Alan Jackson is a country music star.
His wife Denise has a new book out entitled “It’s All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life.”
Denise and Alan grew up in the little town of
Alan finally hit the big time in 1990, and their money problems were over. They began to live the life of the rich and famous. Just about anything they wanted they could buy.
But Alan was gone a lot, and various things took their toll on the marriage. In late 1997 Alan told Denise that he was moving out. She describes that time in her life as “relentless pain.”
She said, “The only anchor in my life was Alan. Tethered to him, I had a sense of who I was. By his side, I was a woman to be envied. Life revolved around Alan…”
“Over the years, he had become my foundation,” she said. “So when he left, there was nothing left for me to depend on. My house had been built on shifting sands, and now in the storm…I felt like everything was going to collapse.”
Fortunately, Denise was involved in a women’s Bible study group, and they supported her, prayed for her, and pointed her in the right direction – toward the Lord Himself.
Denise said, “It’s odd. I would never have chosen to go through the pain of those awful days. But through it, God got my attention. I had been skimming along on the surface of my fairy-tale life, ignoring the fact that Jesus was softly and tenderly calling me to come home to Him. I’d closed my eyes to any warnings that a storm was coming in my marriage.”
“Once that storm broke my heart wide open,” she said, “I finally cried out to God. I heard His voice. I felt His love. And I realized that Alan was never designed to be the center of my life. No human being could fill that place. Christ alone could truly be my all-in-all.”
“Anger came quite naturally,” she said, “But as time went by, a miracle happened. I found myself drawn by God’s Spirit into a different response altogether. I found that the more I pursued my new relationship with Jesus and the more I explored the Bible, the more my attitudes were changing. It was incredible. I saw the words in Psalm 1 beginning to come true in me, of all people. I was finding my ‘delight’ in God’s Word.”
The good news is, eventually Alan moved back, they renewed their vows, and God began healing their marriage. And you can read all about it in Denise’s new book, “It’s All About Him.”
Now let’s go back to the crux of their problem. It took Denise a long time to figure it out, but it was this. She said, “I realized that Alan was never designed to be the center of my life. No human being could fill that place. Christ alone could truly be my all-in-all.”
You see, God is the Creator, and everything else is just part of His creation.
In his “Confessions”
In the September edition of Christianity Today, Daniel Williams wrote that “it is an abuse” to love anything God has made as if it were God. He said we will never find fulfillment in anything God created. We will always expect more from it than it can deliver.
Of course, it’s a trite phrase that “money can’t buy happiness.” Denise Jackson said, “I already knew that no amount of material stuff could bring contentment.” But what she realized through her marital problems was that “no human relationship – even if it seems ‘perfect’ – can really satisfy the deepest longings of a person’s soul.”
See, everything but God is just part of His creation. And nothing He created was meant to take His place. Not stuff, and not people – not even your spouse.
Augustine learned it. Denise Jackson learned it. We all must learn it, and hopefully not the hard way.
Learn what? Learn this. The focus and the foundation of our life, the center point of our affections must be, and only be, the Lord.
(As heard on Wave 94.1 FM)
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