The 7 Keys to a Successful Marriage are not arranged in order of importance, save this one. The most important thing you can do IN LIFE is to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The second most important is to love your neighbor just as you love yourself.
It is not hard to see why this is the foundation for a successful marriage. God must be first in all we do. Why? Because He is the omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful) One. He is not only the creator of the universe but is also your creator (see Psalm 139) and He has perfect plans for your life (see Jeremiah 29:11). He knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen and He desires intimate relationship with you (Leviticus 26:12) in order to guide your steps (Psalm 37:23, Prov. 20:24) and allow you to live the abundant life He’s designed for you (John 10:10).
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you... Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. James 4:7-8a, 10
Submission. First and foremost, in our lives, we need to
submit our will to God. This is a
challenge, isn’t it? Think about your
life and how you live. You may be sincerely
striving to honor God in all you do, yet you fall short at times. Right? If it is difficult to submit to a
perfect, loving, righteous, and holy God, who only wants good for you, how much
more so will it be difficult to deny your will and submit to an imperfect,
limited, flawed, and sinful human being – your spouse? Loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind
allows us to grow in the practice of submission to the One we love. Learning how to turn our back on what we want
in order to honor God and live the way He desires for us to live is a journey
that we will never finish. However, the self-control needed to be able to
resist self and submit is a gift from the Spirit that we can appropriate. Gal
5:22-25 reads: But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who
belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Amen! So we can, by the power of His Spirit, submit
ourselves to God. (and when we fall short, there is forgiveness!) Then we can
exercise that same self-control as we submit one to another. Ephesians 5:21 reads: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. When you are in
the thick of difficulty in your marriage, remember that your first submission
is to God, and THEN to your spouse. So when (not if) your spouse starts “trippin’”,
ask yourself what Christ’s response would be in the situation. Maybe you will
need to pray, breathe deeply, count to ten, or call a time out and ask your
spouse to give you a hour (or a day) before you continue the conversation.
Submission can be challenging, but you can do it because you have the needed
self-control already in you.
The
second command from Christ is to “love your neighbor as yourself”. How do you
love yourself? Do you make sure you
rest? Eat daily? Shower? Brush your
teeth? Protect yourself by wearing shoes or a coat or a hat? Do you make sure
your life is good by living as safely as possible? Paying your bills so you
have heat and light? Do you maintain
your car? Perhaps you get a massage every two weeks? Perhaps you go fishing once a month with your
buddies to maintain a sense of peace and to de-stress? This is how you love your neighbor – with
rudimentary, practical, helpful, and sometimes extravagant love. (Ephesians 5:1&2, James 2:14-17)
Loving God first and foremost is the most important investment you can
make in your marriage. Loving your
spouse as you love yourself is the second.
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