Whose Side Are You On? Who Can Be Against Us?
When the going gets rough in your husband’s life, do you get rough, too? If he has hardship on the job, misunderstandings with one of your kids, or a physical complication; if he falls for a temptation, doesn’t treat you just right, or hasn’t done what you both previously talked about, what happens to you? Do you stay on your husband’s side, on the side of love? Or, do you side with the enemy, like JOB’S WIFE?
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And [Job] took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes. Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks…” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2:7-10)
Now here is an example straight from the Bible of what we as wives shouldn’t do, which recently jumped right off the page of my Bible. I’m sure you’ve heard about Job’s hardships which tested his faith in God. The punchline is that Job did remain faithful to God; and everything the enemy had stolen was restored to him abundantly over again.
However, apparently, Job’s wife didn’t pass the test alongside him, at least not in this moment—at least not when she is telling him to curse God and die. Since the Bible tells us that Job was perfect and upright before God, we have every reason to believe his wife was also righteous. Why would Job marry an unrighteous woman?
Yet, even a righteous woman can listen to the enemy’s words and easily repeat them, as she did. She obviously couldn’t take it anymore, and instead of being a strength, help, and encouragement to her husband, she fell into the enemy’s trap, siding with the enemy against Job—her own husband. In doing this, she also sided against God.
Have we done this same thing with our spouses? Have we listened to the enemy about our spouse, and then repeated to them what he said? When we listen to (receive instead of reject) the enemy’s lies about our spouse, that is exactly what we are doing— we are siding with the enemy against God and our husband. Did she really want Job to curse God and die? If Job would have trusted and listened to his wife on this day, he would have failed the test and lost big time.
The heart of her husband safely trusts her; So he will have no lack of gain. (Proverbs 31:11)
If your husband decides to trust you in a situation, by listening to your words, would he gain or lose? Is what you are communicating really what you want him to think and feel? Is it really what you want him to do? Are the results of your words (from the enemy) really what you want? That’s what we need to ask ourselves before we listen and then repeat the devil’s lies, and that’s what Job’s wife should have asked herself before opening her mouth.
Looking back at previous verses, before Job’s wife told him to curse God and die, we can clearly see exactly WHERE she got those lines to begin with:
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause.” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” (Job 2:3-5)
Job’s cursing God was the devil’s idea. Job’s wife got those words straight from the devil himself; the devil said those words before he gave them to her to say. Sadly, she took the bait—instead of walking in love and following the love command (Matthew 22).
In this letter, I would like to take some time to shine the light on the enemy of our soul and his tactics. He is always trying to get us “out of love.”
The Book of Job is one of the first times the name satan is mentioned in the Bible. If you look it up in the Hebrew, it literally means “accuser.” What is an accuser?
An accuser is someone who lays blame to another, someone who charges another and judges another guilty for an action.
This is precisely what the enemy (satan) was doing right here with Job. He was accusing him to his own God, to his own Father. Was Job sinless? No, because we know Jesus is the only man who was sinless. Did God still call him “blameless” and “upright”? Yes! (Job 1:8) Job was blameless and upright because he believed in, trusted in, and walked in obedience to God.
Today, for us in the New Covenant, because of God’s grace, our Father declares us blameless and upright, too! (Romans 8:33) He looks at our heart through Jesus’ sinless blood and He is looking at your husband’s heart that way, too. He is NOT looking at his mess ups, struggles, issues, or faults. SO, WHY ARE YOU?
I want to remind you of what Romans 8:1 says:
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
I’d like to point out that the word “condemnation” here in the Greek means “judgment against.”
So, let’s resay this with that in mind:
Now, there is NO JUDGMENT AGAINST your spouse who is IN Jesus, who walks after the spirt and not after the flesh.
Even now, before moving on, I can feel what some of you are thinking… “But my spouse isn’t walking after the spirit. He/she is walking after the flesh.” Allow me to be frank. That is not your place to point out or determine or judge or say or think or even really feel much about whether or not your wife or husband is walking after the spirit or not. That is between them and the Lord. Not between you and them. We must get that straight before we can move on. Our obligation is to walk in love according to the New Covenant love command (Matthew 22).
Now, back to the devil and Job’s wife… Here in the Book of Revelation, we see a further description of the enemy of our souls as THE accuser:
Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. (Revelation 12:10)
Job’s wife got those words straight from the accuser of her husband, the devil. She sided WITH the accuser AGAINST her husband, and ultimately against God. The devil gave her the very words to say.
Is the devil feeding us words to say to our husbands, too?
All the enemy can do is lie and divide. He lies in order to divide. He hates unity and is always working division into the Body of Christ, ministries and churches, marriages and families, workplaces, relationships, not to mention governments! How does he do it? By ACCUSING. Telling people lies about other people.
Accuse: blame, point the finger at, declare guilty, lay charge against
He is also constantly going to the Lord, telling Him all the bad he sees us doing, constantly accusing us day and night. Should we be at all shocked that he has been accusing our husbands to us, and us to our husbands, from the day we got married? Not only are many of us shocked, but many of us have also been oblivious.
Why is that?? Why on God’s green earth have we listened to the devil’s lies and accusations against our husband?
Because the devil is a traitor—tricky and smart with his lies, creating them to be very deceiving. He is also very subtle. He doesn’t make his lies obvious. He tells you lies about your spouse (and others) that are so subtle, you slowly start to believe them. He paints a picture of your spouse to you that looks real. His accusations sound so real, so believable, and often so much like we thought it ourselves, that we don’t know we didn’t. And because he is an avid liar through and through, you can guarantee these are LYING accusations, they are NOT TRUTH.
