No matter what, stay together
By J. Success
For Audio click here.
When my wife and I were receiving counseling for our marriage, we expected to have numerous sessions with our pastor going over our current relationship and what to expect in marriage. We expected the pastor and his wife to break down our situation and let us know what we needed to work on prior to our marriage, which was two weeks away. We also expected to have a few tense moments where we argued about who was going to cook the food, clean up, run the house and raise the children. Instead we got one session and in this session we got the lesson of a lifetime.
My pastor took my hand and took my wife to be hand and told us to make an intertwined fist and say to each other, no matter what.stay together. That was it, that was our counseling and that was the focus of our marriage, no matter what.stay together. He was teaching us that the covenant of marriage is bigger then the two individuals that come into it. He was teaching us that God takes two imperfect individuals and makes a perfect covenant before Him and we do not have the right to destroy it without valid reason. Here is an example, when you have an argument with a coworker, you don't quit your job. You might avoid that person for a few days or not speak to them but you do what you have to do to make the situation work because there are benefits to your job. When you have an argument with your spouse, it does not give you an excuse to run to divorce court. There are many more benefits in marriage than a job. Proverbs 18:22 says "The man who finds a wife finds a treasure and he receives favor from the Lord." Now I don't know all the benefits from a job but when I did work in corporate America I do recall things such as a paycheck, health care, dental, vision, company trips, free internet and access to an abundance of free office supplies. Now please let me know if I am mistaken but all those do not even begin to touch the surface of what it's like to have favor from the Lord. Favor from the Lord means that no matter what, someone got your back. When times look rough, you can call on Jesus but the problem is that in the midst of our anger and frustration, we turn our backs on our spouse and in doing so, turn our back on God.
See marriage does not focus on where you are at now; it's a journey of where you are going. Similar to your purpose in the kingdom, God does not focus on where you are at now because He knows where you are going and what you are going to be. If marriage focused on us now then our vows would be "until we change" or "until we feel like something else", instead of "until death do us part". God knows our destiny and our purpose in life, he also knows that we cannot do it alone so He gives us His power (the Holy Spirit) and a human helper (our spouse). The purpose of marriage is to provide you with a person to help you fulfill your purpose. Now within that are numerous other benefits and purposes such as procreation, love and support. But the overall purpose of your spouse is to help you reach the destiny that God has for you.
Now I know my purpose in life, is to teach what God has revealed to me, whether it's a one day entrepreneurship workshops, the gospel, websites, or just words of encouragement. And I also know that I needed to teach men how to love their wives. The problem was that I didn't know how to love my wife. See my wife always used to ask me did I love her and I would tell her yes but in actuality I really didn't know if I did or not. But when we got married I finally started to say not yet to her question of love, but not because I didn't want to say that I loved her but because I didn't know how to love her. See God is love, so the more I become like Jesus, the more I learn how to love her as a husband should and how a woman of God deserves to be loved. My definition of love before I came to God was that of lust and unfaithfulness. I told my wife that you didn't want me to love you like I, in my own ability, knew how to love. So now she knows that everyday she asks me do I love her, I tell her yes I do and I love you more than I did the day before because everyday I learn and become more like the Jesus I serve.
