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Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves—blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. -A.W. Tozer
Faith in our faith is about as useless as rubber lips on a woodpecker.
Early on during what would eventually become a failed marriage with the wife of my dreams, both her and I together encountered some real serious relationship issues—none of which many young couples don’t end up struggling with. Problem was, I was a pastor and I am proud. So, I thought it better to ignore our problems. Over time, our marriage suffered as both my young bride and I made compromises that the marriage couldn’t afford in the grand total of things. Eventually, we separated. And then surprisingly, somehow, we reconciled two months later as both of us made stellar attempts to forgive and leave the past behind. But even our most ardent and combined efforts proved insufficient and our union of fifteen years completely dissolved not too much later.
Looking back, I realize now that neither of us had the kind of faith in God (instead of in ourselves) that it would take to repair a broken marriage. Both of us placed a lot of confidence within ourselves and eachother to do what was going to be painfully necessary to see a marriage so torn apart get the healing it so desperately needed. An indicator that stood out like a sore thumb that I should have easily recognized was how quick I was to pat myself on the back for the small gains I’d made on the long road back to what we had hoped would be an even stronger and more transparent intimacy.
7-8 A holy man showed up and said, “No, O King—don’t let those northern Israelite soldiers into your army; God is not on their side, nor with any of the Ephraimites. Instead, you go by yourself and be strong. God and God only has the power to help or hurt your cause.” -2 Chronicles 25:7-8, The Message Bible
There are things in our lives that we need to learn to trust God for, namely—everything. And when we don’t, we learn the hard way. It’s better to go some places alone if that is what it takes to trust God instead of our faith.
Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins.
-Eric Liddell, Olympian
I wept not too long ago and the tears flowed in what seemed like a river. One afternoon a few weeks ago while munching on some chips and salsa I caught a piece on ESPN about the gripping story concerning Australian golfer Stuart Appleby who tragically lost his wife and former caddie Renay back in 1998. Appleby recalled how devastated he was and how the loss sent him to depths he never dreamed of—they were on a get-away together unloading their car on July 23 just outside a train station in London when another car backed up into her doing somewhere between 10-20 mph, crushing her to death between the two cars. She was 25 years young—Appleby just 27. I remember hearing the news and the feelings I had ten years ago—to watch the story again just stirred up the same emotions and maybe even more-so being that I too have lost a wife—only mine, to divorce. I think I know why we cry and grieve—I suppose it is just a reminder that we are made in the image of God—who weeps over us by the way.
Appleby told his story and shared how—once Renay was gone—his desire to play golf was gone with her. In the days that followed her death he made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t play golf again—only to break the promise less than a month later, showing up to play at the ‘98 PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club just outside Seattle, Washington—knowing his departed wife wouldn’t want him to do anything but be there to compete.
In his first interview following the tragedy—‘The tough times…’ Appleby started, before tears welled in his eyes and his voice began to crack. ‘The tough times are when you do a lot of thinking,’ he said, fighting to continue. ‘You just wish things were different. I’ve just got to bust through this little bubble in front of me.’ Renay Appleby’s death sent shock waves across PGA tours around the globe. She was a favorite among players and their wives, having caddied for her husband when he was trying to make it on the Nike Tour. When he won for the first time on the PGA Tour two years ago, she nearly pulled his thumb off as they nervously held hands behind the 18th green in the Honda Classic as the last group came through. ‘I feel very lucky that I knew her,’ Appleby said. ‘The time we spent together was good quality. She was the first prize in a raffle, and I was lucky enough to win. She changed a lot of people’s lives.’ (source: sportsillustraded.cnn.com—August 11, 1998)
This weekend will mark ten years since Appleby’s return as he competes at Oakland Hills here in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan—at the very event he returned to—to begin with.
I know who I will be pulling for.
Though he slay me, I will hope in him… (Job 13:15a, ESV)
Stuart Appleby may never have all of his questions answered as to why he lost his young bride, but he has remarried (2002) and has a visible peace in his eyes and a calm within his voice. He has even introduced his new wife to Renay’s family—he and Ashley have two daughters and are expecting their first son in October.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
-Benjamin Franklin
Relationship guru I am not. However, I do realize a thing or two about relationships. As for the things I did when I was married that were wrong or that I would do differently if it were possible—there are some things I’d never change—things I’d never do over, moments trapped in time I will never forget. And I can’t take the credit—God was good to me. It’s too late now to do anything different or take anything back—what’s done is done. But, it’s not too late to reflect on the fact that I could have been a better husband with a little more love and a lot less finger pointing. I could have sacrificed more and taken less. I could have kissed more and talked less. I could have forgiven quicker and looked for paybacks less.
