Which Is It? Happiness Or Holiness When It Comes To How To Save Your Marriage?
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Gary Thomas writes in his best-selling book, Sacred Marriage<\/u>, “The idea that marriage can survive on romance alone, or that romantic feeling is more important than any other consideration when choosing a spouse, has wrecked many a marital ship.”\u00a0 If your marriage is struggling or certainly not where you want it to be, how to save your marriage must start from a completely different place.<\/p>\n
In my podcast last week, I talked about how easy and natural it is for all of us to point our love \u201carrows\u201d inwardly and seek love for ourselves rather than outwardly pointing them as exampled by our creator. This is nowhere more evident than in relationships especially marriage. How many times have you heard someone say or perhaps have even said yourself, \u201cI am just not feeling it anymore.\u201d \u201cThey have changed\u201d or \u201cI have changed.\u201d \u201cI do so much more than they do\u2026\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s just not fair.\u201d\u00a0 If you have ever heard or said these words, there is a strong chance that the relationship is not built on a solid foundation.<\/p>\n
When you start to feel this way and\/or your \u201cromantic feelings\u201d are slipping away and if you believe and follow popular philosophy as dispensed in TV shows, magazines, and talk shows, you might find it easy to say, \u201cWell if I feel this way\u2026they must not really be my soul-mate.\u201d The idea that a healthy marriage is based at any time upon how you feel does indeed set you up for a martial ship wreck and is not how to save your marriage. Here is the reason. Biblical love is based upon commitment, not feelings. Can you imagine if God loved us based upon how HE felt<\/u> about us at any given moment? I don\u2019t know about you, but for me, I might be in a heap of trouble.\u00a0 Furthermore, the concept of \u201cgrace\u201d would be totally thrown out the window as well.<\/p>\n
I like what Gary Thomas says when he poses this question, \u201cWhat if God designed marriage to make us Holy more than to make us happy?\u201d Okay, I can hear you saying “\u2026well that\u2019s a real encouraging question\u2026and anyway, I just want to be happy!\u201d Well if you want to become happy\u2026really happy then become Holy! To understand how, we need to look at the definition of the word, Holy<\/em>. Simply put, Holy means \u201cdedicated and devoted unconditionally to\u201d another …most often God as in a Holy man. However, if you were Holy<\/em> in your love for your spouse, you would put their needs above that of your own. In other words, you would love them unconditionally. That especially means loving them when it isn\u2019t fair\u2026when they don\u2019t deserve it and when the score card is 1000 to 1 when comparing your giving to their giving. You might say, \u201cWhy should I love them unconditionally?\u201d The answer is easy. Because that is how God loves you. He loves you regardless of how many times you screw up. Regardless of how many times you are disrespectful. Regardless of how many times you are self-consumed. Little-by-little\u2026when we experience (are aware of) His incredible and unconditional love, we begin to change.<\/em> We slowly and gradually want to do more for Him and to become more pleasing to Him. This is exactly what happens when your spouse experiences YOUR “true” unconditional love. Even the hardest-of-hearts (often under the greatest deception) are…over time… returned to their unhardened state when they are bathed in unconditional love. You may have heard it said that love conquers all\u2026and it is so true.\u00a0 This is how you save your marriage…the more holy you are in your love for your spouse the better your marriage will become permanent.<\/p>\n This week we want to focus on seeking to understand our spouses and then loving them unconditionally. You want to fight as hard to understand them, as you fight to be understood by them. To learn more on how to do this, please see my blog post on guarding your heart. This means that you will have to extend them the courtesy of the benefit-of-the-doubt and seek to understand why they are saying or doing what they are saying or doing. This also means you will love them unconditionally no matter what even though they may not DESERVE it. When you find yourself saying, \u201cWhy am I doing this?\u201d Just quietly whisper to yourself, \u201cBecause HE (God) loves me this way too\u2026even though I don\u2019t deserve it either.\u201d\u00a0 Then, compose yourself, ask for God\u2019s strength and favor and continue to love unconditionally. Plus, know that this is how you save your marriage permanently and ultimately make it 100 x better.<\/p>\n Which Is It? Happiness Or Holiness When It Comes To How To Save Your Marriage? Gary Thomas writes in his best-selling book, Sacred Marriage, “The idea that marriage can survive on romance alone, or that romantic feeling is more important than any other consideration when choosing a spouse, has wrecked many a marital ship.”\u00a0 If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,38,37,1],"tags":[84,86,81,82,40,85,83],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11913,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions\/11913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jondbender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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