“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.’” Mark 12:30-31
Marriage between a man and woman is good and was instituted by God even before the Fall. It is how we are designed to live. Marriage is also a gift, where we can, in a mutually loving relationship, share our precious life experiences, and was created by God for our enjoyment and benefit. Marriage is also where two flawed, imperfect people who have been hurt by the sins of this world can prepare for the hope of the next world.
Marriage is where we can feel, know and practice real, effectual love, and where we learn to apply the love and forgiveness Christ gave us. In a God-honoring marriage, we are each a helpmate to the other while growing in maturity and raising good and healthy children who love God and life—all becoming a precious family that is the anchor of community and civilization.
What marriage is not designed to do (that we sometimes force it to do) is be a place for loneliness, worry, hurt and strife. We take what was to be good and turn it into a warzone. We use our marriage to hone our weapons of pride, arrogance, condescension, and contempt, or just withdraw, staying angry and bitter. We model these practices for our children and expect them to have better lives and marriages, when all we’ve really taught them is how not to do it.
The Heart of Marriage
God wants our marriages to be centers of His redemptive work, played out to in unity and security. A marriage is two people coming together in a sinful world to form an intimate, communal community—a family. Family is the safe harbor where we are honest and help each other grow, leaving behind our self-centered nature and embracing another person. This is how we learn to love, grow in love, even fail in that love, then pick it up–continuing to communicate and commune with one another and with our Lord and Savior together.
God knows this will be difficult, but He knows it is also achievable and even pleasant. He knows that we each think differently and are wired differently; in fact, many times we are in opposition. We grow up in different places with different experiences, and we come together with our bags of desires, expectations, burdens, fears, faults, hurts, and expectation for joy. We soon collide into each other’s faults, and yet, He is there; Christ can help us do love, family and marriage right, even while our pride stands in the way.
What God wants for our Marriage
Christ our Lord wants two people who do not always see everything the same way to come together to show each other the love of Christ. Marriage is the place for us to relinquish our pride and to forgive and flourish. We will be hurt and disappointed, stepped on and humiliated, yet we must persevere in our love. Love is not a mere feeling, if we just let our hearts lead us, we will fail. Our marriage will blow up without a commitment of will as well as heartfelt love.
Here are some questions to challenge, inspire and help equip you to be better in your commitment, love and marriage:
Read Mark 12:30-31; John 14-15
- Do you see your marriage as a gift, where you can live in a mutually loving relationship and share your precious life experiences?
- How can you make your marriage a safe harbor?
- What can you do to make your marriage and family a center of God’s redemptive work? How would this improve your marriage?
For the entire Marriage Builders Series by Dr. Richard Krejcir click here.