Hi SUM Nation. Lynn Donovan here.

I want you to meet my friend.

This is Debbie DelNero. I met her at my new church about a year ago. I was still fairly new to the congregation. She came up to me and introduced herself. Then she said something remarkable.

"I lead a small group of SUMites and we are currently studying your book, Winning Him Without Words."

I hugged her.

In her remarkable words was something that moved my heart deeply. You see, there aren't many of us. Those of us who are walking or have walked the unequally yoked path. The spiritually mismatched are often forgotten in a church body. No one truly understands the deep struggle of living in a marriage where you want to honor God and your marriage vows, even to an unbeliever. 

And even more unlikely will you find a woman who decides to seek out others and then gather them together to study and encourage them to grow in faith and hope for their unbelieving spouses.

Debbie, is brave. We all are brave but she did something that is even less common. She started and continues to lead a small group of SUMites. My heart fills with love for all of us walking out our faith in a spiritual mismatch. But my heart swells with the deepest of gratitude for her selfless efforts. 

She loves God. She loves people.

AND my heart and the heart of Jesus swells for every woman who has led a small group of SUMites. And for those who will in the future.

Also, My heart swells with deep gratitude for the SUMITE Team who writes online and those who contribute to social mead. You serve selflessly and for no reason other than to help someone and see the name of Jesus glorified. 

This month of May marks the 17th anniversary of this ministry. I am thankful for all of you. Those I never met. The many who served another SUMites, in some way, without acknowledgement. I'm thankful that the love of Jesus shines from your eyes.

I'm so thankful and I ask the Lord Jesus to bless each of you in a tremendous and REMARKABLE manner. 

I love you. Lynn

By Ann Hutchison

My friends, I had a reallllly interesting night a week ago. It was one of those nights where you see God move and you drive home with a head full of thoughts.

To tell you the story, I need to backtrack a little. One of our SUMites, Paula Blackie, lives about an hour's drive from me, and every now and again I meet her for coffee.

The first time we ever met in person, we randomly picked a cafe halfway between our two houses. When we got there, imagine our surprise when we saw that the cafe was decorated with model wedding cakes ... Everywhere. 

I meet a SUMite in a place where the walls are adorned with wedding cakes? ... Love it!

But God had more fun for us than that.

A few months ago (sitting in this cafe), Paula shared with me that she'd been asked by God to gather families in her neighborhood on the beach on a Sunday night. She obeyed.

Shortly after that, she was nudged by God to phone a particular man, and ask if she could use his house for these gatherings. Well, he had already been nudged by God about this too, and said yes. So began a little house church.

This house church has grown to about fifty people, and a competent team of four leaders -- amazing, sold-out, on-fire Christians -- have come around Paula to help her. As a team of three men and two women, they love this 'church' as much as Paula does and they run it as a team. 

Can SUMites do this? Well, sometimes God works in unusual ways. The Bible has many stories that demonstrate that.

Having heard all this, I needed to go and visit this house church. For me, this story of Paula's has become a much-loved extension in our SUM family; it's something one of our community is doing and it's exciting.

Here's where it got fun...

I turned up thinking I was going to just eat a meal and enjoy meeting some people; but, Paula got nudged by the Holy Spirit: "Ask Ann to join in with ministry."

They're all sitting in the room on couches, we've listened to some worship and taken communion. Paula sidles up to me and says: "We're going to walk round and give every person a marshmallow and say 'Jesus loves you'. Then, Ann, would you be happy to pray for each person and give them a blessing?"

I'd never done this before with a room of strangers ... but I really was very happy to do it, so said a joyful yes.

Each person in that room was a stranger to me, bar Paula and one other. Strangers yes, but brothers and sisters in Christ. I knelt in front of each person one by one, asked Jesus what to pray, waited to see what popped into my mind, and used that to pray.

Honestly, I couldn't tell if those prayers were resonating with them. But I do know that if you pray blessing over someone with the right heart, your words are powerful. 

It came to Paula, and I somehow got the sense of tears of laughter, so I said, "I bless you with tears of laughter." What a funny thing to pray but it was what popped into my mind.

Well ... I finished, plonked myself down on a dining seat, and turned to someone to talk to them, when snorts of laughter started to emit from Paula's corner. I looked over thinking, "She's being quite loud"... But then I saw the man next to her double over, tears streaming down his face, joy on his face. He looked over at me, said, "I feel the presence of God so thickly," then burst out laughing again. Then, suddenly, the man in the chair next to me leant forward, head in hands, and started to giggle.

It was Holy Laughter! 

Well, when we bless people, the joy of heaven comes. I love the fact the laughter came after that round of blessings. Funnily, I never felt the laughter myself -- so instead I watched them curiously with a smile on my face. 

On the drive home I said to God, "Whether or not each prayer resonated, I do pray that those blessings will come to fruition in those people's lives."

