Would you believe me if I told you that most people don’t really care about you or the problems you are going through? Maybe it's not that they don't care, but that everyone else has their own set of problems to deal with and this will nearly always trump their desire to care about yours.
For Christians, this is an obvious sin issue. In scripture, we are told to love God and love others. We are also repeatedly told to trust God, that all we need is God and that God will provide us with everything we need. The struggle we have then becomes how to trust and obey these commands while dealing with our daily realities. Realities that include the demands of the world (not sin here, just things we have to do), the daily desires of the flesh, and the daily barrage of opportunities to feel inadequate provided by our peers and social media. Christian or not we deal with these issues. We may label them differently (instead of worry you may call it stress, instead of sin you may call it evil) but the outcome is the same: fear, depression, and anger.
On that wonderful note enters Marriage. For many people, marriage seems like a safe haven, a way to fix at least some of these problems. After all, if you find the "right" person then your problems will evaporate.....right?
The problem with this idea is that the right person doesn't exist. We are all flawed, we are all broken. Look no further than the last argument you had to see this.
Instead of trying to understand and nurture, our first inclination is to win! At all costs. Even if we can restrain this desire it will always be there, trying to take over, telling us that our pride is on the line no matter what the conflict is. This is why marriage is so challenging and counter-cultural, because,
For a marriage to work you have to care about the other person more than yourself.
If we can understand this, then marriage can be seen as quite a remarkable opportunity in our sanctification. It works like this: the sin/pride in our lives creates a problem that faith is designed to eradicate, and in this process, marriage works as a catalyst to expose it. Let me explain. Our human desire is to satisfy ourselves, to provide ourselves with the most joy we can get. When we are joined with a person who has these same desires, the ensuing strife exposes the pride that might otherwise have stayed hidden in us. Once that pride is exposed, along comes the Gospel which eradicates this problem through humility and faith.
Humility with regard to life is admitting that we need to trust something outside of our selves to get by. This, of course, requires an object to put our trust in because being humble is useless unless we trust in something; otherwise, we end up being blown along with whatever the current culture fad is. But, when we give up the trust in ourselves and instead trust in God, humility becomes a powerful example pointing to the sufficiency of God in our lives. This is why Abraham's belief (trust) in God was credited to him as righteousness- because it pointed to God. In fact, in the words of Genesis, "it glorified God."
On a side note, from this we can see that trust, no matter what that trust is in, gives glory to what is trusted in (no wonder we are prideful).
But, more importantly for marriage, when we are trusting in something other than ourselves, that trust defines our humility! It also "defines" humility because to trust in something means we believe what the thing represents. When its a person it means we trust what they say. If I say "I trust in Jesus" and I'm not just paying lip service then that trust will govern my humility because I truly want to be in line with what God commands. However, if I don't really believe everything about the person that I say I am "trusting" in then I am not actually being humble, instead I'm keeping a little pride for myself, thinking I know better in this one area or circumstance. At the end to trust in God is to both believe ALL that he says and to humbly obey what he commands, including ALL that he commands about marriage.
In practice, this means that when God says that wives are to submit to their husbands, this requires trust and humility. This isn't a humility that makes the woman grovel at the feet of her husband, serving his every whim. Instead, it is a humility that submits to God first and then BECAUSE of the trust she has in God she listens to his command to submit to her husband's authority. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is hard, but the command is there regardless of most circumstances. Likewise, Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church...seems like the men get the better end of that deal right?.....but lets not stop there, Paul continues...and gave himself up for her in order to make her Holy. Well, that changes things. That means in a real marriage there is a mutual denial of self (humility), the wife denies her desire to rule, and the husband denies his desires to do what he pleases as the head. Instead, the wife submits as unto the Lord and the husband sacrifices his desires for the good and nurture of his wife.
Marriage can be a challenge because it so easily exposes our sinful desires. If you couple this with two people who won't change you get a divorce rate through the roof. But when you couple this exposure of sin with a humility that acknowledges that we can't do it and instead trusts in God we can see the beauty of the Gospel at work in both spouses, and that is truly a unique experience that only happens in marriage. It's not always easy, but marriage is a powerful example of God's love for us and a beautiful demonstration to our kids showing how we can humbly deny ourselves, trust God and grow in righteousness. So if your married and it's hard, dig into God's promises and pray, if your thinking of marriage, know that it's not always easy but God is using it to sanctify you and to bless you and your spouse in the process.
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