Why Won’t God Answer My Prayer For My Marriage?

God hears you when you pray for your marriage, but He will not force your husband or wife to change, because He gives every person a free will. That is how prayer author Leighann McCoy explains it to Dr. Joe. When nothing seems to be happening, it doesn’t mean nothing is happening; God may be working in your spouse’s life in a way you didn’t expect, and your spouse still chooses how to respond.

Leighann started The Prayer Clinic Ministry and has written 17 books, all of them touching on prayer.

Is God listening when I pray for my marriage?

Yes. Leighann says God is always listening when we pray.

The harder part is that when you pray for your husband or wife to do something, there is another person in that conversation. God may well be answering your prayer, but whether your spouse listens to Him, and how they respond to what He is doing, is still up to them.

God may be doing something, Dr. Joe says, just not what you would have thought. Leighann adds that God is going to respond with what is best, because He knows your spouse’s heart and mind far better than you do.

Why doesn’t God just change my spouse?

Because God doesn’t pull our strings. Leighann explains that if God simply made someone do something, there would be no free will. We would be puppets. And if God made your spouse love you, did they really choose to love you, or did God just make them? That would take away the whole value of it.

So while God is working, your spouse can respond in one of two ways. They can be tender-hearted toward what God is doing in their life, or they can put up resistance and grow more hard-hearted.

Dr. Joe knows this from his own story. There was a point when he left his wife, Alice, and divorced her. (They have been remarried for a long time now.) Back then he would often beg God to forgive him and help him resist. He has no doubt God answered, but by the time the answers came, he was in a state of mind where he didn’t want to see them. He is sure God provided a way of escape. He just wasn’t looking.

What should I pray for when my marriage is in trouble?

Keep praying for your spouse. But Leighann’s advice is to also put yourself before God and invite Him to change you. When a relationship is broken, things need to change and people need to change. Your spouse may need to change more than you do, she says, but you need to change too.

Here are the prayers she recommends:

• Surrender every part of your own life to the Lord.
• Ask Him to teach you what you need to know, including the parts of your relationship you may have been blind to.
• Ask Him to enlighten you, illuminate your mind and give you wisdom for where you are right now.

Dr. Joe is careful to say this is not about blaming what your spouse does on you. Each person stands responsible for his or her own actions. But as Leighann puts it, the work God does in you prepares you for the work He is doing in your partner.

Be careful not to make the outcome an idol

Leighann also warns that when you are waiting on God to do one very specific thing, it is easy for that thing to become more important than everything else, including your relationship with God. When everything in your life gets filtered through it, it has become an idol.

Dr. Joe agrees. People who focus only on saving their marriage often make errors of judgment and do things that don’t help. You need a bigger, broader focus. And if your spouse chooses not to come back, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t care about you or love you.

How do I pray when my spouse is having an affair?

Start by being honest with God. Leighann points to David, who was open with God about the people doing wrong. If your spouse is in an affair, it would be unusual for you not to feel anger, hurt or bitterness toward the other person.

Then, she says, put yourself back in a proper place before the Lord and recognize that God loves that person too. When she once prayed with that kind of anger, God reminded her that the ground at the foot of the cross is even. Her prayer became one of trust: this is a person You love, and I am going to trust You with them.

That doesn’t mean you can only pray soft prayers. Leighann thinks it is fine to pray that if they are planning to meet up, they miss their bus or get a flat tire. Dr. Joe has encouraged people to pray that God will bring about circumstances that mess the affair up.

The key, Dr. Joe says, is to check your attitude. When you pray out of anger, rage and bitterness, the things you ask for usually aren’t good things. Asking God to intervene is different from asking out of vengeance. Leighann adds that it helps to start by remembering who God is and who you are. You come to Him the way a child comes to a loving father, asking freely for what you want while knowing He may or may not give it.

Pray your spouse into the pigpen

In the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the father doesn’t chase his son or try to convince him to come home. He stays, watches and waits. And the son doesn’t come to his senses while he is living high. He comes to his senses when there is a famine and all he has left to eat is what the pigs leave behind.

Our nature, Leighann says, is to pray that God protects the person and keeps them from being hurt. Her question is whether we can trust God enough to pray for divine pain, the kind where God knows how much is enough, so they can open their eyes and understand. Dr. Joe has encouraged spouses to pray that their husband or wife comes to realize all they have lost. Again, this isn’t praying meanness.

