I have been married to the same man going on 53 years. Has it been a smooth road all the time? Absolutely not. Why? Because we are simply sinners saved by grace. When we accepted Christ as our Savior, our sinful nature did not go away. We had to choose to be like Christ by learning His word and seeking His will through prayer and obedience. No marriage is perfect, and Satan will use every opportunity to divide those who are seeking to live as God intended. If both parties in a marriage make Jesus the Lord of their lives, divorce will never be an option. While God allowed Moses to grant divorce, it was never in God’s design. In Matthew 19:7-8, the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce, and His simple answer still applies today; it was allowed because of the hardness of people’s hearts. Hardness of heart is sin. It is when we decide to do it our way, not God’s. We have stopped listening to Him and made choices based on our own sinful desires. Today, I want to outline ways we can guard against this.
Matthew 19:7-8 “They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”
There are some core biblical principles that will help us to escape the reality that over 50% of Americans experience, which is divorce. As Christians, we should offer unconditional grace, sacrificial service, and steady prayer. This picture shows how Jesus loves us.
First, show unconditional Love. Love your spouse regardless of flaws, bad days, or unlovable behavior, just as Christ loves people despite human brokenness. If we’re honest, we often break God’s heart with our attitudes and actions. Yet, He still loves us. Instead of casting us aside, He convicts us through the Holy Spirit who dwells within to bring us back to a restored relationship with Him. He loves us through our imperfections and offers mercy and grace that we don’t deserve.
I John 4:10-11 “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Second, extend sacrificial service. We must put our spouse’s needs before our own. Through small, everyday acts of kindness, we can show our love by serving our spouse. Don’t wait for the big moments to serve your spouse. Make it a part of your day to think of them and what pleases them. As a servant of Jesus, we are to do as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily.” We must understand that when we accept Christ as our Lord, He is our Master; we no longer live seeking to please ourselves, but Him.
John 15:12-13 “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Third, no one will keep score. Let the past stay in the past. Don’t keep a tally of mistakes, disagreements, or who did more around the house or took care of the kids. In I Corinthians 13:5, Paul writes that love “keeps no record of wrongs” or ” thinks no evil.” The Greek word for “thinks” is an accounting term: logizomai. It means not tallying up, crediting, or maintaining a ledger of past offenses.
I Corinthians 13:5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.
Fourth, we must extend grace and forgiveness. When we are hurt, we must respond with patience, actively listen, and keep a gentle spirit. Many marriages have been damaged to the point of divorce because they responded without thinking about how God showed grace and forgiveness to them. Did we deserve His forgiveness and grace? No, we deserve Hell, yet God responded with grace and forgiveness. He sent the Holy Spirit to convince us of our need for Him and how much He loves us. We are to extend this to our spouse and others, too.
To succeed in our marriages, we must understand that when we say “I do,” we make a vow with God. God does hold us accountable, and even though He will forgive, we will suffer consequences as a result of breaking our vows. The only way any of us can have a successful marriage that honors God is to submit our lives to Him in obedience daily. We must pray for our spouses. They will face many stresses in work, health, family, and their own walk with the Lord; therefore, we must pray for them consistently. You are probably thinking, but what about me? If you do all of the above God’s way, you will have a deep, settled joy in your heart, and God will take care of you. There are two verses I live by and seek to incorporate in my daily walk with God. I Corinthians 10:31 says that no matter what I do I am to do it for His glory. Everything I do is to give the right opinion of who He is. The second verse is Colossians 3:23: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” I am to give my love to my spouse with everything in me as unto the Lord. Ultimately, everything I do is for Jesus. This keeps my perspective clear on my purpose in life, and should be the purpose of every believer. This keeps the focus off of myself and onto how I can please God. After all He has done for me, there will never be too much I can do for Him.
Live a life pleasing to God by loving your spouse unconditionally, serving them sacrificially, extending grace and forgiveness without keeping a record, praying constantly, and seeking to live in complete obedience to God. When you get weary, do not question God’s design. Rest, and as the song says, “trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.”