We must see the truth about this! The Bible says he, the devil, the accuser of the brethren, is the father of lies—he cannot tell the truth! He’s not gonna tell you an obvious lie about your husband that he knows you won’t believe. No, he’s gonna make sure and feed you something with just enough sauce to make sure you’ll believe it. He may even mix in a smidge of truth with that lie, making it even more believable. He may twistingly mix in some truth with a lie, but he will never tell the pure truth. (Matt. 4)
This is something we all need to be trained in: recognizing the accusing thoughts from the enemy, resisting them no matter what we see or feel, and replacing them with God’s thoughts. From the time my daughter Miah was little, I have been teaching her these very same 3 steps:
Three R’s to Deal with the Enemy’s Lying Thoughts:
1. RECOGNIZE – We must recognize the accuser when he comes with lying, false thoughts against our spouse. We haven’t always recognized the enemy’s accusations because we have mistakenly thought they were our own, and we’ve felt justified in them. Yuck.
2. RESIST/REJECT – We must resist and reject these lying accusations against one another, immediately, before they paint an untrue picture. We haven’t always resisted it because it felt like the truth—it felt real—and it looked like the truth. The danger here is that if you keep looking at this false picture painted by lying accusations, eventually you won’t know the difference.
3. REPLACE – It is imperative that we instantly replace the lying thought with the truth of God’s Word about our spouse. We haven’t done this because it takes faith—to see past what you see in the natural—and it takes effort to choose to look at the Word of God regarding your spouse.
Let me show you a life-changing scripture from the Bible that will double underline exactly how to deal with the devil’s accusations, which are automatic-false just by nature of his lying origin:
Then the angel showed me Jeshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. The Accuser, Satan, was there at the angel’s right hand, making accusations against Jeshua. And the Lord said to Satan, “I, the Lord, reject your accusations, Satan. Yes, the Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebukes you. (Zechariah 3:1-2, NLT)
You see, even the Lord recognized—then resisted (rejected, rebuked)—the devil’s accusations against one of His. Then, as seen in this next verse, He replaced it with the truth. If He had to do it, how much more do we? He gives the perfect example of what we should do when the enemy comes to us with accusations against our spouse. He even tells us what to say:
What then shall we say to all these things? If God is for us, who can be [successful] against us? Who will bring any charge against [accuse] God’s elect (His chosen ones)? It is God who justifies us [declaring us blameless and putting us in a right relationship with Himself]. Who shall ever separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31, 33, 35 AMP)
If our husband has confessed Jesus as his Savior, he is now the righteousness of God IN CHRIST (2 Cor. 5:21) and it is God Who justifies him. Who are we to accuse whom God has called blameless and righteous? Who are we to say differently? Who are we to “separate” him from the love of Christ? Who are we to listen to the accuser’s lies against our spouse, and side in with the enemy against our spouse (and others)? Romans 8 says it won’t be successful. Instead, it goes on to tell us what we should say and believe: “Nay, in all these things we (our spouse) are more than conquerors THROUGH HIM that loved us” (Vs. 37).
Now here is another life-changing verse that tells wives exactly how to be where this is concerned:
The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. (Titus 2:3-5, KJV)
Here, wives (and we know husbands are not exempt) are told outright not be false accusers. Does it get any more obvious?
Furthermore, we can quickly look once again at the example in Proverbs 31 of the righteous wife:
The heart of her husband safely trusts her; So he will have no lack of gain. (Proverbs 31:11)
If a wife is operating according to the enemy’s accusations, her husband CAN NOT TRUST HER, AND, HE WILL GAIN NO GROUND.
Can the heart of your husband feel safe with you if you are using the enemy’s accusations against him? Can he GAIN any ground if you are yielding to the enemy’s lies about him? If we mess up or make a wrong decision, would we want our husband making a big deal about it? Pointing it out and highlighting it to no end, making sure we really know how we messed up and all the wrong it caused? Would these judgments and accusations empower and enable us, support and uphold us enough to get some “gain” and go forward so we can get it right? No, on the contrary. These kinds of actions only disable, damage, weaken and paralyze one another. None of us (wives and husbands) want to do anything that even remotely resembles the nature of our enemy.
It’s when things start to get a little rocky that we are the most tempted to get out of love and to speak what we hear from the enemy. This is when our husband needs us the most. Job was already dealing with enough from the enemy. He didn’t need his wife adding to it. When our husbands are struggling—no matter what it is—they need us believing with them and for them, not apart from them and against them.
When we side with God’s truth, alongside our husband, we side with love; and because of that, we will defeat the enemy every time. If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31)
I’ll even go a step further by encouraging you in this: We need to watch about accusing our spouse to the Father in “prayer,” too. If we go to the Father, Who is also your husband’s Father, saying things like, “My husband did this, and he did that; why won’t he do this, he won’t do that, can You make him fix this, etc.…” then we sound like the enemy to God! The enemy is the master of fault finding, and if we are pointing out our husband’s faults, whether to God or to him, we are acting like the devil—taking his side!
Conversely, we have the love of God shed abroad in our heart.
All of this is tied up in the foundational truth of the New Covenant command to walk in LOVE. This is how we are to live towards not just our spouses, but our co-workers, our bosses, our family members, our friends, and the list goes on.
If our ear has been wrongly tuned to hear the accusing, lying voice of the enemy, it can be re-tuned to hear God’s voice—the TRUTH. When, and yes, WHEN, the enemy comes to us with accusations against our husband, we need to immediately recognize it as a lie—because he is unable to tell the truth. God’s voice is the voice of love, drowning out every lying thought that comes against us, our husband, or God.
Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. (1 Corinthians 13:7, AMPC)
To end, rather than judging Job’s wife, let’s learn from her lack of faith. Let’s be strong and very courageous in the face of difficulty and choose God’s truth over the enemy’s lies, no matter what we see.
Love,
Jess