Marriage Sanctified

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. – Corrie ten Boom

Sometimes in marriage and family we experience seasons that prompt us to start to wonder what our future will be like. Will we be healthy and still in love? Will the kids be okay? Our parents?

We attempt to control so many things that are simply unknown to us and it causes excessive worry & exhaustion.

But Proverbs 16:3 says to commit to the Lord in whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.

When we trust God with our future & lean on His understanding, we can rest assured that He sees what’s on the other side of what we can’t yet see or comprehend.

God designed marriage & the family. He has a perfect plan.  Release it all to Him and watch patiently as He reveals His perfect plan for your marriage & family. Hw holds your future and He is a good, good Father.

Whether you are newly married or have been married for years, at some point in your relationship you will face two things- brokenness and the need for forgiveness.   

We have all experienced personal brokenness in our lives prior to getting married. We will also experience brokenness within our marriage. Why? Because we often carry the burdens of our past hurts and mistakes with us and bring them into our marriage. Our pain and discomfort bring us to a place of familiarity and, oddly, this familiarity gets disguised as comfort to us. Yet, we continue to mess up in our brokenness. We get hurt and we become hurtful.  We react instead of responding. We want to be different, but we don’t always know how to be different. Our desire is to move beyond the things that cripple our godly thinking, but sometimes we just get stuck.

Our brokenness, whether from our past or current circumstances, can often trigger us to respond with our usual, unhealthy coping methods. For example, our instinctive response may be to blame our childhood trauma or our upbringing for our own current bad behavior toward our spouse. We claim, excuse, and justify it through a victim’s lens. We give our brokenness a permanent dwelling spot in our heart, closing our minds off to the possibility of authentic change and authentic forgiveness towards our spouse and ourselves. We choose to remain wounded and live with injustice stamped over our heart.

But there is a much better way…

2 Corinthians 10:5 says we are to destroy every proud obstacle that keeps us from knowing God. That we must capture every rebellious thought captive and submit those thoughts to obey Christ. Wow! What a powerful scripture to help us with our need for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing! And Proverbs 23:12 says to commit ourselves to instruction and to listen carefully to wisdom.

 So, when we feel wounded by something our spouse has done to hurt us or we feel like we can’t be forgiven for something we have done to hurt our spouse, we must capture those thoughts and submit them to Christ and His character. His forgiveness towards us gives us the strength to extend forgiveness to our spouse and even to ourselves. His redemptive power is what allows us to pick up our feet and take the next step forward toward positive change.

Isaiah 43:18 says, “Do not remember the past events; pay no attention of things of old.” We must work through each trying circumstance that comes our way today and let the past stay in the past. Walk in His forgiveness and extend forgiveness consistently and continually to your spouse and to yourself. Acknowledge the areas in which you are weak and identify your triggers and submit them into His mighty healing hands.

When we go through hardships in marriage, we may be tempted to give up and quit. The last thing we may want to do is celebrate. Yet, scripture reminds us that we all go through seasons in our lives.

Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there “is a time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.”

Reflecting upon our two decades of marriage, we can see this truth weaved throughout our own marital hardships.

Plenty of times we have cried and grieved. And plenty of times we have laughed and danced from the triumph of overcoming those same hardships.

How is it that we can look back and celebrate our hardships? Because we see the goodness of God in each of them. Because through each hardship, we are strengthened, and God is glorified by the power of our testimony.

Through our hardships we have learned the freeing power of confession and forgiveness. We have learned the humbling power of submission to God and obedience. We have been a witness to God’s faithfulness to grow us to be more like Him. We have felt His sovereignty over our temporal circumstances.

If your marriage feels like it is in a pit of sinking sand, take time to reflect upon the goodness of God in your prior marriage struggles. Look for the ways in which the hardships grew you closer to Him and to your spouse. Celebrate them!

Write them in a journal or on post-it notes as a reminder. And encourage, support & celebrate the marriages of others. God’s goodness is also displayed when we celebrate others, despite our own circumstances.

Our marriages are a way we get to share the Gospel with others in the world. Let His glory be on display!