I Choose You (Making a Marriage Work)

 

My husband and I are celebrating 29 years of marriage today. We have been through many things over the years. We've cried together at injustice. We've clung to each other as we prayed for God to heal our daughter and protect her through brain surgery. We've laughed  through absurdities. And We've forgiven through hurt and betrayal. Ultimately, we don't just agree to stay together. We choose to stay together. I think of the show, The Bachelor. Of all the options available, the bachelor chooses one woman to begin a commitment. Of all the options available to us, we chose each other to begin a commitment. If you look at commitment in the Bible, commitment was an absolute, wholehearted dedication to obedience to God. It involved sacrifice, denying selfish desires, enduring hardship, and love through action. Luke 9:23 ESV And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Taking up a cross, for Jesus, meant complete obedience to His Father. It meant that even though the pain or hurt was excruciating, Jesus laid down His own rights of happiness, pleasure, and comfort to embrace the pain that would bring our salvation from being eternally separated from God. It was wholehearted love and commitment that brought Him to complete surrender. What would happen in our relationships, not only with God but also with our spouses and family, if we lived that radical kind of wholehearted commitment and surrender? What would happen if our comfort and pleasure was denied to give others precedence? Jesus did that for us. He chose us over ever self-fulfilling option. You were His choice over everything! Now, will He be your choice over everything available? In extension through that choice, will you choose others over your comfort, pleasure, or need to be right? Will you take up the cross of denial to self every single day? This doesn't always mean living as a martyr, although for some it may. It means putting our love of God and others above ourselves. That means whatever God says, we obey above all options available to us. What was the most important commandment? Matthew 22:37-39 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This brings me back to making a marriage work. It is making a choice every day to put my rights aside and love my husband as myself. It isn't always perfect, but it is a process. So after 29 years, I still choose him.

Have a great week high-heeled warriors!