What if my spouse says God told them to leave?

Dr. Joe says he hears this all the time: a spouse who has always been in church says he prayed, and God told him to leave his wife and marry someone else.

Leighann’s answer is simple. God didn’t say that. Everything in Scripture shows how highly God values the covenant of marriage, so He would not tell someone to break it. Your spouse may be completely convinced God said it, she explains, because people often take what they already want and twist Scripture to support it.

When one man told Dr. Joe the Holy Spirit had told him to leave his wife for another woman, Dr. Joe answered, “You may have heard from a spirit, but it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.” He points to Malachi, where God says He hates divorce, and to Jesus, who said divorce came about because of hard hearts.

Dr. Joe also tells of a church elder who said God was giving him a second chance with his high school sweetheart. A couple of years later, that same man came to a Marriage Helper workshop and couldn’t believe he had said it.

What if I prayed and my marriage still ended?

Leighann’s answer is to stay with God. Let Him help you make sense of it, restore your broken heart and rebuild your confidence and faith. Sometimes a marriage is not restored, and that doesn’t mean your prayer wasn’t sincere, good and God-directed. It means your spouse used their free will to resist and go their own way. Even then, she says, if you hold tight to God, He will make a good way for you.

Dr. Joe once officiated the wedding of two Christian people who had each fought hard to save their first marriages and still went through divorce. He told them they were together because God was blessing them for their faithfulness. His point is that God has not given up on us.

Leighann agrees, and she ends with the heart of it. We often think the answer we are looking for is the thing we are praying for. “The answer that God’s giving is Himself,” she says, and you always get to have Him, no matter how the prayer turns out.

You can read the full conversation between Dr. Joe and Leighann McCoy below.

The full conversation

A Conversation With Dr. Joe Beam & Leighann McCoy

Dr. Joe: If you are a religious person and you have trouble with your marriage, you probably have prayed about it. You might have asked God to change your husband or your wife’s mind about what they’re doing, change their behavior, or even get rid of some other person that might be in the picture. You’ve asked for all kinds of things from God like, “Heal my marriage for the sake of my faith, the sake of my children.” Everything else, and may be a tad frustrated because it appears that God is not answering your prayer.

Dr. Joe: Maybe you’re thinking, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me, or maybe there’s something wrong with God, but whatever it is, I’m praying and nothing is happening that I can see.” And it just leads to greater frustration because you are a religious person, a person of faith. Well, let’s talk about that. I have a special guest with me today, Leighann McCoy, who actually is an expert on prayer.

Leighann McCoy: Oh wow, an expert.

Dr. Joe: As a matter of fact, you started a clinic on prayer.

Leighann McCoy: Yes, we’ve started a ministry called The Prayer Clinic Ministry, which is really an intercessory prayer ministry for churches. It’ll mobilize your people to pray.

Dr. Joe: Excellent.

Leighann McCoy: People come for prayer and some of their prayers will be for their marriage, and the clinic team members are committed to praying through with you until God’s answer comes.

Dr. Joe: Okay. Yes, let’s get to this God’s answer thing because that’s what I want to talk about. Now, I know that you’ve written several books, many of which are on prayer.

Leighann McCoy: Right, 17 books.

Dr. Joe: That makes the number of books I’ve written sound very, very small.

Leighann McCoy: No, not at all.

Dr. Joe: And about how many of those would be about prayer?

Leighann McCoy: I think every one of them is about prayer. Some it’s not the primary subject, but every one of them are about prayer.

Here Are Some Prayers We’ve Heard About A Marriage:

Dr. Joe: “I’ve been praying for my husband to come home” or, “I’ve been praying for my wife to get out of that relationship with that other man, or “I’ve prayed diligently, I’m faithful, I know my Bible”…and sometimes they’ll even say this, “Because I know that God will do whatever I ask, then this is going to happen no matter what.”

Dr. Joe: Let’s talk about the parameters of that.

Dr. Joe: First Of All, If You’re Praying For Your Husband Or Wife To Straighten Up, Is God Listening?

Leighann McCoy: Oh absolutely. God is always listening when we’re praying.

