Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2Investing in the Wrong Relationship

Leslie Basham: During a rebellious time in his life, Lorne Matthews was looking for an excuse to divorce his wife.

Lorne Matthews: I finally found a so-called Christian counselor. He said, “You're under your wife's control, and you need to get out of this.”

Leslie: Around the same time, his wife was getting some advice of her own. 

Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Christian people were calling me and knocking on my door, and it was almost like, “Yippee, your husband's committing adultery. Now you can get a divorce.” 

Leslie: You're listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, May 12. For the last two days, we've been pondering this statement from the True Woman Manifesto. 

Marriage, as created by God, is a sacred, binding, lifelong
covenant between one man and one woman.

Leslie: Nancy has been teaching on this statement in the series, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: God is a faithful, covenant-keeping God. He keeps His promises. Even if we are faithless, He remains faithful. Marriage is supposed to picture the covenant-keeping character of God, the faithfulness of God, the love of God. It's that Old Testament Hebrew word hesed, the faithful, covenant-keeping love of God. It's supposed to picture the plan of redemption, Christ's love for His bride. Marriage is supposed to picture that, and because God is a covenant-keeping God, that's why it's right to reflect that heart of God by keeping our covenant in the marriage relationship.

Leslie: If you missed either of those teaching days, you can hear them at ReviveOurHearts.com. Now, as part of this series, we're about to bring you a story. It's about a couple whose covenant was severely challenged. Our purpose is to show you a real-world example of the principles Nancy's been teaching.

We know a story like this can be painful to listeners struggling in difficult marriages, so as you listen, I hope you'll do a few things.

• First, be inspired by the picture of commitment and forgiveness we'll see in this story over the next four days.
• Second, realize the specifics in your situation might be different from the couple in this story. For help in your circumstance, listen to Nancy's complete teaching on the topic and evaluate the Scriptures for yourself.
• Third, if you're in a struggling marriage, don't struggle alone. Get help from your pastor or an older couple in your church.

Well, the story begins in 1962 at a camp ministry in Baltimore, Maryland. The head counselor for girls that year was a young seminary student named Jimmie Ruth.

Jimmie Ruth: I was in my senior year at Moody.

Leslie: She signed up for a three-month commitment.

Jimmie Ruth: They have a very Western camp for young people. They bring kids out of the inner city.

Leslie: Music that summer was provided by a trio of singers. Jimmie Ruth paid a lot of attention to the group's piano player, Lorne Matthews.

Jimmie Ruth: They had hired this tall, skinny guy from Toronto to play for them that summer, and it was Lorne.

Lorne: She saw me, and she couldn't resist me. (laughter)

Jimmie Ruth: No, that's my line, Lorne. (laughter)

Nancy: Is it true?

Jimmie Ruth: Yes, it's true.

Nancy: You saw him, and you said, “This is the one”?

Jimmie Ruth: I knew that was my husband.

Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss helps us get to know this piano player better.

Nancy: Now, I have to say, I'm looking at selected highlights of your resume here, Lorne. For those who may not be into Southern Gospel music, you may not be familiar with Lorne Matthews, but if you are, you certainly have heard his name.

He studied at the Toronto Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada. In 2003, he was inducted into the Southern Gospel Piano Role of Honor, Hall of Fame—that's quite an honor—and is a living legend in the Southern Gospel industry. If you've seen the Gaither Homecoming videos (or DVDs now)—I know that many of our listeners have—then Lorne, you've been on a number of those.

Lorne: Yes, I've been honored. Bill and I go back a long way, back in the 60s.

Nancy: So you're a pianist.

Lorne: Yes.

Nancy: And it was in that function/role that you were at the dude ranch when you met Jimmie Ruth.

Lorne: Right. I saw Jimmie Ruth, and I flipped out.

Nancy: So you both did.

Lorne: Yes.

Nancy: Love at first sight.

Lorne: Well, we left to go on a tour. We went to Berwick, Pennsylvania.

Nancy: The trio

Lorne: The trio did, and the next week, here comes Jimmie Ruth with all the kitchen staff. They came up there to hear us sing.

Jimmie Ruth: Now, now, now let me explain it.

(laughter)

Jimmie Ruth: We all—the staff—we had a day off, and so I really think there was a bunch of them that were trying to play cupid. They said, “Let's go visit with The Kingsmen on our day off,” so we drove up to Berwick, Pennsylvania.

We're all congregated there together in kind of a circle, and everybody else starts going their way. Here I am standing all alone with Lorne, so we went to eat at a restaurant. Then he took me for a walk in the rain, and you go from there.