And I, for one, cannot wait to visit that house church again. 

Oh I hope you liked that story, and I wish you a joy-filled weekend, and that the joy of the Holy Spirit will fill you to the brim, overflowing!

Love,

Ann

My friends,

It's been interesting talking about serving God when spiritually single, and I've found your comments wonderfully insightful. I have especially loved hearing your stories. Our lives certainly are different to other Christians, aren't they?

For the final post in this series, I want to finish with a story --

You might remember I'm going through the book The Love Dare, and one of the dares I had to do was ask Bryce a question, listen to his answer, and not argue back. The question was a hard one. It was this: "What three areas of my behavior do you wish I would change?"

"Do you really want me to answer this?" He said. "Are you sure you want to go there?"

"Hit me with it!" I said. Go on, just do it.

"Wellll..... I'm sorry but your driving is terrible," he said. "It really, really bothers me, your driving." That one made me laugh, even though he was being serious. 

But then he told me this, and this one didn't make me laugh. It sort of made me want to cry, but I listened: He said, he works hard bringing in the money. He works long hours and he's often tired. He comes home to see me at my computer 'blogging', and yet parts of the house-cleaning haven't been done, the laundry hasn't been folded, and sometimes important administrative things have been forgotten. He then has to spend time on those things at the weekend.

Ouch.

So the thing is, I've been serving God, but kind of neglecting other things. And that's hard because serving God sometimes takes up a chunky part of our lives.

"What do I do?" I asked God. "I can't not work on the SUM ministry, because You have called me to it and I know it's where I'm meant to be. But, I'm stumped, and I'm quite distressed now."

I reflected further and decided not to get excessively discouraged but instead work out a solution. Bryce did have a point. As the one who 'doesn't work' in his eyes, I should do my part for the family. That is, at least keep the house clean, make it a nice environment, stay on top of the dishes and do family jobs during the week so that we can both relax at the weekend.

My friends, that is the conundrum about service. And, I think the lesson is this: Even if God is calling us to serve outside our homes, we can still do it in a way that's considerate to our spouse.

Ok, here's what I did next --

I changed my daily routine. I realized my priorities are, in order: (1) My relationship with God, (2) My family, and (3) Service to others. With that in mind, I set up my daily routine to reflect that order.

I decided to:

(1) Spend the first chunk of the day with God, which I was doing anyway.

(2) Immediately after that, do a little bit of cleaning, and make sure the kitchen is tidy and laundry done.

(3) Only then, work on ministry and other service things.

(4) Each day, try to fit in some kind of task for our family, whether it's inviting some neighbors for dinner, or doing some school paperwork -- The aim being to keep our family life vibrant and running smoothly.

It's working so far. Already the home feels more orderly, and I kind of like it. I'm not a naturally neat person when it comes to my home but I'm finding this new discipline is good for me.

Ultimately, in the SUM ministry our goal is to thrive in our faith and our marriage. A big part of our marriage succeeding lies in us being considerate to our spouse. In the area of service, that truth remains: It is our thoughtfulness and love that will win them over. And while God has many fabulous things for us to do, his heart is always brooding over our marriages.

Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives (1 Peter 3:1, NKJV)

So, that completes our series on Serving God when Spiritually Single. I hope you've enjoyed it like I have. I would love to hear any final thoughts you have in the comments!

Love,

Ann

Hello everyone!

Serving when spiritually single, part 1

Serving when spiritually single, part 2

We're continuing the above series, and it's time to turn our attention to this difficult aspect of serving: How our spouses feel.

Gulp!

Because we are one flesh in marriage, like conjoined twins, our choice to serve often costs our spouse something. 

It's mostly our time that we give; but sometimes it's part of our heart too. And from our spouse's point of view, our time and heart could be spent on other things.

It's very difficult, and for me this continues to be a tightrope balance. My husband does miss out on certain things because of time I spend on God. That said, marriage is about two people's needs, so there's give and take here.

Several years ago, my pastor took a few of us through some conversations as a leadership team. He wanted to encourage personal integrity and so he covered a different topic with us each week. One of those topics was 'balancing ministry with your marriage.'

He shared with us that while he felt an intense call to ministry, his wife did not have the same sense of calling. While she supported him 100%, because they had that slight difference he always made sure he asked her about every single evening he was to be away from her -- "Is it ok?" he would keep on asking.

He suggested we all do the same, and I liked that. However, I did reflect that if I had asked my husband "Is it ok?" in those early days I would not be a believer or attending church by now! As a SUMite, part of our lifestyle unfortunately involves standing up to our spouse in certain areas and not always being in agreement. So, how do we strike the balance?

When we want to serve in a particular area, we can first ask this:

Lord, do you definitely want me to serve in this area? I've got a desire to do it, but is this from you? Please confirm it.