Dr. Joe: So why don’t we see the results of those prayers?

Leighann McCoy: Well, you are praying, God’s listening, but if you’re praying for your husband or your wife to do something, then there’s also that particular person in that conversation as well.

Dr. Joe: But what does that mean?

Leighann McCoy: Well, whether they’re listening to God or not, and whether they are responding to even what God most likely is doing in response to your prayers, but still up to them, you know?

Dr. Joe: So you’re saying that the fact that nothing appears to be happening doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening.

Leighann McCoy: Well that’s true, yes.

What God Is Doing May Differ From What You Expected Him To Do

Dr. Joe: That God may well be doing things, but it’s not exactly what you would have thought.

Leighann McCoy: Right.

Dr. Joe: So you can’t see what God’s doing because God might be doing something in his or her life, but I just heard you say, now it’s up to them as to how they respond to that thing.

Leighann McCoy: Right, it is

Dr. Joe: So Why Doesn’t God Just Change Them**?**

Leighann McCoy: Well, He’s doing that in His own way because God doesn’t just yank our strings and cause us to do or to be, otherwise there would be no free will on our part, right? If God just made somebody do something.. (and don’t we want that?) I mean, boy, when we pray we’re like, “Lord, just make them to this.” And God’s like, “Okay, I got you there.”

God Is Going To Respond With What Is Best

Leighann McCoy: But some of our prayers are not always exactly what’s in line with what God knows is best. I love the fact that we just pray and share what’s on our heart- open and honest dialogue with God. But the fact is, God is going to respond with what is best and He knows much better how to work in a person’s heart and mind than we do. He knows their heart and mind better than we do.

Dr. Joe: So God may approach them a very different way than what I would’ve thought because He knows them far beyond however well I know them. But that’s an intriguing point you have, Leighann. He’s not going to make them do it. He’s not going to reach inside their heart and go, “snap.”

Leighann McCoy: Yes, He doesn’t work that way.

Dr. Joe: Because then we are-

Leighann McCoy: Just puppets. Then we have no will of our own, no ability to choose. And if you were to do that, then did that person really choose to love you or to be in that relationship, or did God just make them do that? And so it takes away the whole value of that.

Dr. Joe: Yes, but of course desperate people would want God to do that anyway.

Leighann McCoy: Absolutely. I get that.

Dr. Joe: People try to sneak into some of our Facebook groups occasionally and post about “so and so has a love charm or a love potion and you contact them.” And of course they’re frauds, but I’m thinking this: There are people desperate enough out there that if a charm/potion would work, “I would still do it because I so desperately want my husband or my wife to come back.”

Leighann McCoy: Sure.

Dr. Joe: It’s hard to accept reality sometimes, isn’t it?

Leighann McCoy: Yes, it is hard to accept reality.

Dr. Joe: So For Example, If God’s Working In A Husband’s Life, Elaborate A Little Bit More On The Fact That The Husband May Or May Not Respond To What God’s Doing. What Do You Mean By That?

Leighann McCoy: I think a key point, which you’ve already made, is that when we’re praying, God is working. I believe that because His Word tells us that when we pray, He’s answering. He’s hearing, He’s answering, and His work might be different than what we think it is.

Leighann McCoy: For example, we are looking for “this” but God may be doing something over here and doing something different. Either way, they can either be tender-hearted toward the activity of God in their life, or they can put up resistance, and even though it may be hard for them to continue to put up resistance, they can grow more hard-hearted.

Praying “In The Moment”: An Example From Dr. Joe Beam’s Life

Dr. Joe: Yes, they definitely can. In my own story, there was a point where I left my wife Alice and divorced her. It’s been a long time now, and we’ve been remarried now for quite a while. When I would sin, or do the things that were leading me away from Alice, many times as I was leaving that place, I’d be begging God to forgive me and promising that I’d never do it again, and asking Him to help me resist. Now I have no doubt that He answered that prayer, but when those answers came, I was already back in such a state of mind that whatever God was doing, I didn’t want to see. I did when I prayed it.

Dr. Joe: Things begin to change over the next hour, two hours, three hours, days, and then when I head back toward that temptation, I’m sure God provided a way of escape, but I wasn’t looking.

