You will have unique opportunities to minister to people in the church because of your husband’s position.
You have a great advantage here. Many women will see you and, simply because of who your husband is, come to you for advice, spiritual care and prayer. Use this to your advantage and allow the Word of God to soak up in you so you will have His words to say in time of need. It is a great blessing and joy to minister alongside my husband in this way, as well. Often, we have people in need of spiritual care come over to talk with both of us. Especially in the case of women coming over, God has seen fit to use me to be His literal hands and feet by comforting cries with warm hugs, touches and prayers over hurting women in our body, ministering to them in ways my husband is unable to. God has a purpose and a calling for wives to come alongside our husbands. Let’s make good use of the opportunities we will have.
There have been various points in the past year where I found myself clinging to the call from God for my husband and me to plant this church. The call was more distant and fading into the background of our current trials. Surely, this wasn’t still the call, was it? I am so thankful God, in His mercy, found it pleasing to give us the strength to endure. I can look back with thankfulness in the ways God grew us, utilizing our circumstances to dredge up sin that would have otherwise stayed hidden until prompted by something else. My shortcomings and weaknesses were there all along, it simply took church planting to bring them to the surface. I pray that as your weaknesses surface, you will cling to God and His calling upon you and your husband as you journey through your first year of church planting. And the most wonderful news …
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).
Understand that while going through the first year of church planting or other trials, your soul, your marriage and your identity have the potential to come out of the trial all the better for it. Don’t let this trial be in vain; allow God to make it a year of sanctification and refinement, which will result in more praise, glory and honor due to Jesus now and in the last days. No matter how smooth or rough our transition into planting a church is, there will be trials along the way. We can rest knowing we don’t have to worry, strive, prove, be in control, fear, look elsewhere; we can find hope and rest in God, the same God who called us to church planting and sees it through.
