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strength. Yes, our choices may result in unpleasant consequences, but even then, God helps us to endure.
    That’s the message I want to communicate: you and God are in this together, and he’s beginning your marriage makeover with you . Let him transform you as you seek to move your husband. While you may never achieve the results you have in mind, you can — without question — change the equation of your marriage by remodeling yourself. It begins with understanding, perhaps for the first time, the glory of being a godly woman and acting with the strength of a godly woman who understands she was created in the image of God, forgiven of her sins through the work of Jesus Christ, and gifted and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to live the life God has called her to live.
    You may have picked up this book simply to find out how you can motivate or even transform your husband. I’m here to tell you that as noble as this cause may be, it’s too small for you. God made you to remake the world . Your home is where it starts. By courageously facing up to the challenges that every marriage faces, and by letting God change you in the process, something wonderful takes place — the formation of a new woman, fully alive to God, who can take the lessons she learns at home and apply them everywhere else.
    “We can’t guarantee success in this war, but we can do something better. We can deserve it.”

Chapter 4: The Widow at
Zarephath
    Understanding a Man’s Deepest Thirst
     
    W as there ever a more desperate woman? In a land laid waste by famine, with no food anywhere, the mother looked at the remaining flour and oil and realized she had enough for one last meal.
    This scene played out nearly three thousand years ago, long before supermarkets overflowed with food and before convenience stores and fast-food restaurants on every street corner promised quick remedies for growling stomachs. Back then, during a famine and drought, no food meant, literally, no food . Every apple had been picked; every potato had been dug up. Even the bark had been stripped off the trees. Anything that could possibly be consumed had been, leaving death as the last certainty.
    Imagine you are this widow. You’ve endured the trauma of watching your husband die — and now you face the awful prospect of watching your son slowly waste away from starvation.
    Just then, a strange man enters your life, claiming to be God’s prophet. He asks you to make him a meal. When you reply that you’re running out of flour and oil, with just enough to make one last meal for you and your son, he assures you that if you’ll bake him the last loaf, your jar of flour will never run out and your jug of oil will never run dry.
    What do you have to lose? So you do what he says and then watch in amazement as his words prove true. For months on end, that tiny pile of flour and that small jug of oil continue to replenish themselves. At first, you opened that jar and jug with great trepidation. You wanted to believe you were living a miracle, but your mind fought the idea all the way: “Maybe the flour was just stuck to the sides of the jar; maybe the oil likewise just ran down the sides and gathered at the bottom — ” Gradually, after a few days, you realize that only one explanation makes sense: God is miraculously providing for you through this prophet named Elijah. No natural phenomenon can explain what you’re experiencing.
    Over time, you’re no longer surprised when you open up the jar and the jug. In fact, though it goes against all reason, you would be more surprised if those receptacles were empty than full. The replenishing has happened so often that it no longer seems like a miracle. It’s just the way things are.
    But then tragedy strikes and shakes you from your complacency.
    Your son becomes seriously ill from a disease that bears no connection to hunger. After a painful battle, he succumbs to the sickness and dies.
    Now you are furious with the man of