I received a call to pray with a woman who was experiencing challenges in her marriage. She and her husband had young children and were behind on paying bills. He wasn’t bringing income to the household, and their relationship was deteriorating. The situation seemed overwhelming, and it seemed that the problems were multiplying daily. As she and I prayed together, with each new problem, we’d go back to the truth—God’s spiritual truth—and affirm her and her husband’s forever status as children of God. 

While my patient’s desire had been to heal the marriage, she filed for divorce when she found out that her husband was having an affair. It felt as though everything was crashing down on her and that she was being punished for his bad decisions. She said to me, “I’m trying to do the right thing. Why am I the one getting stuck with all the problems?”

Then one day, while I was praying and listening for inspiration from God, a thought came to me that helped us both: “Someone working out their salvation cannot hurt us.” To me, this meant that whether she could see it or not, her husband was working out his own salvation, and that his actions and behavior could not hurt her as she worked out her own salvation.