MARRIAGE: God’s Cruel Tool
What a month for marriages! It’s very disheartening to watch them “grow apart.” Walls go up to protect what feels threatened, however, the thing protected is what has to be confronted and dealt with! (It’s what God is using the other mate to reveal in you!) Self-life is self-preserving like that. (It’s also self-sustaining and self-destructing!) We cling to the very thing that’s causing our misery. We defend our insanity and if we were to win, what is the prize? Loneliness, rejection, isolation, guilt…more of the same feelings we feared would overtake us, the same feelings we were trying to protect ourselves from in the first place. Ironic.
I still see people reinventing their childhoods, even if it was traumatic and they hated it. Whatever the identity message was they experienced at a feeling level as a child, they continue to live out of in their adult life. They spent their childhood digging the trench they will travel in their whole life. They expect their life to continue its misery. As a result, they create in their mate the very behavior they hate, because they cannot trust what their mate does and says. It doesn’t fit what they expect; it’s not “normal!” They push and push until their mate bends (or cracks) to their will, then they exclaim, “Aha! See!? I knew it!”I get the picture of a lot of marriages being a tug-of-war match. I see two people with their heels trenched into the sand and pulling hard against the “ties that bind.” They are fighting for their self-lives and they are not about to let go. If they lose, they may lose “everything.” Oh yeah? What are they gaining now? What do they get out of holding on to their stubbornness? Blisters, pain, stress, heart-aches and pains! My advice? “Keep pulling and straining and trying to win and see what you risk losing then…Everything!”A young, unmarried couple described it well: “We were playing checkers and we got down to the last two checkers on the board. We were in a stalemate because neither of us wanted to lose to the other. Back and forth we moved the same two checkers and there was nothing else we could do! We were stuck, just like we are now [in our relationship].” “Oh, but there is another option; something you can do,” I said, thumbing through my New Testament in search of a “proof text” form Luke 9:23-24. “Let the other person win?” wife-to-be wisely replied. “Yes!” “If anyone is willing to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me. Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, will find it.”
I envision this couple leaving the counseling session in tears of relief and joy. There is a lift in their spirit. They are holding hands (and it‘s comforting, not clinging). The burden is lifted and their fight is over. The stress is gone because they surrender to The Almighty and there is no more resistance. They see now that their problem was not their problem, only a revelation of the real problem. They now realize that their covenant in marriage was not made between each other, but between each individual and God. They recognize the significance of God’s commandments: Love (for him) and Submit (for her). Love her enough to give up yourself for her! Respect him as you would the Lord Himself, for he IS your head!Listen, the fear of submission to your husband is far greater than the actual surrender. The fear will flee when the will is yielded. And the resistance to loving your wife builds higher walls of self-hatred and isolation than the ones keeping you from her. Choose the smaller wall and love! Jesus is the Way and every other way is not the way. He is the super glue that holds all things together. (Just this week, Kelli had to super glue back together a decoration the boys knocked off a shelf which spelled “FAMILY.” It made me think of this truth.) I believe God is more interested in your losing your self-life in the small battles than your winning the big war on your own.
This is why I have come to believe that God’s primary purpose for marriage on earth is to prepare us for eternity (and there is no marriage in heaven, because marriage isn’t perfect)! It’s method is death! In God’s Kingdom, death to self leads to life in Christ. Yes, marriage is God’s cruel tool to kill you, “so that the life of Christ might be manifested in your mortal body!” (2 Cor. 4:11). The sooner your die to self, the quicker you let the cruel Roman cross have it’s way with you, the sooner Jesus will be made known to and through you. Remember, the genius of the Roman cross was that the strongest man died the longest death. Jesus gave up His spirit without seeking to save Himself.Hannah Whitall Smith says nothing comes to us except through the permissible hand of God. The “all things” of Romans 8:28 means ALL things.
Whatever has brought your marriage to where it is right now, has been permitted to bring you to Christ! Yield to it and see. Amen!
