What do you do, when you’re a Christian and believe in Jesus Christ, but your spouse doesn’t believe in God and refuses to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord? What do you do, when you live with an unbelieving spouse and your spouse doesn’t want to go to church with you, read the Bible, and pray? Do you feel lonely in your marriage, because your spouse doesn’t believe the same way you do and disagree with how you want to raise your children? Maybe you’ve tried all kinds of things to convert your unbelieving spouse, like applying prayer methods for an unbelieving husband or proclamations, but it didn’t work and now you wonder what to do. Well, then this article is for you! Find out what the Bible says about living with an unbelieving husband and how to convert your unbelieving spouse to Christianity.
Do you feel lonely in your marriage?
When you and your spouse don’t share the same faith and are not on the same level, you can become very lonely in your marriage. There are many Christian women, who are married to an unbeliever.
Some Christian women deliberately married an unbeliever, despite the warning of God’s Word. They thought they could win their spouse for Jesus, in no time, but that didn’t happen. There are other Christian women, who are converted during their marriage. And there are women, who married a believer, but during their marriage, their husband left the faith.
But what do you do, in these circumstances? Do you stay patient and faithful to your unbelieving spouse? Or are you fed up with the whole situation and step out of the marriage covenant and get a divorce?
Are there effective prayer strategies to convert your unbelieving spouse?
There are many sermons and Christian books about prayer strategies in combination with fasting for the conversion of people. Many Christians apply these prayer strategies and methods to convert their spouses. But when their spouse is not converted after a few months or years, they become frustrated and give up. Or even worse, they give up on their marriage and break their marriage covenant.
When Christians give up on their marriage and break their marriage covenant by getting a divorce, they act out of the flesh; out of selfishness. They don’t act out of the spirit in obedience to the Word of God. Because divorce is not the will of God and it will never become His will. (Read also: ‘What does the Bible say about divorce?‘).
If you feel hopeless and embittered about the fact that your unbelieving husband is still not converted, despite your many prayers, I would like to encourage you and say, that there is one way to lead your unbelieving spouse to Jesus Christ according to the Bible.
How to convert your unbelieving spouse?
There is one way to convert your unbelieving spouse and that’s through you! Yes, you read it well, through you! Let’s have a look at what the Bible says about an unbelieving husband and how to convert an unbelieving spouse:
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price (1 Peter 3:1-4)
It’s important that you acknowledge your husband as the head of your family, as Christ is the Head of the Church. Through your subjection to your spouse and by respecting him, through your behavior your spouse will be won for Jesus Christ. That’s what the Bible; the Word of God says.
“How can you submit yourself to God,
if you can’t submit yourself to your husband?”
The Lord has appointed the man, as the head of the family. But because the spirit of feminism (spirit of darkness), rules in the lives of many women, women become rebellious against their spouses. They want to be head of the family and refuse to submit to their spouse.
Submission doesn’t mean being treated like a slave and being controlled and abused (physically and mentally) by your spouse. But submission means, that you recognize your spouse as your husband, as the head of the family, and that you respect your husband.
Don’t judge your husband. Don’t put him down, by making fun of him or by making sarcastic remarks about your husband, especially in front of your children and others. But honor your husband.
Acknowledge your husband’s task to care for and provide for his family. While your task is to nurture the members of your family. (Read also: The marriage covenant).
She talks piously, but what about her walk?
Will you convert your unbelieving spouse, by your words? By your daily preachings, corrections, and chastisements? The answer is no. This will only drive your husband further away from the faith.
The only way to convert your unbelieving spouse is by your behavior; through your pure manner of life which is accompanied by a reverential fear.
Here we have the main problem because many Christian women don’t bear this fruit. Their spouses don’t see their pure manner of life.
They don’t see a changed woman, who walks after the Spirit. Instead, they see a rebellious woman, who doesn’t respect her husband and doesn’t want to listen and submit to her husband.
They see a person, who wants to lead her own life, doing her own will and enforcing her will on her husband and children.
They see someone, who is haughty, maybe gossip, speak evil about others, complain, murmur, etc.
The unbelieving spouse sees an unchanged woman, who lives like the world, doing the same works and bearing the same fruit (adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, rebellion, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like).
Therefore, the unbelieving husband is not drawn to become a Christian and serve Jesus. The husband doesn’t see any benefit in becoming a Christian and the necessity of repentance. Because he doesn’t see a difference in the lifestyle of a Christian and an unbeliever.
The only thing the husband sees that differs from his lifestyle, is that his believing spouse reads the Bible and goes to church on Sundays. But that’s it. (Read also: If Christians live like the world what should the world repent of?).
As long, as you won’t change,
your spouse will not change either
When you do what the Word tells you to do and you submit yourself to the Word and begin to respect your husband, instead of controlling your husband and confronting your husband all the time with his errors, shortcomings, and flaws, then the situation shall change.
There shall be a change because you have changed.
When you do what the Bible says and bear the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, your husband shall notice the change in you. This way, you shall win your husband for Christ.
You shall not convert your unbelieving spouse by your words, but by your deeds
The Bible says, that you shall not win your unbelieving husband by your many words, but by your deeds.
When your unbelieving husband notices your meek and quiet spirit and sees the fruit of the Spirit, then it won’t be long, before your unbelieving husband gives his life to Jesus Christ.
How long does it take? No one knows, but it shall happen because the Bible says so. And we know that the Bible; the Word of God is the truth. Therefore if you want to convert your unbelieving spouse, be patient, submit to the Word, and do what the Bible tells you to do, because God’s Word doesn’t lie.
‘Be the salt of the earth’
