"Martha, Martha...." Part 5

A few days ago I counseled with a man who had recently left his house at his wife's request because she felt threatened by him. I asked him to thoroughly recount for me the incident that led him to being asked to leave the house. He told me that a conversation that he and his wife were having went very badly and he decided to leave the room and go to the bedroom. His wife followed him there and the argument continued. At some point my client, in frustration and anger, shouted a couple insults, punched a wall and then slammed a closet door on his way out of the bedroom. I asked my client who he was trusting and relying in as he shouted out his anger, punched the wall and slammed the door. He thought for a moment and said these exact word,"Well, I certainly was not trusting Christ." I asked who he was trusting and relying on instead. He responded,"I guess I was relying on myself."
I then asked my client," If you were preaching to yourself the good news of the gospel, praying and relying on the Lord while you were coming up the stairs and in the bedroom conversing with your wife, do you think you would have responded differently?" He thought for a bit and then responded,"Definitely..I would have been more calm and self-controlled had I been trusting Christ."
As noted in an earlier blog Martha is" ministry driven" and not "gospel driven." Put in different terminology, her faith and trust are not in Christ but located somewhere else (probably herself). Likewise, my client was not at the time of the argument being controlled by the gospel, and he admitted that his faith and trust were not in Christ. The same root in both Martha and my client gave birth to the same sinful fruit.
Also, Martha wanted to blame her sister and God. My client earlier (in our conversation) had placed the blame for his outburst on his wife's unreasonableness. My client left our appointment understanding a very important point: In order to be "good" (i.e. "goodness" :Galatians 5;22) in any situation (including when dealing with an unreasonable wife) his focus (the "eyes of his heart": Ephesians 1;18) need to be '
"fixed" (Hebrews 3;1, 12;2) on Christ and the good news of the gospel when in conversation with his "unreasonable" wife. The priority effort of my clients heart while in conversation with his wife (or while doing ministry!!!) needs to be applying these gospel truths to his heart and not on getting his wife to be reasonable.