Lorne: Well, we went on this bridge across the Susquehanna River. We went walking across, and I just felt led to share her my heart. I said, “I really feel like God's calling me to be a Gospel musician, and my dream is to marry a woman that wants to travel, sing Gospel music, raise a family, and have a family that travels in Gospel music.”

Jimmie Ruth: And drives and carries equipment. (laughter)

Lorne: Yes, so I looked at her. I didn't know what she'd say, but I said, “If you think you'd like to do that, too, I'd like you to be my wife.”

Jimmie Ruth: This was our first date.

Nancy: Wow! What did you say?

Jimmie Ruth: I said, “I'll go home and pray and pack.” (laughter)

Nancy: Oh my goodness! It wasn't long after that that you were married, right? Just a matter of months?

Jimmie Ruth: Well, that was in July, and he came back at the end of the summer when my parents came to pick me up and visited with my family in Tennessee. Then I went and visited his family in October in Toronto, and we were married in December. We hadn't really been together that much.

Lorne: It's an amazing story.

Nancy: You knew what you were looking for.

Lorne: Well, I really—I told my buddy, I said, “I'm going to ask her.” I said, “All she can say is 'no' or 'yes.'”

He said, “You're crazy! You don't even know her!”

I said, “I see what I want in her,” and I remember going out under the stars and praying and saying, “Lord, if this is Your will, I just yield to You, but I feel so drawn to her.”

Leslie: That feeling of being drawn to someone led Lorne Matthews to make a lifelong commitment before God, and he and Jimmie Ruth were married. But that same feeling of being drawn to someone could also be dangerous. This couple would later discover why.

As newlyweds, Lorne and Jimmie Ruth did some traveling together, but when they started having children, they were apart for long stretches when Lorne headed out on the road. His music career seemed to be doing very well.

Lorne: I began to get puffed up in pride because of my piano gift. I thought that that was my identity, and so it was a performance orientation, and it was pride.

Nancy: As we know, pride sets us up for a fall.

Lorne: Yes, “After pride is destruction and after a haughty spirit, a fall,” the Word says (Proverbs 16:18, paraphrase).

Leslie: That pride was just one of the many stresses this relationship faced.

Jimmie Ruth: We're so much alike but yet so, so different. Lorne is—what is the personality that is always, they want to party? Everything they do, they party? They have fun with everything they do. I'm very—I'm a choleric, structured, boring, predictable person. Well, he's in that direction, and I'm . . .

Nancy: He's the artist.

Jimmie Ruth: Yes, he's the artist, and I thought, “When is he going to settle down and grow up?”

Nancy: Isn't it amazing though, when you were—this is love at first sight, back to the origin here. You both saw each other, said, “That's the one for me,” and you were probably drawn to the differences.

Lorne: Absolutely!

Jimmie Ruth: Right! I needed him.

Nancy: Then the time came when those differences became a huge barrier.

Jimmie Ruth: It had reached the dull, boring state, and we were just kind of coasting.

Lorne: We were separated a lot by the Gospel music world. I was traveling out on the road. I'd come home, and we didn't have any intimacy because she was a slave at home and did all the work raising the kids. I was this prima donna getting on a bus and traveling around the country getting standing ovations. So I'd come home and give her the laundry to do and go out and play golf with my friends, just a picture of real stupidity and pride on my part.

Jimmie Ruth: I started resenting his coming home because the kids and I would develop our lifestyle, and when he came home, he became an interruption to what was normal for us. I was loving Lorne. My love language is acts of service, so I was doing everything for him. That was construed as controlling, and it probably was out of balance.

Lorne: You think it was a little bit out of balance? (laughter)

Jimmie Ruth: He was loving me with verbal words and touch. Well, I hadn't grown up with that, and if we've not had that poured into us, you don't just suddenly speak your wedding vows and start gushing it out. So Lorne was loving me, and I was loving him, but we were a million miles apart. Neither of us were feeling emotion because I wasn't feeling him doing things to help me around the home.

Nancy: You said he was a weak and wimpy man. Did you see him that way when you married him, when you were first drawn to him?

That hasn't been said, but I think that's okay.

Jimmie Ruth: I think in some ways I did, and I think there was a mothering attitude in me that found this was somebody that I could help and be a blessing to.

Nancy: As you look back—now I don't mean to pry here, but I hear a lot of women say this about men today in general and their own husbands in particular. I find myself wondering, are there ways that we as women are contributing to men becoming that?

Jimmie Ruth: Definitely, definitely.