Leighann McCoy: But by then you didn’t want it.

Dr. Joe: Exactly. So it’s not like God didn’t answer my prayers. God answered my prayer, I’m quite sure He did, but I had no awareness of that.

Dr. Joe: If I ask God to just change my husband or wife, what you’re saying is He’s going to work in circumstances and situations.

Dr. Joe: What Other Kinds Of Things Should I Ask For In Prayer?

Leighann McCoy: That’s a good question to ask, because when we’re asking God to change somebody else, we want to put ourselves before God and invite Him to change us as well. Because change needs to happen if the relationship is broken, things need to change. Things need to change, people need to change, most likely they need to change more than you need to change…

Pray That The Lord Would Teach You What You Need To Know

Leighann McCoy: But undeniably, you need to change too. So that would be one thing, to surrender to the Lord every place in your own life, or ask the Lord even to teach you what you need to know. There are many times in our lives when we think we know. We think we have the right perspective on a situation, but there might be parts of it that we don’t know or parts of the relationship that we have been blind to and so a great prayer is to ask the Lord to enlighten us, to illuminate our mind,to give us wisdom, and then to teach us everything that we know in this unique place in time. Where you are right now is not where you’re going to be when God comes through and answers your prayer in a way that you get delighted by, but where you are right now is still a significant and valuable time in your life.

Dr. Joe: Sure it is. I like what you’re saying because sometimes it’s kind of difficult to get people to realize that, they know they’re not perfect. If you ask, “Are you perfect?” Well, of course I’m not perfect. But they kind of act like they are in the sense of, “This is not my fault.” Now, we’re not trying to blame what your spouse does on you. We really aren’t. I mean, each person stands responsible for his or her own actions, but I love that idea of, “Okay Lord, reveal to me, open my mind, my heart to whatever I need to learn in the present time, but also that will affect the future. Is that what I heard you say?”

Leighann McCoy: Yes. Very much so. Because there’s work that will happen in you that will prepare you for the work that God’s doing in your partner as well.

Be Careful Not To Idolize The Outcome

When we pray while we are waiting on God to do something very specific, it can be really easy to slip over into a place with the Lord where that “thing” becomes so very important. Where that thing, that “Lord you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to change him, you’ve got to take her away, you’ve got to take him,” whatever it is, we get so focused on that “thing” that everything in our life is filtered through our focus on that, then it has become an idol to us. It becomes more important than our relationship with anybody else- with our relationship with God, with the ministry that God’s called us to, with our job, or whatever else it is.

Dr. Joe: I haven’t thought about that before, but I agree. We often tell people for example, if you’re focused just on saving your marriage, you’re probably going to wind up doing some things that are not very helpful to saving your marriage. This is because a person can be so focused on that one thing, that they make errors of judgment, et cetera. You’ve got to have a bigger, broader focus. Leighann, is that why you think that some people who are praying say, “God didn’t answer my prayers so there is no God.”

Leighann McCoy: Yes.

Dr. Joe: It is because they were focused on this little thing and God’s saying, “But I’ve got a bigger picture going on here.”

Leighann McCoy: That’s right.

Your Spouse’s Decisions Don’t Impact God’s Love For You

Dr. Joe: And, “I am not going to turn your spouse into a robot. I’m still going to allow him or her to choose,” which means sometimes they may choose not to come back, but it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care and God doesn’t love you.

Dr. Joe: Should You Pray About The Other Person**?**

If a person says, “My wife is involved with that guy,” or, “My husband is involved with that woman.” What would you recommend that you pray or that a person would pray about that other person?

Leighann McCoy: Oh, do we have to pray for them too? I guess if we do we could pray the prayer that I prayed one time about another person, not related to marriage but something else. I was like, “Lord, could you just let the gravity not work for that person and they would just hurl off into space?” We can always pray that, but that obviously is NOT an okay prayer to pray.

Dr. Joe: Well, this is from a prayer expert…

Leighann McCoy: Now there you go. That was not one of my better moments.

Dr. Joe: But didn’t David on occasion ask God to intervene by doing things to the people that were doing wrong?