At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, ‘Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?’ Jesus replied, ‘Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.’ (Matthew 18:21-22, The Message Bible)
In John Michael Talbot’s The Lessons Of St. Francis, Talbot writes Perhaps you need to begin forgiving someone who has hurt you in the past. An unforgiving spirit blocks the flow of grace and mercy into our lives, causing us to drown in a stagnant cesspool of regrets, animosities, and grudges.
Who do you need to forgive? Is it a parent or sibling who slighted you? Is it a friend or lover who hurt you? Is it a priest, pastor, or teacher who took advantage of a position of trust and authority? Is it a kamikaze driver on the freeway who terrorizes your morning commute? A telemarketer who invades your dinner hour?
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that what they did was right. As Frederick Buechner writes, forgiveness is a way of saying: ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we may carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want to be your friend.’
Talbot continues, Forgiveness simply means getting down off the seat of judgment and releasing those who have offended you from your hostility and anger. And while you’re at it, ask God to forgive you for the ways you’ve let down Him and others. Freed by forgiveness and energized by love, you can be a channel of charity, compassion, and grace in a hard and needy world.
Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it is the key to a long lasting and fruitful relationship. It can be heart-wrenching. But without genuine forgiveness, there is no hope for a love that lasts a life-time.
Forgiveness is the relationship glue.
When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.
-C.S. Lewis
I asked a close friend recently, who like me, is divorced—what she thought would be a key ingredient to making a marriage last. Now that she’s had one fail I figured she might have an idea or two. Her response was short and sweet—and one thing she said in particular stood out like a sore thumb—Kiss each-other every night before you go to bed.
Kiss each-other every night before you go to bed. That might not be possible if you travel for a living, but the idea is simple—love on your spouse even when things aren’t all warm and fuzzy. Cherish the one you love when you might not feel it. Do it because you love them. Married friends up in age have told me that being able to resolve arguments, clear up misunderstandings, and extinguish any heated disagreements has made a major difference for them–even the difference according to some. I’d call it not allowing the weeds to grow up in your relationship–some call it agreeing to disagree while others call it still being able to hold hands while being upset with one another. Basically it boils down to not allowing resentments to grab hold and fester. Many of us entered marriage blindly not having a very good idea about the fellow sinner we were marrying—and if we are going to stay married, we’d better learn to forgive quickly .
The greatest disappointments in our lives don’t occur down at the corner market between ourselves and the guy at the meat counter who doesn’t cut our deli ham quite thin enough. And it should be no surprise. The relationships that provide the most joy in turn are the very ones to be the vehicle for our deepest hurts. You might call it a double-edged sword—one blade providing the finest array of exhilarating-breathtaking moments of our life all the while the other blade able to give us the most gruesome hurts and wounds life has to offer. Marriage covers the entire gamut, and if you are not prepared or willing to sip from the bitter cup—you’ll never taste the nectar.
If you want to find a million reasons to scrap your marriage you may just be able to find them, but if you want God to save it—all you need is one reason, and God just might give you that reason if you sit and listen long enough to hear.
A good woman is hard to find,
and worth far more than diamonds.
Her husband trusts her without reserve,
and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously
all her life long.
(Proverbs 31:10-12, The Message Bible)
and worth far more than diamonds.
Her husband trusts her without reserve,
and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously
all her life long.
(Proverbs 31:10-12, The Message Bible)
Don’t make the mistake of checking out of your marriage just to find out that the greener grass your looking for is over a septic tank—instead, try watering the grass in your own back yard with a hearty dose of unconditional love and see what God might do.
I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable.
G.K. Chesterton
If we spent half the effort on praying and waiting that we exert trying to convince everyone (including ourselves) that divorce is the solution for our marriage in crisis—maybe we’d see a marriage we had no hope for become a beacon of hope for others. Our idea of praying for a miracle can go like this: God, please change my wife, and if you don’t, I’ll take that as a sign that I need to ditch her. It’s really the equivalent of giving God lip service. Have you ever considered that the reason your marriage might not be perfect or that it might be terrible has something to do with you?
