The One Where We Revitalize Marriage

Media promotes relationships as being the things that "complete" us - make us whole if you will. Media likes to lead you to believe that you get married to fulfill some need inside. Perhaps if you get married, it will even fill an emptiness you might have inside. You meet someone that interests you, fall in "love" and decide that marriage is the key to true happiness in life. A couple of years in, you think you've made a mistake and this person no longer "completes" you like the movies said they would. You've been bamboozled.

What if marriage wasn't intended to "complete" you. (Sorry Jerry Maguire)

God is the only one who can fill voids in your soul and truly complete you. No other human will or can. Humans weren't made for that. We are all imperfect people with flaws. We seek God deeper each day and live with goals to become more like God in our daily walk in life, but we will always be imperfect people and we will make mistakes. That's why God sent Jesus for us. We desperately need Jesus in our lives daily. I've said it before and I'll say it every day until I pass on to Heaven, I am a huge mess without Jesus.

That being said, we shouldn't be seeking a spouse for unhealthy reasons. It will just lead to an unhealthy marriage with lots of struggles. If you expect a person to fulfill your needs...your soul holes...you will be let down again and again. God completes you, people don't and never will. Not even our spouses. So what is the true purpose of marriage? Let's ponder that together...

When you accept Jesus' gift of salvation, you become a child of God. You belong to God. God is your Father. It's fact and plainly written several places throughout the Bible. Here's just a couple...

John 1:12 "But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God."

Ephesians 5:1 "Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children."

Let's pull that fact into our marriages. Gary Thomas has a great way of explaining that we are sons and daughter's of Christ; therefore, we not only have earthly father-in-laws, we have a heavenly Father-in-Law. God becomes your Father-in-Law as well. Thinking about the dynamics of this really makes you stop to think about how we are treating each other in our marriages. Would your Father-in-Law in Heaven be pleased with how you are treating each other? Are we encouraging each other? Rallying each other on to grow further in God? Cherishing each other the way God intended? God sees our marriages and our daily lives. He sees how we respect and love each other and how we don't. Is our Father-in-Law happy with our marriage? I am pretty confident we all have room for improvement. Pleasing God in our marriages should be top priority. Taking care of each other in a way that pleases God should be what matters most every day.

The primary goal in our marriages should be to help our spouses have a better eternity. We are saved by grace. But our rewards in Heaven are measured by how we live each day. It's how we spread God's love to others. It's how we serve others. It's how we share Christ in our daily lives. My goal for my husband is that he has the largest reward possible when he gets to Heaven. I want his crown of glory to outnumber mine and I want him to be showered with praise by God when he gets there. I'm also truly hoping that God rewards him with all the dogs imaginable! A mansion full of dogs sounds like a pretty amazing heavenly reward.

The mission in marriage is not what he or she can do for "me", it's what he or she can do for God. Give meaning and power to your marriage. The heart of marriage is to set our spouses up for a supreme eternity. When we change the perspective we have of marriage from "me" to "what can I do for him or her", our whole marriage transforms to an entirely different level of intimacy in both God and each other.

Why do we get married? What attracted you to your husband or wife? Most people will say they fell in "love". What is love? God says we are to love others as God loves us. How do we really love like God loves? What does that even mean?

When asked why we want to get married or why we fell in love, we may respond with "they make me laugh", "they have a kind heart", "they are so hot", or whatever the reason for initial attraction might have been. So what about when the person you think is so "kind" or "funny" or "good looking" isn't? What about when you've been married for a little bit and suddenly your precious, funny, kind spouse has a day when they are not so kind. Their jokes may suddenly be too much and don't seem as funny any longer. You get gray hairs and wrinkles as you age, are you still good looking enough?

None of these things matter to God. That is not how or why God loves us and it shouldn't be how or why we love each other. God just loves us. He loves us even when we don't truly know Him like we should. He loves us when we are mean, cruel, and ugly to each other. He loves us when we do those horrible things we often do in life. He loves us because he loves us. That. is. it. He loves all of us just as we are day in and out. He even loves us when we want to hit our spouses with frying pans or broom handles. He won't be happy with how you are treating His son or daughter, but He will continually love us regardless. His love never ends and is ever-consuming. THAT is how we are supposed to love each other. Just love. For no reason other than Love. There's no ending point to it. It's eternal, unconditional love.

When we see marriage as giving unconditional love, putting your spouse's needs first for the purpose of eternity, and respecting the other person as God's son or daughter, it changes how you think of your marriage. It changes the purpose behind it. We start to build sincere, intimate, God centered relationships with an eternal purpose. You no longer simply share tasks in day to day life, you start to share souls. You build a foundation for an eternal purpose creating an eternal passion.

Let's take a look at marriage from a task perspective for a second. Let's say you are building a house and you only put one nail in each board. The boards will be wobbly and not very sturdy. If you are sleeping, waking, working, feeding kids, sleeping, waking, working, and doing the mundane tasks in between with no foundation or purpose, what is the outcome? You'll have a house with wobbly boards and over time, the boards will give out and come undone. You'll eventually look at the house you've built and decide to plow it down and start over. You can either rebuild the house with a stronger foundation with all the nails and bracing needed or choose a different house altogether. According to statistics in America, a lot of people - whether believers in God or not - give up on the house they tried to build and start over on a different house. The thing is, if you go into building the new house with the same old principles and thought patterns, won't that house also come tumbling down over time? It becomes of cycle of repeat.

To build a true intimate relationship, you have to be honest and transparent with each other. You have to be known and accepted just as you are. Can you imagine how different our marriages would look if we lived daily to bless our spouses? What if we ask our spouses, "hey, how can I bless you today" or "how can I make your day better" a little more often from day to day? Wouldn't our marriages start to change for the better?

Our greatest need in our marriages is to learn how to love the other person. We don't need to be loved because God already loves us more than any human can. We need to learn how to love others. God says in scripture over and over again, to love each other. He knew we'd need a LOT of help with this. Love is hard and it's even harder without Jesus and the Holy Spirit working through you. God directed us to love more than anything else. What about those days we don't "feel" like it? (I know we ALL have those days.) Jesus didn't "feel" like dying a brutal death on the cross for our sins either, but He did anyways because it was God's will. God's will for us is to love each other like God loves us whether we "feel" like it or not. Loving the imperfect people God places in our lives brings God even closer to us. The Holy Spirit is ready and armed with God's Word to help us through those difficult days.

John 13:34-35 "So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples."

Another fun thing I like to do that can add a huge quality to marriage is to secretly do things your spouse never sees or notices. You know, those helpful things you know you are doing for them, but only you know about it. Our souls were created to serve others. Science has proven it over and over. We are happier when we serve others. Bringing this element of personal happiness into your marriage adds an extra special bonus to your relationship. It's like putting high quality granite in the home you are building. It adds that fancy finishing touch. It adds a quality you don't really expect, but it's there and you like it. I actually get a little disappointed when I try to do things that will help my husband's daily life in secret and he notices them. It becomes a little bit of a competition with myself.

Ecclesiastes 12:14 "God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad."

I want to be judged for good secret things I can find to do daily. I'm hoping for lots of heavenly dogs too.

1 John 4:12 "No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us."