I have become acutely aware of the attack on marriages over the past year. Primarily due to the attack my own marriage has suffered. It's amazing how during your own season of suffering, the Lord leads you to others who are suffering in that same season. It's as if I have on 3-D glasses that gives me eyes for hurting marriages. Marriages are falling apart everywhere; there is no arena that is not suffering from this attack. The number of marriage "fatalities" continues to climb......and my heart breaks for those whose hearts are breaking without Hope.
It seems Satan is using the facet of marriage to ramp up his dirty work. By tearing apart the union closest to God's heart, Satan is undermining the sanctity of marriage, and thus attempting to undermine Christ. Marriage is the relationship designed by God to reflect the relationship Christ has with His Church. Satan is personally attacking God by amputating husbands and wives from one another, thus leaving us to limp along with handicapped marriages and divorce of staggering proportions. Satan is infiltrating our minds with thoughts that marriage can be easily divorced. No longer is the marriage covenant considered sacred or binding.
Satan declares war on marriage by shifting our focus to self and our wants and expectations, and then allowing our own spiral of selfishness to pull us away from Christ. How simple, yet destructive, a battle plan. The enemy just turns us over to our natural sinful nature--self. The world is his ally and diligently works with him to entice, entitle, and convince us we need or deserve better than what we have. Your typical, "the grass is greener on the other side" mentality. "Going green" in marriage means removing the philosophy of fixing what is broken. Instead, we are encouraged to seek to replace marriage with a greener, more appealing life that "we deserve". If marriage is messy, simply dispose of it. We live in a world that is focused on fast, convenient, and disposable. This self gratification leads to a lack of permanence in our marriages.
Satan highlights self, which becomes our biggest enemy. This is exactly where I found myself a few months ago. Marriage, as it was, wasn't working for me. I made it all about me. It was easier to just want out instead of seeking my part of the solution. If he wasn't going to change into what I wanted, then I couldn't do this anymore. I gave very little regard for the battle he was engaged in. I was not supporting him from my own pit. Instead of being his cheerleader as a wife should be, I allowed my disappointment and hurt to become rotten apples I threw at him while booing him off the husband field. Satan distracted my focus from the marriage covenant to the worship of self. Satan used past baggage to convince me I needed to pack up and move on. I was convinced nothing would ever change. Satan was winning in our marriage because we were both focused on self.
Our marriage was at another crossroads. Would we continue to fight WITH one another or would we choose to fight FOR one another? Would we claim the promises of Christ that we established our marriage on, or would we give in to the world's standards and simply divorce the sanctity of our marriage? Today, I am praising the Lord that our marriage victory belongs to Christ! Christ trumps self and thus defeats Satan and his tactics to sever marriages. The Christ in our marriage is stronger than the enemy's pull that threatened to dissolve our marriage vows. We chose marriage and the covenant we made with God fifteen years ago. We surrendered our marriage to the One who joined us together and trust Him daily for the means to make this work. In our own strength we fail 100% of the time. In His strength we succeed 100% of the time. What is humanly impossible is Divinely Possible.
Was it a switch that flipped from thoughts of divorce to happily-ever-after? NO. It's a struggle, to some degree, everyday. He is fighting against his formative childhood, the easier path of passivity, the unnatural element of communication, and the negative chatter inside his mind. But he is no longer fighting against me; he is fighting for me. I am fighting against paralyzing insecurities and fear, fluctuating hormones, becoming emotionally unglued, and unrealistic expectations. But I am no longer fighting against him; I am fighting for him. There is only One reason the battle for our marriage was diverted from the path towards divorce. That reason is CHRIST! He alone saved our marriage.
My heart is heavily burdened for the disintegrating marriages that seem to be rapidly on the rise. My heart hurts for the ways in which Satan is diluting marriage to a disposable entity. The Father of Lies is convincing us that there is no other option than to divorce our marriages. Satan is succeeding (for now) to undermine the Christ in us and in our marriages. He is wreaking havoc on the unity of marriages, homes, and families. We are accepting our brokenness far too easily and choosing paths that steer us away from one another, and ultimately away from the Greatest Power available to us! Marriages everywhere need to know that Christ is the answer to any marriage struggling for its next breath.
Marriage is one of the hardest jobs we have been given in this fallen world. Two messy people are to become one flesh and meet the other's needs which are fundamentally opposite of their own. Is it any wonder that disaster strikes??? Again, I am drawn to the marriage parallel of Christ and His Church. Christ--fully God and fully man and without sin--came to our sinful world to die for a people who despised and rejected His salvation while stubbornly choosing to cling to the destructive ways of their sins. Without Christ, sin is all we know. We are the polar opposite of Christ. We are separated from God by our sin and He simply asks us to trust Christ for the forgiveness of those sins. Yet, this simplicity is the ONLY WAY! CHRIST IS THE ONLY WAY TO REDEMPTION! The same goes for marriages. Christ is the only way a man and a woman (polar opposites if you ask me) can be united and hearts tied together in love for a lifetime. A lifetime of love, forgiveness, grace, sacrifice, yielding, submission, and daily choosing one another over self. We cannot do marriage on our own; we must be rescued from our selfishness and redeemed as one in Christ. Christ is the difference between eternal life and death and Christ is the difference between marriage and divorce. What is humanly impossible is Divinely Possible.
The bottom line, when we give up on our marriages, we are telling God He is not big enough to fix our mess. We are choosing to walk away and hit the reset button. I am aware of the familiar Bible verse that gives infidelity veto power over marriage. However, I will passionately argue against that by claiming the power of Christ over it. I am aware of the extenuating circumstances of abuse. I am also aware that the efforts of only one spouse cannot necessarily be enough to jump-start reconciliation. No two marriages are the same, nor can they all be covered by a blanket of black and white reasoning. I do know, that no marriage is beyond Christ's redemption. No human, male or female, is beyond Christ's redemption. No baggage is beyond Christ's restitution. The same power that raised Christ from the dead, is alive and living in us and in our marriages. I just wonder why we are so quick to "choose life" for the unborn, yet we seem to be just as quick to "choose divorce" for the union made before God? God created both. We are aghast at ending life, yet numb to ending marriages. Myself included. How quickly I pulled the "eject" cord in my mind and in my heart during a time of marital crisis. I will be forever grateful for Christ's forgiveness of that and for His redeeming power in my marriage. He gets the Glory. Our story for His Glory! Our marriage for His Glory!
My heart aches for marriages to claim the awesome power of our Redeemer and resist the pull of the enemy to divorce the sanctity of our marriages. Satan rejoices when we give up and take Christ out of the marital equation. When we divorce the sanctity of marriage, we remove the power of Christ, of which there is no greater power.
"For Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world" ~1 John 4:4
We have claimed that unparalleled power of Christ for our marriage today and every hard day ahead. We now passionately share the power of Christ with every marriage being attacked by the enemy's forces.
Passion is born from redemption.
"Your internal passion determines external reach" ~The Catalyst Leader by Brad Lomenick
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