Nancy: As you look back, do you think there are ways that you contributed to him becoming more of that?

Jimmie Ruth: Definitely, yes. When I was a young child, my dad was an alcoholic. He left us many times, and I thought, “Well, when I get married, I'm going to marry a man that will never do this to me.” I think there was probably a clutchiness in me. I had to keep everything perfect.

Nancy: So you were controlling?

Jimmie Ruth: Yes, I was. I had this basic fear of being abandoned, and I think there's a fine line in our personalities that we both have to keep very aware of. I'm still strong. I'm a leader. I'm a strong worker, and it's easy for Lorne to lay back and let me.

Lorne: I remember the first few days we were married. Here she's a Moody graduate. She also studied medical technology, a lab technician. She also went to business college. So here she is. She's this strong, business personality, and well, I had hardly been away from my mother.

I went to one year of Bible college, and so I took my wallet, and I said, “Listen, you take the headship of the checkbook and writing the bills and taking care of everything. I don't know anything about this.”

Well, she grabbed that checkbook and said, “Oh, wonderful!”

Jimmie Ruth: See, my love language is serving, so that was a way for me to love him.

Nancy: You thought.

Jimmie Ruth: Yes.

Nancy: Of course, this all comes from Genesis chapter 3, the result of the fall when God said to Eve, “Your drive is going to be to rule over your husband,” (verse 16, paraphrase). And the man's natural, fallen tendency is to let her, to stand back, and to default to her leadership. This is where, when God redeems a couple, He allows them to come back into that God-created place of the man providing the leadership and the headship and the woman being the responder.

Jimmie Ruth: But coming to the place where we can acknowledge that is the first step to victory, because most people want to deny it and not deal with it.

Leslie: As we've been hearing, Lorne's pride and passivity were major threats to his marriage. So was Jimmie Ruth's fear and her desire to control. While this couple was dealing with the results of these threats, another temptation appeared. This couple had met a hair stylist at church. She operated a salon in her basement.

Lorne: I remember one time she was cutting my hair, and we were alone. She reached out, and she touched me very gently on my shoulders. I felt something that I had never felt ever in my life up to that point. It was a flow that I just can't describe. I just—I looked at her, and I said, “What is that?”

She said, “Haven't you figured it out by now? I'm in love with you,” and so I believe at that point, I just went over the edge.

I just said, “I want to see you tomorrow.” The next thing you know, we were talking about we'd divorce our mates, and we'd get married. We were in—quotes—"love." So I came to my wife after 18 years of marriage, and I got the big head. I said, “I don't feel any emotions for you anymore, and I want a divorce.”

Jimmie Ruth: I can't even describe what I felt at that point because I was so unprepared for it.

Nancy: You had two children.

Jimmie Ruth: Mark and Melody

Nancy: How old were they?

Jimmie Ruth: They were, let's see, Melody, I believe, was 15, and Mark was 17.

Nancy: Did you tell them right away?

Jimmie Ruth: Yes, because this woman's children were friends of our kids, and in fact, the woman's son came and talked with Lorne and tried to beg him not to become involved with his mom.

Lorne: That was a very important moment in my life as I look back. This young man had been a drug addict, and he got saved. He was a street minister, prison minister. He was a fine, young man on fire for God.

Jimmie Ruth: Nineteen.

Lorne: He sat down with me, and he said, “Lorne, you're making the biggest mistake of your life.”

We were sitting together, and I said, “No. Your mother—I just—I will marry her. I’ll adopt you as my son some day, and we'll minister together.”

He began to weep, and he said, “I see you're totally and completely deceived.” He said, “I see you're sincere, but you're wrong,” and then he told me something that I'll never forget. He said, “Lorne, my mother—she's a Jezebel. I've seen her seduce many men through the years, and you're just one.”

I got really mad at him, and I said, “Son, don't ever talk about your mother like that. She tells me she hears the voice of God, and we're going to have a ministry together.”

Nancy: So you were spiritualizing this.

Lorne: Yes, definitely.

Jimmie Ruth: Oh, he was a spiritual giant.

Lorne: Oh my, I was over the edge, and I thought my wife was controlling. Well, this lady controlled me totally by her so-called spiritual insights and gifts and things.

Nancy: And you're still doing music ministry throughout this time.

Lorne: Oh yes, I always continued to do music and to travel and to play the Gospel songs.

I began to look for counseling at that point. I found some counselors that told me I needed to stay in the marriage and all the things that I needed to hear, but I didn't want to hear. So I finally found a so-called Christian counselor. He, incidentally, had his own TV ministry in another country, had a PhD in psychology, and was very gifted in his persona and his ministry.