Some of us make the mistake of praying for a miracle and then expecting our spouse to perform it. Bear in mind, God may not give you the miracle you ask for on your terms—God just may perform the miracle you ask for but it might take a month when you want it to take a day, or it may take a year when all you are willing to give God is a month.
In order for a marriage to get anywhere it’s going to take some prayer and patience.
We want God to play to our ego—we want to look good when God pulls off the thing he is planning on doing. There is a disconnect between our way of thinking and God’s way of thinking much of the time however—God never plays to our egos. Miracles often require our eating some crow and enduring hardship that isn’t so easy stomach. God hasn’t made it a habit of elevating a man or a woman when he has acted in the past, and I get the impression he’s not about to start.
If God doesn’t build the house, the builders only build shacks. If God doesn’t guard the city, the night watchman might as well nap. It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late, and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don’t you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves? (Psalm 127:1-2, The Message Bible)
A beautiful marriage is the glory of God.
And a word to the wise: God makes the marriage—it’s never the accomplishment of man.
Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten…
-Dick Gregory
Just imagine the wigged out Jim Jones—leader of the famed Peoples Temple cult—giving his followers down in Jonestown arsenic instead of cyanide back in 1979. Do you think it would have altered the result if he had changed the poison in the Kool-Aid he had his nine-hundred loyal parishioners sipping on? I don’t think so—every last one of his decieved disciples still would have died on the spot had they drank another poison before crawling too far away from the scene in what remains the largest mass-suicide in the history of mankind on record.
My all-time favorite reason for divorcing instead of exhausting every last drop possible in reconciling or weathering the storms marriages may have to endure is the worn out—It’s better for everyone if we divorce. Really? Saying that divorce is good over the alternatives is akin to stating that arsenic is better to drink than cyanide. You are only fooling yourself. I mean seriously, arguing that a double-homicide beats a triple-homicide is pointless. They are both atrocities.
Wouldn’t it be best if God restored your marriage rather than your deciding to go out in your quest to find someone who deserves you more and likewise—and torturing them as well? You may have divorced with good reason—but how many of us divorce with lame reasons? And please—it’s better for the kids is just a crafty disguise more times than not for needing to sound like we are so giving and responsible. The truth is—many of us don’t give a rip about anyone other than ourselves. And if we are going to state it’s better for the kids, maybe we ought to qualify our statement with adding who says it’s better? Did we bother asking God his opinion? It may sound spiritual to say it’s better for the kids—but who are you fooling? I haven’t read much biblical discourse providing such an argument. My question is—If divorce is so much better for the kids why does the overwhelming body of evidence exclaim time and time again just the opposite?
Don’t you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom. A number of you know from experience what I’m talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you’ve been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit.
Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims. (1 Corinthians 6:9-12, The Message Bible)
Divorce should be a last resort after every attempt to change oneself has failed—has anyone ever filed for the poison we call divorce and pointed the finger at themselves? Can’t say too many of the folks I know getting divorces these days acknowledge their own part in the undoing of their marriage—because if they did, they might have to face the music about the fact that they haven’t given their marriage as much as they have dedicated to thier their own selfish agendas.
Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.
-Joyce Brothers
One of my buddies at work was talking with me this morning about some differences that he and his girlfriend have—nothing too extreme or out of the ordinary really. He was telling me he has some pet peeves that he figures must drive his girlfriend nuts. One problem he shared is the age old toothpaste tube dilemma—he has to have it squeezed from the bottom (makes you wonder what couples had their biggest disputes over before Crest was invented?). My buddy and his girlfriend have recently solved the problem by purchasing the competing brands they each prefer—Aqua Fresh for him and Colgate for her.
The whole conversation got me to thinking later on this afternoon as I was running around the golf course I work at while I was finishing up my projects for the day. Let’s say that Dan and has girlfriend both liked the same toothpaste—what would they do then? Easy—get two tubes of the same toothpaste, and if they happen to share a bathroom they could have a designated spot for his and hers.
When you stop to consider—there is usually a solution to most relationship problems. I mean—there is no reason to have the same argument time and time again unless bickering is your idea of fun—a resolution or remedy probably exists. And it all comes down to good-considerate communication.
I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common. (1 Corinthians 1:10, The Message Bible)
Dealing with problems creatively that we encounter in our marriages is sometimes the last thing we try. Trying to change someone else—or even ourselves could very well be going at it all the wrong way. We are quirky, temperamental, emotional, and even strange—like it or not—and that isn’t going to change just because we like to tell ourselves so. As I have said more than once—normal is nothing more than a setting on your dryer.
