How I learned to let go of my unequally yoked relationship

Post by Mich’a Gary

Purity. Wholeness. Purpose. These are the core aspects that come to my mind when I begin to think of my single season. Each of these are vital concepts that need to be understood so that I can better gather how to reach my full potential in Jesus Christ. But if I am distracted from focusing on these in my single season, how can I fully dedicate my time and efforts to emerging and thriving in these areas?

The simple but concrete answer is “I can’t” and “I won’t”. Daily I have to ask myself what I was willing to sacrifice to obtain Christ’s optimum for my life, my unborn children’s lives, my grandchildren’s lives, and their children’s lives. That can seem like a scary question to answer, because a lot of times the flesh and the sprit are not in alignment, so most times as humans we will have to decide which of the two we will bow down to.

As a conscious Christian, I know that I should be relentlessly striving to choose to bow down to my spirit, but we all know that is easier said than done. During my single season, I was stuck at a crossroads between my heart’s selfish desires (which would cause me to bow down to my flesh), and the perfect will of the Father (which would cause me to bow down to my spirit). God gave us free will to choose, and life presented me with an opportunity to make a huge decision, one that would change my life forever.

I met an exceptional Black man, a man of great character, a man who understood how to treat a real woman. He was loyal, trustworthy, highly intelligent, financially savvy, an engineer like me, a deep thinker like me, a deep lover like me, family oriented like me, and chocolate.

He was actually most of the things I thought my ideal husband would be, and then some. I have never met a man who treated me the way he did, and I was falling because of that. The idea of marrying this man, who deeply cared for me, was the perfect love story. He understood what it looked like to serve me, to respect me, to uplift me, and to be there in any way I may have needed.

You might ask, “well what is the issue, why couldn’t you marry him, why didn’t you?”. Well, he happened to hold and practice a different religion than me. He was a Muslim man, devout in his faith. First thing my spirit told me in my dealings with him was that we were not equally yoked. As we continued to build on our friendship of a year and a half, we constantly talked about faith, what Muslims believed and what Christians believed.

“Though we believed similar ideologies and practiced similar traditions, we were still not on one accord.”

I believe in the blood of Jesus, I believe in the Cross, I believe in the resurrection of the Son, that He came on earth as fully man and fully God to die for my sins and uncleanliness, so that I could now be saved by His grace through my faith in Him (and allotted a golden opportunity to get have eternal life in heaven by believing this). To this Muslim man, these things were not true, for Jesus was just a great prophet to him. I seeked God diligently because I did not want to lose this beautiful love I thought I had found.

I asked the Lord to change his religion, to push him to come to church with me (which he did), to give him a tangible undeniable experience with the Holy Spirit, to move on his heart- the typical prayers of a woman pleading with God to change His will for love, for my own selfish desires to be loved, needed, and wanted the way I was by this man.

In my quiet moments with the Lord, He impressed on my heart “full obedience”. He told me that if I kept allowing this man of Muslim faith to pursue me, and I kept pursing his heart as well, I would not be being fully obedient to the perfect will of my Heavenly Father.

“If my heart is wrapped in the hands of my God and Savior, Jesus Christ, how could a man who does not believe Jesus as their God and Savior ever acquire my heart?”

If the tangible act of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for all of mankind exemplified what love is, how could a man who denies this ever understand how to love me? I had to answer some questions that I did not want to ask, as my flesh would much rather have stayed in a committed “situationship” with this “amazing Muslim man”.

It took fervent and continual prayer to be released from this soul tie, but I knew I had to make an intentional decision and bow down to my spirit in obedience to the perfect will of the Father. I learned that not all “good things” are “God things”. In choosing to be obedient to the voice of the Lord I was able to re-dedicate my time and efforts back to my dreams, bettering my health (mental, emotional, spiritual, physical), establishing income that can help to create legacy, and enhancing relationships that matter most to me.

Full obedience allowed me to walk in the full promises of the Lord, and as I continue to wait and practice full obedience to Christ in my singleness, I know His promises will only blow my mind further and further. Be encouraged, be obedient without delay, be pure, be whole, and be purposeful—whatever it takes!

Mich’a Gary is co-founder of CrossEyed Visionaries, a ministry fully dedicated to encouraging believers and non-believers to live a life authentically for Jesus Christ! She’ll be hosting a fellowship, prayer and networking event with Cross Eyed Visionaries on Saturday, June 30th in Hartford, CT, get your tickets for The Experience here. You can also connect with her on Instagram at @michawish