Marriage and relationships

Holy smokes, I was going to rant and rant about what makes a good marriage and I stumbled across this link. Pretty much sums up what I was going to say.

A few addendums: haha! You thought I'd leave it at that!

Each and every one of us is a poor, miserable sinner (Romans 3:23), iow, selfish and self-serving. Yeah, so how are two selfish people supposed to stay married?? Can you see how very difficult, near impossible accomplishing the goal of a life-long, happy marriage is?

The Bible says, "We love, because God first loved us." (1 John 4:19) I am singing a little Sunday School ditty in my head right now. We, in our deepest heart, are selfish toddlers. You don't think you are selfish? All you have to do is consider all of the things you want from your spouse. We all have a list. Ok, so I know *I* have a list! The problem comes in when that dear, loving, spouse does not give us what we want..whether we have communicated that desire or not. So very many times, we feel we deserve these desires to be met.

Now, go back to Romans 3:23. None of us deserve anything from God..the perfect, holy God...not even a sinless spouse! (Truthfully, even if we did have a perfect spouse, we'd even get mad at them! You know I am right!)

Now consider this, your spouse has this very same list of desires for you! uh oh. hmm. You know what at least some of them are. I know things from my dh's (dear husband's) list. I fail him over and over again.

The Bible speaks of Christ and His Church as a marriage. Selfless. Christ lays down His life for the sake of His dear Church. She does NOT deserve His faithfulness as she is constantly unfaithful. Really unfaithful. The entire book of  Hosea is a picture of  this. The Old Testament is chock full of these stories. Yet, Christ loves her anyway. (Hosea is a type of Christ - pointing to what Christ will do for His bride.)

This is what we are called to do. Love our spouse more than we love ourselves. We are to think of his/her needs more than our own. We are to serve each other out of reverence to Christ. Oh boy. I am not good at this. Don't ask my dh. I don't want him to tell you how unsuccessful I am in this way.

This is where the crux of a good marriage lies.

FORGIVENESS.



Now, I am so not saying this is easy. I am not saying that the second the other fails we just forgive them. We are only human afterall.  It can take awhile to get through the emotions. Mine are good at getting in the way. BUT Christ forgave me. I do not deserve it from Christ and therefore not even from my dh. I forgive my dh because God forgave me. Dh forgives me for the same reason. Christ gave me His Spirit, to give me His power to forgive. Like I said, I get in the way and like to hold on to my anger. (I hate that about myself.) But God, in His great kindness, has so much forgiveness, gave and still gives me so very much of that forgiveness that I can give it to others.


Truthfully, this is true for ALL relationships we have.