We might grow up, we might ease up, and we might even give up—when it comes to our pet peeves and preferences—but a better approach may be to recognize our differences and handle them better than by fighting over them.
We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a ‘getaway.’ We cannot love and be limited.
-Alfred Adler
We fail to live up to our own standards when it comes to love—but when it comes to our spouses we expect them to love us not an inch less than God does. And when they crack and reveal their imperfections (which is bound to happen if we are married for any length of time)—we are faced with a choice—to love or not to love. When we love one another based on what we get or don’t get out of the deal, it isn’t long before any marriage is in dire straits—whether it ends in divorce court or not. Many marriages die a silent death although there is no official funeral, while others get buried that are still very much alive.
I think it is fair to say that it is a fear of getting burned that motivates a good many of us to do some of the crazy things in our marriages we end up doing that ultimately serve to ruin them. Even those of us who have been unfaithful can tell you that we didn’t set out to become cheaters—what happened is that we failed miserably to love somewhere along the line and sinned horrifically in the process. And when you think about it—cheating in any form or fashion is more about re-acting—it isn’t responding.
When we respond to one another rather than re-act—we move in love rather than act out of spite.
Re-acting is the sort reasoning we go through in our minds where we think he did this or he didn’t do that so I’m not gonna do such and such and so forth. Imagine your relationship with your parents (if you were so fortunate to be raised by them)—and what would it have looked like if they handled you that way? You would have never been fed beyond the age of two. All of the marriage counselors in the world can’t do for a marriage what not returning the favorso to speak can do. When we do things to hurt one another—intentional or not—all it serves to do is undermine and weaken the relationship. And some times looks can be deceiving—the intentional can look so innocent and the unintentional can appear so cold and heartless.
Better to live in a tent in the wild than with a cross and petulant spouse.
(Proverbs 21:19, The Message Bible)
If you’d like a marriage that not only stands the test of time but one that is worth cherishing—take it from someone who knows what he’s talking about—don’t return the favor when you are taken for granted or played as the fool.
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
-Mark Twain
Many of us abandon our spouses—maybe not physically—but emotionally and mentally for certain. And some of us have done so without even noticing it. By the time we we woke up and smelled the coffee, the damage had been done and our marriage was on the rocks—or worse yet—in the courts. It’s not that the warning signals were missing, we just didn’t bother to pay attention to them—we more or less ignored them. For many of us—our jobs, our recreation, our stocks, our yards, our sex, our you name it–became our idols in a sense–and it was our relationships with God and others that suffered for it.
And as admirable as it may seem—even our mates, our kids—our families—can become idols.
For the rest of you who are in mixed marriages—Christian married to non-Christian—we have no explicit command from the Master. So this is what you must do. If you are a man with a wife who is not a believer but who still wants to live with you, hold on to her. If you are a woman with a husband who is not a believer but he wants to live with you, hold on to him. The unbelieving husband shares to an extent in the holiness of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is likewise touched by the holiness of her husband. Otherwise, your children would be left out; as it is, they also are included in the spiritual purposes of God.
On the other hand, if the unbelieving spouse walks out, you’ve got to let him or her go. You don’t have to hold on desperately. God has called us to make the best of it, as peacefully as we can. You never know, wife: The way you handle this might bring your husband not only back to you but to God. You never know, husband: The way you handle this might bring your wife not only back to you but to God.
And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life. Don’t think I’m being harder on you than on the others. I give this same counsel in all the churches. (1 Corinthians 7:12-17, The Message Bible)
The moment we elevate someone else above God we do them and ourselves a greater dis-service than we realize. I am convinced that it is because of this type of worship of one another—that we begin to operate out of fear. We desire to control and manipulate one another because we can’t stand the thought of losing what we feel like we just can’t lose. And in the end—when we try to control—we lose what or who we can’t control. I have wondered who the genius was (there is conflicting information about who is responsible) who coined the phrase—If you love someone set them free? Musical talent Sting has made a living singing those words—Jesus modeled the principle as a way of life.
Maybe our marriages—and all of our relationships for that matter—would be stronger if we’d cut one another a bit more slack and laid off of giving one another such a hard time.
For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.
