What Does Trusting Christ For Our Marriage Really Mean?

I have felt led today to speak about the contentment in a godly home. A face book friend inspired a conversation on "Fighting in the Home" that spawned some thoughts on the subject. On his sight I recounted a conversation I had years ago with a woman who did not believe God wanted her to live in a marriage where she was encountering hardship with her husband. She was not unsafe in the relationship, but merely could not get along with him. He was a difficult man to be sure, but not physically abusive. She proclaimed over and over that the Lord would endorse her divorcing him to marry another man. My advice to her was to stop fighting with him and begin praying.

When I was younger I was married to an unsaved man. We fought over things that were sinful because I was saved and wanted to live a certain way that he did not. One day the Lord told me to stop fighting and just begin praying. I did that, and a short time later my husband became saved. The Lord was clearly saying to me "when you are ready to stop trying to change your husband, I will take over and do it." I learned a lesson then, and that was that the Lord very often can do it without me. We have a good marriage today, of course it has its ups and downs and with each new hurdle we grow a little more and a little closer to God and one another.

Getting back to this other woman, she argued with me and told me that I was insensitive and uncaring for her difficulty. I began to explain that I loved her and that I wanted the best for her, not her happiness but her holiness, that she would seek the Lord’s way rather than the easy way out.

I then explained that her statement “God would not want me to be unhappy” was not Biblical and definitely not Christ like. My answer to her was an answer with another question, “do you mean the God who would send His own Son to the cross to die a horrible death, for the sins of other people would not want you to go through any hardship.”

I see a problem in marriages today, those in them do not see them as mission fields, they see them as a safe place where they can enjoy their life, living it the way the want. To say that God would never want us to suffer flies in the face of missionary work. If God would not want us to suffer then what do we do with missionaries who have been burned at the stake, beheaded, beaten and hung, for their faith? God does not call us to an easy life but he calls us to a devoted and holy one. Devoted to God first and then our spouse in response to our love for Christ.

When we begin to see our homes as mission fields for those in them that are not saved and as godly instruction to those who are saved, then we begin to have a higher purpose in them than just a happy place to live. We can have joy and peace in our homes as long as one person loves God and will refuse to fight and admit when we have been wrong.

Each time we admit our own sin, we grow a little more and gain strength to forsake the sin that held us captive. Our helper is the Lord, why must we keep trying to do His job, we are a stubborn lot, and find it unthinkable to let go of our rights and solutions.

When we realize that God knows perfectly what is needed, we will want to seek Him for everything. He can prompt us to do what is right, why do we not believe it? Trusting Christ is not just for salvation that is just the beginning. We can trust Him for the answers to everything, all day long, all week long, all year long. When we walk in this kind of faith, His work will be evident and our growth significant.