He said to me, “You're wife . . . I've studied you guys, watched you come in and out of this area, and I can read Jimmie Ruth pretty well. She's very damaged, and she's very controlling. Her father probably was an alcoholic.”

I said, “How in the world does this guy know that?”

He said, “Her mother was very, very, very religious, but you never, ever, ever felt her arms around you. There was no touch and flow in that family. That's the family your wife was raised in.” He said, “Is that correct?”

I said, “Yes, it's true.”

He said, “Now, when you're with this other woman, and she touches you, that's the kind of love you need.” He said, “I'd recommend that you divorce your wife and move in with her if you have to. When you do that, every religious person in the world is going to condemn you to hell, but when it's over, God will forgive you, and you can have a brand new wife and a brand new life.”

As I was walking out of the counseling room, he looked at me, and he quoted the Bible. He said, “It says in the Word that if you leave father, mother, houses, land, wife, children for my sake and the gospel . . .” (Mark 10:29, paraphrase) so he kind of made me sense and I felt, in a lying way, that I was doing that for the sake of the Gospel.

Nancy: Did you believe him?

Lorne: I did. I wanted to. See, I had itching ears. I had heaped to myself a teacher, but his explanation was that every human being needs nurture, touch, love. He said, “You will never get it from Jimmie Ruth. She doesn't have it to give. But investigate this other relationship, and you'll learn a lot. You'll grow up,” but he said, “you're under your wife's control, and you need to get out of this.”

His diagnosis was perfect. His solution was demonic. But the diagnosis was: You've created a relationship where your wife is on top, and you are the wimp underneath. He said, “I'm empowering you to throw that off.”

Leslie: We've been hearing the story of a marriage in a downward spiral. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been talking with Jimmie Ruth Matthews who tried to control her husband for many years, and we also heard from her husband, Lorne Matthews, who was tempted by adultery and divorce. We left that story in a very bleak place, but I hope you'll keep listening over the next few days because ultimately, it's a story of healing and hope.

That interview is part of a series called, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2. In the teaching portion of this series, Nancy Leigh DeMoss provides a clear picture of what biblical marriage is supposed to look like. You'll understand why the type of marriage we heard about today isn't healthy, and you'll also discover a clear, biblical path to healing. For details, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

In several series this year, Nancy is showing women the beauty that comes from biblical womanhood. We recently heard from a listener from New Berlin, Wisconsin, whose thinking has been changed by this kind of message. She wrote,

I used to think Christian womanhood that you portray on this show was simplistic and unsophisticated. God has moved me to a renewed spirit in Him. I know now that I was holding on to some pseudo-feminist ideology.

Revive Our Hearts has pointed her to God's Word and has challenged her thinking. Nancy, I appreciate the listeners who make it possible to present God's truth to women like her.

Nancy: I do, too. This program just wouldn't be on the air in your area if not for the prayers and the financial support of friends like you who donate to Revive Our Hearts. I am so thankful for all who've given to make this ministry possible during this year, even with the financial uncertainty that many have faced.

It's been a difficult year for us as well. Donations have honestly not been where we need them to be. So as we end our fiscal year coming up here at the end of May, we're facing a budget shortfall. We need the Lord to provide $350,000 or more over these next couple of weeks to enable us to end our fiscal year in the black. Would you help us make up this shortfall and keep us from having to scale back the ministry in your listening area and around the country?

When you send a donation in the month of May, we want to say thanks by sending you a helpful new book called, Voices of the True Woman Movement: A Call to the Counter-Revolution. It's a compilation of messages from the original, True Woman '08 Conference and includes some great chapters by Dr. John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, Janet Parshall, and others, as well as a nine-week, small group discussion guide so you can use this resource in a group in your church or community.

This book, Voices of the True Woman Movement, is our gift to you when you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts. We really need your help this month, so would you ask the Lord how He might want you to have a part in helping to meet this need?

Leslie: We especially need to hear from you if you've never given to Revive Our Hearts before. Your gifts will be matched by some friends of the ministry who are doubling the gifts of each new donor up to $105,000. Donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com, or ask for Voices of the True Woman Movement when you call. The number is 1-800-569-5959.

Well, today's story ended in a dark place. Lorne Matthews had told his wife he wanted a divorce, but she wanted their marriage to end a different way.

Jimmie Ruth: God designed marriage to last until death parts you, so I just prayed for God to kill him.

Leslie: More from the Matthews tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.