-Bill Cosby
In Sunday, from the hit series, Nooma, pastor and author Rob Bell tells of a husband who purchases flowers for his wife. The wife, upon receiving her flowers turns to her husband and says—You didn’t have to do that. To which Bell describes the husband replying some thing along the lines of—I know, they were on sale—It was the right thing to do—You are my wife, what would you expect?
Silly, right?
But how often do we do what we do for one another out of obligation, fear—or for show? Just as God desires our hearts—so we long to be loved from a heart that wants to love us. And when our actions come from anything but a heart of love that says—Thank you, I love you—it is nothing more than mere lip service.
Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. (1 Peter 1:22, The Message Bible)
Do we love our spouse because it is what we are supposed to do—or has the love of God taken root and begun to take form in our hearts and lives? We can be sure God doesn’t love us out of obligation, but he loves us from a sincere heart.
An ounce of sincere love is better than a pound of anything when it comes to a healthy and prosperous marriage.
Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
-Martin Luther
Contrary to all you may have seen growing up, a relationship soaked in fear is not the key to a successful and sustained relationship. The key to a marriage that’s worth anything more than the piece of paper that makes it official takes more than vain threats and holding one another hostage for what each other might have done wrong. You better shape up bucko or I’ll be shipping you out, these are far from the kind of words that motivate a spouse—rather they are the words that separate husband and wife. Uttering the words, You’re not holding up your end of the bargain so I’m outta here—only alienates your partner. These sorts of things never contribute to intimacy.
Words that divide don’t have to be spoken to be said, and messages can be sent in a plethora of mediums. A marriage in which a man and a woman can threaten less and tolerate more—is a marriage that has many of the components it takes to last if you ask me. A marriage (or any relationship for that matter) in which unfulfilled expectations don’t win the day because neither party is depending on the other to change or be who they demand one another be is one step closer to being a winning marriage. When a wife is secure in Christ to a certain degree, a husband doesn’t have to be her everything—and the man who doesn’t have to be everything has a realistic shot at being something.
Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage.
No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband. (Ephesians 5:25-33, The Message Bible)
How many marriages are ruled by an iron fist? That kind of approach may work in a tire factory or even in a toxic church, but it never works in a loving relationship where freedom should be celebrated—not squashed. Marriage is not a place to use bribery to get something from the other party—be it good behavior, money, sex, or a certain image we wish to project when it comes to what those on the outside see. Marriages don’t thrive under oppresion—when either party attempts to use anything as a motivator instead of simply loving the other—it is ultimately resentment closely followed by a rebellion that ensues. If you want to build you can’t continue to tear down. Using sex or money as a weapon is all too common—and intimidation is just as lethal. And marriages that live under the cloud of these sorts of things tend to drown.
If you want a losing marriage—focus on demanding your rights and forget about laying them down.
When God makes a covenant with us, God says: ‘I will love you with an everlasting love. I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me.’ In our society we don’t speak much about covenants; we speak about contracts. When we make a contract with a person, we say: ‘I will fulfill my part as long as you fulfill yours. When you don’t live up to your promises, I no longer have to live up to mine.’ Contracts are often broken because the partners are unwilling or unable to be faithful to their terms.
-Henri Nouwen
News out of California today concerns a man named Terry Childs who most recently was working for the Department of Technology for San Francisco in a pretty high ranking position—seems he was arrested over this past weekend for some violations concerning his privileges. Childs is accused of improperly tampering with computer systems and causing a denial of service, said Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s district attorney, on Monday afternoon—according to Yahoo Tech News. In addition, the story also says he is alleged to have installed a tracing system to monitor communications related to his personnel case. And Mr. Childs isn’t going to go down quietly without making some waves either—he is withholding and has denied the city important passwords while he sits in jail, which subsequently poses a huge data security risk.
I’m not sure what the legal fate of Terry Childs is going to be, but I do know that no good ever comes out of holding something over someone else’s head—or using something we possess to damage or handicap some one else. It would appear from a brief survey of the Holy Scriptures that God doesn’t warm up too much to the idea of our trying to destroy those he has so lovingly put into our lives. And worse yet—using the very gifts he’s given us to do it. I can’t think of a place that this kind of interaction is more costly than within the sacred confines of marriage. But it happens, and does it happen. Husbands are guilty, as are wives.
