By: DR. JUN VENCER, President, Global Transformational Ministries and Pastor, Alliance International Church.
Someone said that America is at the verge of a post marriage culture. Marriage as an institution is under attack by easy divorces, increasing cohabitations, and rising unwed mothers. People are marrying less. Even those who hope to marry are faced with a debilitating fear that marriage no longer works. Our disposable culture offers free love which is just another way of saying free sex, a promiscuity without commitment or responsibility. Marriage is viewed as a private affair between consenting male and female without regards for children or society. God’s gift of sexuality is made subservient to human choice and gratification. Free love, however, is a contradiction in terms because when lovers are in love, they don’t want to be free. They want to be bound for a lifetime.
No marriage is perfect. In fact, even if marriage is made up in heaven, so are thunders and lightnings. Marriage is made up of two imperfect and self-willed people, whose DNAs are uniquely different from each other. Factor into the marriage equation the fact that both man and woman are sinners(Rom. 3:23) and generally selfish (Ps. 14:3). It is a foregone conclusion that conflicts are inevitable. Yet marriage is the hope of our completion.
Someone called marriage a noble daring. It involves risks. Rosemary Haughton wrote, “marriage is handing over your whole self – your body, your soul, your happiness, your future – in the keeping of one whom you love, but who is, and remains, greatly a stranger…. The greatest of human gifts are set to work only when people are prepared to risk everything.” Notwithstanding their trials and tears , a husband said of a sickly wife, “I would rather carry her on my back the rest of my life than to live one day without her.”
For marriage and love to thrive, not just survive, three things are needed.
Firstly, SELF-CHANGE. It is futile to change your spouse on your own. You have no control of your spouse. But you have control of yourself to become a better husband or wife. The Biblical model is that we love God because He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). Initiate self-change to inspire change in your spouse. To love is to will to love.
Secondly, DUTIES FIRST. Spouses make their happiness depend on conditional clauses. The husband will say, “I will love you if you submit to me.” The wife in return says, “I will submit if you love me.” So we insist on our rights before we perform our duties. Turn the table around and follow Jesus who did not come to be served but to serve (Mk. 10:45.) A wife once told her husband, “By God’s grace, no one will come before you my husband, not even me.”
And thirdly, TRUST GOD. Marriage requires faith in God who is the Author-Witness of love and marriage. Only God in Christ can make a husband and wife new beings to love and to serve even though each may feel unloved and neglected. Then the God of newness will bring a miracle of grace to transform and bless you marriage. Amen.