We can wait a little while to mull this one over, but if we are pretty sure it's God's will for us to serve in a particular way, we will then find one of two things happens:

EITHER:

(a) Our spouse says 'yes', and sometimes it's a miraculous 'yes' that leaves us floored at God's goodness (woohoo!)

OR:

(b) Our spouse resists us. If that happens we then have to test whether we've heard God correctly. God doesn't mind testing us either: "Are you going to follow Me, or follow man?" It's not easy, but occasionally serving becomes a matter of obedience to God. 

I've been in both of the above scenarios and I know that others in this community have too. Discerning God's voice becomes critical. And, consideration for our spouse's feelings remains important.

Amazingly, all the spouses of the writers here at Spiritually Unequal Marriage have given their blessing for us to write. They said a miraculous yes. It's truly amazing. That said, their permission is necessary given the personal nature of the writing, so God had to help us with that.

The same was true when Dineen and Lynn wrote the book Winning Him Without Words. Their husbands never read the book; yet they cheered their wives on. God has hidden us all in a very unique way there. That there is scenario (a) in big, bold miraculous form!

However, when I stepped into speaking at church, I had the opposite happen. Bryce felt I was going too far with the whole Christian thing and he resisted me strongly. We had a particularly difficult conversation one night about it. Later that night God gave me a vision of a fly aiming at my voice-box. Flies in visions often represent Satan. Through this vision God said to me, "Ann, this is an attack from the enemy; he is trying to discourage you from speaking, and you need to push through and speak anyway." After that, I kept going.

It didn't take long for Bryce to have a change of heart and within a few weeks he was even supportive. I guess every scenario is different.

I suppose the moral is that sometimes our spouse will support us, sometimes they won't, but the most important thing is to listen as best we can to God's voice. Stay considerate to our spouse, and stay obedient.

Do you have any thoughts or experiences you'd like to share about the above?

Love to you all,

Ann

Hi SUM family, Ann here and we're currently in our series on Serving God while Spiritually Single. Part One is here:

Serving God when Spiritually Single: Part One

Today I want to talk about how we cope when the church looks at us differently. Does it affect our opportunity to serve?

I decided to look at this because one of our SUMites recently shared that's how she feels. She said something along the lines of: "Sometimes I feel the leaders might look at me and think there's something wrong with my life because my husband isn't believing. That might make them less likely to trust me or think of me as an obvious person to serve."

Have any of you have found that?

In my experience it's certainly been harder to build social connections and trust at church, at the very least. Because my husband isn't there it takes longer for people to know me. 

That said, there's a tremendous truth here that is rather exciting: God overrides these things if he really wants you to serve in a particular area.

I experienced that in a personal way recently. Many of you know my church closed last year, and then I followed the Holy Spirit's lead in moving to a new church. The old church was mostly made up of families. The new church is mostly in their twenties. Sometimes I feel very old in this new place!

One day while back in the old church, God stirred my heart that I was to start preaching there. "Yikes, that's bold of me I thought" ((laughing)). That's not the sort of thing you put yourself forward for easily, so I didn't mention it to anybody. But, one day the leader of the preaching team came running after me as I was leaving church. "Ann, would you like to give the sermon next week?" My mouth dropped open. 

God opened that guy's heart to my desire to serve; and that's how it goes: God gives us a stirring, and then it kind of happens.

Well, I really enjoyed that season of preaching in that church. But, you know, Bryce never attended once, and I stood up there alone each time. It was tough almost as much as it was rewarding. That seems to be the nature of service, at times.

I then moved to the new church, and God said to me "Ann, now I want you to be a passenger, not a driver."  In other words, he was asking me to step back and be a behind-the-scenes support. Meanwhile, my son Miles (age 16) signed himself up for the 7:30am set-up team on a Sunday, and that's what he and I now do once a month. That too feels 'meant to be', as God also said to me "I just want you to talk to people." While setting up, that's what I do.

Now, back to our SUMite sister's comment: Yes, in my new church I'm experiencing a little of what she said. It's been difficult to get to know people. I'm looked at a little differently too, as I don't fit the mold. It's ok -- God's breath on my life has shown me where he wants me.

Overall, though, I think the following quote captures how we must walk this. It's from Dineen, our past leader, and I just happened across it yesterday. She said:

"Don’t confuse your calling or ministry or service as who you are. Those are things you do. They come from your identity in Christ. All that we do to serve must be held loosely because we really don’t know the full picture of where God plans to take us next."

A hearty amen to that. So, let's seize the adventure of where God wants to take us next. Who knows, huh! All we know is that we must do this:

Through love, serve one another (Galatians 5:13, NKJV), and --

.. in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord (Romans 12:10-11, NKJV) 

Now your turn: What's your favorite area to serve in at the moment? And have you found it looks different in different seasons?