And how dare you take each other to court! When you think you have been wronged, does it make any sense to go before a court that knows nothing of God’s ways instead of a family of Christians? The day is coming when the world is going to stand before a jury made up of followers of Jesus. If someday you are going to rule on the world’s fate, wouldn’t it be a good idea to practice on some of these smaller cases? Why, we’re even going to judge angels! So why not these everyday affairs? As these disagreements and wrongs surface, why would you ever entrust them to the judgment of people you don’t trust in any other way? (1 Corinthians 6:1-4, The Message Bible)
When you consider that Jesus didn’t owe us a thing—it sort of has a way of challenging the way we deal with one another. Truthfully, Jesus owed us nothing but justice (how easily we forget that) and imagine for a moment if Jesus would have taken that road with each of us—Well, boys and girls, you are cooked without me and I figure it’s your fault so I am going to pass on this hanging on a cross thing.
But how often as spouses when given the chance to let one another off the hook—we are as trigger happy as a deer hunter on the opening day of hunting season.
A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
-Maurois Andr
When we take a new job we get the details down about the job description, company values, pay, vacation, benefits and the like—or the lack of the aforementioned. We then proceed to shake hands and go to work. Sadly, oodles of deals are made to be broken or eventually amended. One day when it’s not going as well as we had hoped, or things change—we part company. Or at least one party starts to threaten the other, seeing as this might somehow motivate the other.
Sounds like a lot of marriages I have heard about.
For lack of a better term, I will call them marriage deals.
Too many of us who are married, and others of us like myself who have been—don’t know the first thing about what real love looks like or how it responds when it isn’t appreciated or returned. Television and Hollywood surely have their own warped ideas about love and the church isn’t much better often times. Over half of the marriages here in these United States end in court and some estimates say that over seventy-five percent of second marriages ultimately fail—which ought to say something about of all of the first time divorces to begin with. And if you think the infidelity rate among married couples is any lower than our current divorce rate, I’d say think again, as not all marriages that are victim—are aware of it—at least one side isn’t. And then there is the much overlooked issue of reverse infidelity that ends up having ravenous effects on a marriage. Even fewer of us like to talk about that hot potato.
I say this as bluntly as I can to wake you up to the stupidity of what you’re doing. Is it possible that there isn’t one levelheaded person among you who can make fair decisions when disagreements and disputes come up? I don’t believe it. And here you are taking each other to court before people who don’t even believe in God! How can they render justice if they don’t believe in the God of justice?
These court cases are an ugly blot on your community. Wouldn’t it be far better to just take it, to let yourselves be wronged and forget it? All you’re doing is providing fuel for more wrong, more injustice, bringing more hurt to the people of your own spiritual family. (1 Corinthians 6:5-8, The Message Bible)
When you think about it, marriage isn’t some version of a business deal in which we shake hands on and agree to such and such. No, marriage is to be a commitment to love someone when they don’t love you very well and even when it seems like they might hate you instead.
Maybe we ought to think a little bit more about our own approach to marriage—and divorce?
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
-Martin Luther
One of my closest friends and his wife were married for twenty-five years—but not to one another. Both were divorced a few years before they ever laid eyes on each other. My friends wife, I’ll call her Lori, was married to a practicing alcoholic for the entire tenure of her first marriage. And it was tough. Her husband was far from perfect to put it nicely—but Lori will tell you that she was no angel either.
Well, if she wasn’t an angel, who is? Lori wasn’t about to divorce her husband just because it was difficult, she was going to love him instead. She has told me that it wasn’t for their two children either that she endured what was, according to her, an often almost unbearable marriage at times. It was out of love that she did so. A good many of us would have counseled her to get out of dodge while the getting was still good and while she had something to offer—or in other words, something to market. Oh, we wouldn’t have been so crude—we’d have spiritualized it by saying that God would want her to enjoy her life and being married to a screwed up man like that never was going to allow her that luxury.
What may surprise you is that it was Lori’s ex-husband who ended up divorcing her—and not vice versa—and not for another woman. It was a real blow for her. But she doesn’t regret her decision to remain married to a man who eventually dumped her when just about everyone would have expected her to be the one doing the dumping.
…It’s good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out. Abstaining from sex is permissible for a period of time if you both agree to it, and if it’s for the purposes of prayer and fasting—but only for such times. Then come back together again. Satan has an ingenious way of tempting us when we least expect it. (1 Corinthians 7:2b-5, The Message Bible)
Some people would call Lori crazy and others might call her worse—I call her a hero.
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