I love love stories. That's part of the reason I wanted to share several Real Love Stories with you on the blog in February. But after church on Sunday and meeting with our Grand Parkway community group later that night, I realized the incompleteness of sharing just part of the picture. The effortless way our love stories begin doesn't indicate the manor in which they will last. Marriage is hard. Being a wife is not usually love notes and spontaneous date nights. Sometimes it's piles of laundry and schedule disagreements. Here are a few observations from women who are in the thick of it. Committed. But in the thickness of day-to-day marriage. 1. Sometimes you are called to speak knowing you won't be heard. Moses was commanded to speak but told he wouldn't be heard. How's that for encouragement? Go, get 'em Moses. You tell Pharaoh what he's got coming if he doesn't let My people go. Sometimes our soft, gentle obedience to speak the truth in love might mean we're not heard the first time. (And just if I was about to forget, I spotted this pic above on Instagram this morning.) 2. Sometimes you will need submit to leadership you don't agree with, knowing it's ultimately God you are submitting to. I was cleaning our office closet earlier today, something I've been putting off since before Jaxson was even born, and I found this note I'd saved from a Bible study a few semesters ago. 3. Sometimes it will feel like you are doing everything around the house. I mean. Everything. You can't count. It will always feel like you're "losing." It's likely to never feel 50/50 in marriage, so you've got to find a way to ask for help when you need it, let things go when they are not absolutely necessary, and be OK with a little more "mess." Marriage is wonderful and beautiful and worth it! But we're missing the big picture if we miss the fact that it represents God's covenant with His bride, the Church. We will quickly lose motivation to do what's right in marriage when we lose Christ and His bride as our frame of reference. Then it becomes "I'll do this, if you'll do that," or "You get your way here, and I'll get mine over here." If you've got a few minutes, check out the message from Neil on Sunday. “The Christians idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism...The male and the female were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on a sexual level, but totally combined. I'll leave you with a few questions Neil asked during the sermon: What is malnourished in your relationship? What has grown cold? And one more C.S. Lewis quote....
He also says in Mere Christianity: "Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from ‘being in love’-is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it." If you're looking for encouragement in your marriage, check out these great resources: Revive Our Hearts Focus on the Family FamilyLife
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PodcastListen to devotionals shared at FBCSA MOPS on Kennan's Podbean Podcast channel here.
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KennanI'm a lover of words. Sometimes I edit, cook, craft, or sing. I'm also a wife and mom. Categories
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