Letter to a Sister

Dear L____,

Beloved sister in the Lord, I am writing, because I am concerned for you and because I love you as a friend, and I thought it may be helpful if I share my own experience with you. I am not wishing to interfere in your life or your decisions, and we are free to choose, but I say this merely to urge you to think carefully about the course you are taking.

It is by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are redeemed; we are bought with a price. He has taken us out of the world, and given us Life. It doesn't matter what we have done in our past lives as sinners; He has made us clean and we are acceptable to Him. 'But as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons and daughters of God, even to them that believe on His Name' (John 1:12). We are family with Him and with other true believers, and we are free from the power of sin which used to control us.

Dear sister, I am married to a man who is an atheist. He does not respect my faith, and is antagonistic towards all things sacred. It is a sad and lonely existence, because I cannot share that which is most precious to me, with the man I live with. I go to church alone, I cannot speak of the things of God in my own home, and often I must bear his direct anger and blasphemy. He likes things which are offensive to me, and does not care about that. This is the experience of being in a relationship with a non-believer.

We may think that we share many common interests with a person or partner. They may be kind, caring and courteous towards us. But those things do not necessarily last, and they are not enough to cement a lifelong relationship. Light and darkness do not have anything in common and we cannot pretend that they do (2Corinthians 6:14-18) . One day, my husband and I will go our separate ways - one to everlasting life, and one to eternal hell and torment and that is a terrible, sad pain which I must bear on a daily basis. I will not spend eternity with my husband in his present unsaved state.

When I married my husband, we both attended church, but in actual fact my husband was not truly born-again. He was a false convert who had never repented of his past sin, and sadly he fell away from any saving knowledge of Christ after we were married. I had ignored the Lord's warnings to me, and entered into the marriage, assuming that my husband was a believer. If we knowingly enter into a relationship with a professing non-believer, that is a different matter again. In fact, it is disobedience to God. We can tell ourselves that it is not important. Our partner may promise to respect our beliefs and even allow us to go to church at first......but that can easily, and usually does, change. We are torn between our relationship with a man and our relationship with the God we profess to love. We are also more likely to commit fornication, and the danger of going back into sin, is that it then has a hold over us, making it almost impossible - or at least very difficult - to end the relationship.

We can not make it right by praying for the person's salvation in the hope that they will convert, because we have no assurance that this will happen (1 Corinthians 7:16). It is more likely that we will compromise and that our own faith will be shipwrecked through sin, particularly since, as women we are more sensitive emotionally and more likely to be deceived (1 Timothy 2:14). Dear sister, I say this again from personal experience, because I care about you. I am so sad to see that you are beginning to miss church and fellowship with us, and my fear is that this is as a direct result of your friendship with a man who is not a believer.

Please consider carefully the path that you are on. You are in my prayers every day, and I beg with great sorrow in my heart, that you do not leave your First Love, this same Jesus Christ who gave His life for you. Let Him be your Husband, dear sister. Return to Him with all your heart, and know that He will help you and strengthen you. Let Him be everything to you, and know that I will continue praying for you, as will all your friends who love you.

Your sister in Christ,


Bonny