Leighann McCoy: Yes, he did. We’re being exposed to his very vulnerable and open heart with God, which was why the Lord called David a man after his own heart. So in all seriousness, I think it’s fine to be honest and open with God and express the way that you’re… I mean, it would be unusual for you not to feel some kind of disdain or dislike for this person-

Dr. Joe: Anger, hurt, bitterness, rage.

Leighann McCoy: That’s invaded.

Dr. Joe: All kinds of things. They go through a person’s mind.

Be Honest About Your Feelings, But Recognize God’s Love

Leighann McCoy: So be honest about, but then, before the Lord, put yourself then back in a proper place where you recognize that God loves that person too. What the Lord did with me when I was at a place of praying that way is He reminded me that at the foot of the cross the ground was even. There was not a hill here for me and a ditch there for them because they had done this horrible thing to me in my life, but it was even ground.

Leighann McCoy: The only way that I could be right before God, which is important if we’re wanting to have this powerful prayer relationship, is to be right in that humble place. The only way I could be right in that place would be if the Lord allowed my heart to be settled about that person. I think in that regard, we have to say, “You know what Lord, I recognize this is a person you love and I am going to trust you with them.” I think it’s also fine to pray that if they’re planning to meet up, that they miss their bus, or their car has a flat tire, or you could get specific like that.

Dr. Joe: Actually I have encouraged people to pray like that. I’ve encouraged people pray that God will bring about circumstances and situations that mess this up. Whatever those things might be.

Leighann McCoy: I think that’s a great way to pray.

Check Your Attitude When You’re Praying

Dr. Joe: I often personally, and Leighann tell me if you think I’m right or not, say to check your attitude. If you’re praying out of anger, rage, and bitterness, then the things you typically ask for aren’t good things.

Leighann McCoy: Right.

Dr. Joe: But you can actually ask for tough things when your heart is okay. Like, “Lord, they’re moving too fast. They have too much money so I pray that somebody gets fired.” If you do it out of vengeance, it’s a bad thing, but if you do it out of a sense of “can you just intervene” but you’re not trying to be mean and hurt the other person.

Be Mindful Of Who God Is And Who We Are

Leighann McCoy: Yes, I think that’s a fine way. It is important how you enter into that place of prayer. One of the most significant parts of that is to always enter into prayer and spend a little bit of time being mindful of who God is and who we are. Because when we come into prayer, it’s not like we get to take a magic wand and say, “Hocus Pocus, now Lord I command you to do this.” Because we have a prayer, a promise in God’s word that He’s going to answer us when we pray, but instead we recognize, “he’s God, I’m not. I’m completely dependent on God, but I come to God as a child comes to a loving father.” Dr. Joe Beam, you know how a child comes to a loving parent- if they know that you love them, they come unreservedly asking for what they want. But that at the same time, they come knowing that you may or may not give them what they’re asking for. You’re still loving them and they’re still your kid, but…

Dr. Joe: Are you trying to say then that God may not want my marriage to get back together?

Leighann McCoy: No. In the book of Malachi in the Bible it specifically says, “God hates divorce.” But why does God hate divorce? Because divorce is painful, it’s a brokenness, it’s a put asunder of what God, put together.

Dr. Joe: So it’s not like God looked down and said, “I’m going to split you two up.”

Leighann McCoy: No.

Dr. Joe: Divorce happens because, as Jesus would say in Matthew, at least one person has a “hardened heart.”

Leighann McCoy: That’s right.

Dr. Joe: When they asked, “Why did Moses give us the ability to divorce?” Because your hearts are hard.

Leighann McCoy: Right.

Pray Them Into The “Pigpen”

Dr. Joe: On a previous podcast you mentioned praying for a wayward spouse, and you made a specific statement: Pray them into the pigpen.

Leighann McCoy: That’s right.

Dr. Joe: Please explain what that means.

Leighann McCoy: Well, when Jesus was sharing the story of the Prodigal Son, He says the son comes to the father and then he leaves. Then, the father does an interesting thing. The father stays and he watches, and he waits for the son to come back home. He doesn’t go chasing after him, he doesn’t go trying to convince him to come back, he just stays home. So, where was it that the son came to his senses? It wasn’t when he was living high, it wasn’t when he had all the riches and when things were going well. The son came to his senses when things were not going well, when there was a famine and all he had left to do was to eat the leftovers from what the pigs had-

Dr. Joe: The pig slop, yes.

