Biblical Keys to Navigating Marriage and Ministry
Both marriage and ministry require effort and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In a recent podcast, Vlad and Lana Savchuk discussed the struggles they’ve encountered with blending their marriage and ministry lives, and how the Lord has graciously led them to grow together over the years.
After the two first got married, Lana experienced spiritual warfare, including attacks in her sleep. She says she was going through a cycle of attacks that made her feel unlike herself and she could not seem to get out of this cycle. Vlad notes that during this time he also dealt with expectations that she would be involved in ministry in the certain capacity that he wanted. Despite these obstacles, the two continued to grow with each other and the Holy Spirit.
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“When she would give insights into certain decisions that I would make, into certain decisions about our personal life, that I was amazed,” says Savchuk. “She just saw things straight. And the Lord started personally dealing with my heart and said, ‘You know, there’s two people that you need to keep very close, and you need to keep very honest with; that will guarantee your protection.'”
Savchuk assumed that his uncle, his pastor, was the one that he was supposed to keep close with. However, God pointed out that this was not so.
“He says, ‘You pretty much can talk your way [out] and you can conceal things, even in your own heart from your pastor.’ He said, ‘But two people you cannot do that to: the Holy Spirit…and second one is your wife. She knows you through thick and thin, she spots things before…'”
Savchuk says when God started dealing with his heart, he began to shift some of the structure of the church where Lana could smoothly accept the calling on her life to disciple other women. Lana became more of her own individual, and it was within recent years that her gifts started to shine and flourish.
Lana says her natural tendency is to run and hide away, but now she feels empowered, even challenged by the Holy Spirit and her husband to walk in the calling and purpose for her life.
“…when the wife feels the call, and sometimes they will feel the call, if we water that, if we encourage that, not push it, you know flowers don’t grow when you pull them, they grow when you water them,” Vlad Savchuk says. “If we water that calling and encourage her to step up and to grow and to use her gifts in the Kingdom of God, if the gifts that she has and foster that, it could by a dynamic, beautiful thing.”
“We made a decision that our marriage is not our mission; we will not sacrifice our marriage for the mission, but our marriage will be on the mission, and that mission is to serve the body of Christ,” Vlad says. “Some people, they will sacrifice their marriage to fulfill the calling of God; other people will make their marriage really the calling of God, everything’s about the marriage, everything’s about them…”
Lana and Vlad’s honest account of how they’ve grown with each other over the years goes to show that the Holy Spirit desires to lead and guide couples to complement, not compete, with one another to fulfill both their individual and collective callings together.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
