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Forget Your Marriage!

Jul5

Forget your marriage. 

Why would someone who is committed to encouraging marriages tell you to forget your marriage? What I mean is this: focus on your spouse, not on your marriage.

Trying to achieve a certain kind of marriage can make us crazy! This is misplaced energy; we are actually off-target when we are focused on the marriage itself. We do not take our marriages with us to heaven; we take people with us to heaven. We have been called to love someone, not to create a particular kind of marriage.

Focus on loving your spouse, serving his or her needs as God directs. This will have the effect of blessing your marriage, of course; but you will have a much healthier focus. You can thrive when you let go of trying to manipulate your marriage and instead focus on valuing your spouse. Your spouse is the real treasure, not the marriage itself.

When I say, “forget your marriage,” what I mean is this: focus on what your loving looks like, not on what your marriage looks like. As we stand before God, we are not responsible for the condition of our marriages; we are responsible for the way we serve in our marriages.

We can torment ourselves by continually measuring our marriages against our version of the ideal marriage. We can live free from that! Instead of evaluating our marriages, we want to evaluate ourselves as husbands and wives. As we ask God for insight into the needs of our spouses, we also ask God to enable us to minister to those needs according to His wisdom and purposes.

(adapted from Radiance: Secrets to Thriving in Marriage)

Starving at a Banquet, and Staring at my Feet

Jun22

Imagine that you go to a grand banquet. With great excitement, you find your name on a place-setting at the table. As you sit there, you focus on your name card. You focus on your name card even as the warm bread is passed. You focus on your name card as the savory soup and then the juicy steak go by. You focus on your name card as the chocolate cheesecake comes around and as the coffee is served.  As the evening goes on, you wonder why your stomach is growling.

It is important for believers to know that we are the children of God, the valued sheep of His flock, and the apple of His eye. However, if our focus remains on who we are, our healing will not be complete, and our joy will not be full.

Think about it this way: it would be a good thing to learn that we were someone’s child and that we had a father, right? But that joy, in itself, would be quite limited. The full joy would come in knowing that our father was a kind and patient man!

The fact that we are  beloved children of God gives us joy and brings us into God’s Presence. But too often, we stand there and stare at our own feet. Focused on ourselves, we say, “I am God’s child. I am loved.” We wonder why our healing does not progress and why our joy does not grow.

But then … we feel the gentle fingers of Jesus beneath our chin, lifting our head so that our eyes see Him. Here is our full healing! When the Lifter of our Head becomes the focus of our eyes, then is our joy made complete.

It is good to see that our feet are bought by Christ, but our healing  progresses when we then focus on the pierced feet of Jesus Who bought us! It is good to know that we are sheep of God’s flock, but our joy is made full as we then focus on the gentleness and wisdom and goodness of our Shepherd.

Our list of who we are in Christ (“I am chosen; I am accepted; I am loved; etc.”) is what we stand on in order to see the awesome “I AM” of God.  God uses my “I am … ” to lift my head to see His “I AM.”  Our complete healing and full joy come from focusing on Him and on savoring Who He Is.

My “I am … ” helps me to find my place at the table, but His “I AM” is the feast!

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.  Consider Him, so that you do not grow weary or discouraged (Hebrews 12:2,3).

The Emotion that Devours, continued

Jun8

When we are wronged, how can we handle our anger? We answer that best when we look at what God does when He is wronged.  John Piper considers this in his book This Momentary Marriage: “But even though God has never done anything that legitimately pro­vokes our anger at him, what has he done about the breakdown in our relationship with him? He has taken initiatives to heal it—initiatives that were infinitely costly to him” (p. 151).

When we are wronged, we can reflect God by thinking like this: “In my spirit, I will walk towards this person in love. I will join Christ in this situation. I am willing to suffer so that this person can be healed.” Just as Christ was willing to suffer in order to love me well, so I can be willing to suffer in order to love others well.

Although the work of atonement was completed at the Cross, the work of redemption (turning ashes into beauty) and sanctification (turning self-centered, diseased people into Christ-centered, healthy people) is ongoing. It is an awesome privilege to be invited to partner with God in His work. Not only does He promise to reward us well, but He promises that He Himself will be our great reward. There is nothing greater than that!

This means that when I am tempted to be angry about what is happening to me, I can instead yield to the Spirit so that the situation belongs to Him and not to me. Not only does this allow His power and wisdom to replace my weakness and foolishness, but this also changes the suffering of that situation into His suffering, instead of mine.  Double-yoked with Christ, I delight in being drawn nearer to Him; sharing in His sufferings, I delight in bringing pleasure to Him as the desires of His heart are being fulfilled.

In summary, here are the three things that help me to combat anger and gain richness instead:

1. Recognize that my enemy is my anger, not what someone else has said or is doing. It is my bitterness that devours my soul.

2. Choose to be an active giver, truly believing that the best blessings come through giving.

3. Choose to join Christ in His sufferings in order to love others well and to gain intimacy with Christ.

When we do these things through the Spirit, every bit of our lives can be infused with the beauty and joy of God.  That, I think, is awesome.

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