Leighann McCoy: -Yes, that he had been feeding them. So just that experience of coming down to ground zero is where he suddenly opened his eyes and thought, “Wow, I should go back to my father.” Because even at his father’s house, the servants had better than he had. Even then, the son didn’t have a right understanding of how great the father’s love was for him, but he had enough understanding to know that he didn’t have to stay here and eat the pig slop.

Leighann McCoy: So when we pray for people that are doing like that, they’ve disregarded God’s instructions, they’ve chosen to have a hardened heart. Then our nature because we love them so much is to pray, “God protect them, take care of them, make sure they’re not hurt.” We don’t want to pray pain into their life. But could we trust God enough to pray Divine pain? The kind of pain that God knows, He knows how much is enough, and how messy it has to get, and then trust God with that. Could we pray for that to happen in their lives so that they can open their eyes and understand?

Dr. Joe: They come to their senses. As I was saying earlier, I think it still comes back to your attitude, “I’m just praying meanness.”

Leighann McCoy: Right, not that.

Dr. Joe: That’s not a good prayer.

Dr. Joe: By the way, if you’re not familiar with this Bible story, it is in the 15th chapter of Luke if you want to go look. The son is sometimes referred to as the “Prodigal Son,” but it’s a story where the son finally realized all that he had lost. I’ve encouraged spouses to pray for that.

Leighann McCoy: Yes.

Dr. Joe: Pray your spouse into the pigpen.

Leighann McCoy: It’s good.

Dr. Joe: Because that’s what Leighann told me you should be praying. You should pray them into the pigpen.

Leighann McCoy: That’s a good thing to pray.

Dr. Joe: What If A Spouse Says, “God Told Me To Leave My Spouse For Another…”?

Dr. Joe: Sometimes we hear this when a husband or a wife contacts us. Let’s just say it’s the wife, and she contacts us and says, “I asked my husband why he was doing this and he, because he’s always been a part of church, he’s been a Bible school teacher, and now he’s leaving me for this other woman, and what he told me was that he prayed and God told him that he should leave me, divorce me, and marry her.” Now, as a person who studies prayer all the time, how do you react to a statement like that?

Leighann McCoy: Well, I would have to say God didn’t. This may might have thought he heard God say that, but God would not say that because everything we read in Scripture reveals to us the character of God and the instructions of God. God has a high value in regard for covenant relationship. If your husband and you had this covenant relationship before God and a commitment there, then that is a God-honored thing. So God would not say that. Now that does not mean that your spouse is not completely convinced that God did say that. They could be very confused and think that God did, because how often do we override what we really want and endorse it with, “Well God said, God made it okay,” and we want to twist Scripture to work for what our personal agenda is.

Dr. Joe: I understand that, people have even twisted things I’ve said on national television. Having been on national television, every once in a while somebody will say, “Well, Dr. Beam said this.” And I hear and think, “Not only did I not say that, that is contrary to everything I believe and stand for!” And I know how frustrated I’ve become. So I find myself wondering, how frustrated does God become when people are quoting Him, like: “No, I prayed, God said this is okay. This is what God wants me to do.” It’s almost like God’s in Heaven going, “What in the world. Why do you blame this on to me?”

Dr. Joe: One day when a man said, “The Holy Spirit told me to leave my wife for this woman.” Maybe I wasn’t kind, Leighann, but I said, “You may have heard from a spirit, but it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.”

Leighann McCoy: It wasn’t the Holy one, no.

Dr. Joe: Because it would be consistent with your Bible if it’s from the Holy Spirit. Which says the marriage bed should be undefiled.

Leighann McCoy: Sure, right.

Dr. Joe: That God, in Malachi 3, hates divorce. Jesus said, “I didn’t want you to ever divorce.” Well, why then did the Bible ever allow divorce? Well, because of the “hard heart.” All those passages come together to say that.

An Example of A Church Elder Saying “God Intended Me To Leave My Wife”

Dr. Joe: Interestingly three or four years ago, a man who had been an elder in his church. A good Bible student, taught big Bible classes in his church, et cetera, actually said to me, “I’m leaving my wife and divorcing her for my high school sweetheart because God is giving me the second chance to be with the woman He always intended me to be with.”

