much of them were natural adaptations of a recently divorced man
who had lost his three children trying to cope with five step
children. So all in all I guess we could have done much worse.
But I was fairly slow in forgiving Mauri for intruding into my life
after my divorce. It took many years after we were married for me
to feel she hadn't caught me in my weakest period of my life. Even
though I was in the darkest days of my life after my ex-wife
kidnapped my three children and took them to Germany, I was given
love from Mauri and my five step chidren. When I was totally
unlovable, they loved me. When Jonathan was born, my depression
lifted, but Mauri and our kids helped me to reach the stage where I
could trust and love again. My family and friends could not
understand marrying a woman with five kids to care for, while I
look back on it knowing it was the best thing for me personally.
But I can honestly say, that even though we underwent some of the
roughest times imaginable, God sustained us because He was the
center of our home. There is no way possible for me to be more
proud of how wonderful our children are. Much of the credit goes
to me, but much of the credit goes to their mother too.
There were two significant things that happened that preceded the
attack on our marriage. The first came from within our own church.
We loved this church. We loved the congregation, the music, the
children and the anointing of the pastor. But the church had
taken a step up the spiritual ladder. God placed a tremendously
special anointing on the church, and therefore the church came
under a horrific spiritual attack. My wife was in charge of the
childrens church and was a special prayer warrior on the wive's
prayer chain. And this was a powerful prayer chain. When these
ladies got together over the phone lines to pray for someone,
miracles took place. Our pastor had started a series of sermons
about six weeks before entitled, "Walking in the Spirit". The first
Sunday he was to preach on this topic, God came to church. The
Pastor got up to preach after we had sang our praise and worship
songs, and he just stood there. He said he was going to start on
his series of "Walking in the Spirit", but he felt someone in the
church had something to say. First one man got up to say
something which resulted in another man getting up to say
something which resulted in a third and a fourth and so on for
over two hours of testimony from the congregation. It was a
glorious movement of God. The congregation was ecstatic, and
everyone was truly amazed at what God had done in church that
day. Our congregation doubled in one week to standing room only
the next Sunday. And the same thing occurred again. For four
straight Sundays we experienced a walk in the Spirit. The church
was growing by leaps and bounds, the congregation was truly alive
in Christ and God was in church with us. The women's prayer chain
was seeing so many miracles occurring that people from other
churches were calling our prayer chain for prayers. But then the
bottom dropped out from underneath this mighty movement of God.
The pastor stood in front of the congregation on the fifth Sunday
and said, "Today I am going to preach on Walking in the Spirit.
Unless you have heard an audible word from God and the person
sitting beside you has heard Him speak to you too, I don't want
anyone to say anything in church today besides me." And the
quenching of the Spirit of God was so heavy you could hear a gasp
from much of the congregation. The people that came to church
the following week were sad and hollow on the inside. We knew we
had sat in the presence of God, and because of man's fear of
losing control of his congregation, God had been sent packing.
Sadly to say, within a few short weeks the church was looking for
a smaller place to conduct its services. One of the reasons many
left the church was because the pastor had called in the husbands
and wives of all of the women who had been participating in the
wive's prayer chain. Even though this prayer chain had brought
together many mighty women of God who had seen evidence of the
power of their prayers, this prayer chain had not been sanctioned
by the board of directors of the church. Therefore the wive's were
being formally reprimanded and the husbands were being told to
keep them in line. It was forbidden for the women to pray together
over the phone lines. Then our family left the church. This was
the first occurrence that preceded the drastic attack on our
marriage. The second was a little more disguised. A young pastor
came into my bookstore and told me he was getting a divorce. Both
he and his wife shopped in my store frequently, and both were
wonderful servants of God. I was a little stern with him as I told
him that it was not the will of God for him to go through a divorce.
He told me he had fallen out of love with his wife and I rebuked him
again. God loves us all even if we have been through a divorce.
But God abhors divorce. As Christians we have a responsibility to
stand on the Word of God to preserve our marriages. However,
much to often we Christians are no better than the non-christians
of the world who jump from marriage to marriage. I was not easy
on that young pastor that day as I told him not to get a divorce,
God was not allowing me to tell him what he wanted to hear. I
never saw that young pastor again, but I did not know the spiritual
challenges I was soon to go through concerning that very area. It
was to be a horrible period of time during the next year that could
have been prevented if I had been a better spiritual leader of my
family, especially my wife.
So we had lost our church, the children's church, my wife's prayer chain and my wife is suffering spiritually. I still had my friends and customers who came into my Christian bookstore every day to share the Lord with, but Mauri was cut off from all of her spiritual contacts. She was hurting and I was to busy to notice. And I had opened a door for our marriage to be attacked when I did not prayerfully protect my marriage after I had counseled the young pastor to not get a divorce. As my wife drew away from God, I was getting closer to God and she and I were growing apart. When she is close to God she is very beautiful to me, however, she is not when she is not close to God. our marriage was being attacked by the devil, and I was too stupid to protect it. The year of 1993 was a year of spiritual attacks I wouldn't wish on anyone. I had an obscene phone call one night from a seducing jezebel spirit that openly offered me sex. It was an outright frontal assault by satan so therefore I saw it for what it was and refused. But satan does not always come at you with his horns blazing, his long pointed tail and pitch fork in hand. Many times he comes up beside you disguised as an angel of light. That is when you must be especially prepared to protect yourself, your family and your status as a Saint of God. Jezebel always has the right words and if you are not careful you can be led off the path of righteousness. Jezebel tried to deceive me into thinking divorce was the best thing for me because she would be my best possible spouse. So my unhappiness with my wife and home life continued to get worse as I tried to justify this relationship. Mauri did not realize the attacks I faced, she just knew that I was unhappy and wanted a divorce.