Leighann McCoy: Oh wow.

Dr. Joe: And I’m thinking, “Since you already know so much Scripture, how do I argue with that?” A couple of years later he actually showed up in our Marriage Helper Workshop, and in our workshop he said, “Can you believe I said that?”

Leighann McCoy: Oh wow, that’s good.

Dr. Joe: I said, “Well yes, I believe you said it because I heard it.”

Leighann McCoy: Right.

Dr. Joe: And unfortunately I hear these things all the time, but if we’re really seeking God we should pray.

Leighann McCoy: Absolutely.

Dr. Joe: And if God doesn’t answer my prayer in the way I expect, then I should…?

Even If Your Spouse Resisted, God Still Has A Plan For YOU!

Leighann McCoy: You should still remain with God! We should allow God to help us make sense of that, to restore perhaps what is a broken heart. To rebuild our confidence and our faith because there are times when the marriage won’t be restored, and it doesn’t mean that your prayer was not a sincere, and a good, and a God directed prayer. What it means is that that other, your spouse, was not willing to yield to God’s intervention; they resisted and went their own way because they have their own free will. But even in that situation, know that because you are holding tight to God, that He’s going to make a good way for you. Just because there might be divorce, doesn’t mean that God’s intent and plan for you has been destroyed. He will begin to make a new way, and you’ll get to know yourself, and you’ll get to know God as you pioneer this new path.

Dr. Joe: I was officiating at a wedding of two celebrities, both of whom were very good Christian people who love Jesus. Both went through horrendous divorces where each of them fought hard to save their marriage. As a matter of fact, the wife said to me at that wedding, “This is the first time I’ve ever felt really, truly loved (the man she was now marring).”

Dr. Joe: They had fought hard for their first marriages, they did everything they could but still went through a divorce. Then, in their wedding ceremony I said, “The reason you’re together is because God is blessing you for your faithfulness, even through those horrendous times.” God has not given up on us.

The Answer God Gives Is: Himself

Leighann McCoy: No, and He won’t. He won’t, and that’s the beauty of it is when we pray, often times we think that the answer we’re looking for is the one we’re praying for, but the answer that God’s giving is Himself. He’ll always respond to our prayers by pouring Himself in response, and we always get to have Him no matter what the outcome is of the prayer.

Dr. Joe: Leighann, thank you so much.

Leighann McCoy: You’re welcome.

Dr. Joe: I wish we had another hour to talk because I’ve got a lot more questions. Leighann can be found on her website.

Leighann McCoy: You can find courses, all kinds of blog posts. I have one that’s called How To Argue With God And Win, that might be interesting to this conversation.

Dr. Joe: And she’s already written 17 books. Here is one, “Taking Responsibility For The Choices We Make.” Is this a relatively new book?

Leighann McCoy: This is the most recent book I’ve written, and it is a great one to read when you feel like you’re in a really hard place, and you’re having a rough time. It’s really a very practical step-by-step how you can begin to make decisions that will change your experience in life regardless of what the people around you, your spouse, or whatever are doing.

Dr. Joe: Okay, and this one, “A Woman’s Guide To Hearing God’s Voice.”

Leighann McCoy: To Hearing God’s Voice, right. And A Woman’s Guide To Hearing God’s Voice is for that time in your life, and it’s for men too. (I just want to you to know that a man can read it and get benefit from it.) But it’s for those times in your life when you really felt like- and thought- that God was going to answer your prayer in the way that really seemed right, but it doesn’t work out that way. The book delves into, “Now what are you going to do with your faith, what are you going to do with God?” So this is a great book because it talks about, “Where is God when I’m doing the right thing but things are not working out that way.” So it’s a book to encourage you just to continue to trust God.

Dr. Joe: And how do they get these books?

Leighann McCoy: They can buy them anywhere books are sold. Amazon, or Christian Book Distributors, or anywhere online.

Dr. Joe: Okay, excellent. And you still do a lot of speaking on prayer.

Leighann McCoy: I do, I do travel a lot and speak and teach.

Dr. Joe: So if you want to invite Leighann to come speak at your church or your organization, visit her website.

Dr. Joe: Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.

Leighann McCoy: You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me. It was fun.

Dr. Joe: Thank you for being with us.

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