It’s What You Do with It

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt.”

Jeremiah 31:3–4 NASB

When German-speaking Mennonites began migrating to the Central American nation of Belize in the 1950s, Belizean officials were a bit wary. It had been barely a decade since World War II, and though the Mennonites didn’t look, act, or talk like Nazis, they spoke German and so, despite the fact they had been living in Mexico since the 1920s, they were suspect. What to do?

The Mennonites wanted nothing more than to be free to practice their religion, teach their children in their own schools in their own language, be exempt from military service (they were pacifists), and set up their own farming community. In the end, the Belize government permitted them to immigrate but gave them the most unproductive land in the country, the property no one else wanted.

It was a brilliant solution, though perhaps not in the way the Belizean officials anticipated. By applying their committed faith and work ethic, the Mennonites eventually made their part of Belize not just productive and fruitful but, indeed, the most fruitful and productive region of the entire country. Today, the Belizean Mennonites produce a large portion of the country’s agricultural output—including 85 percent of all poultry and dairy products—from land that a hundred years ago nobody else wanted!

“You know as soon as you hit the Mennonite area,” a person from Belize once said to me. “You just know.”

It’s an inspiring tale. The Belizean Mennonites, applying their faith, took the worst land in the country to work with and made it the most productive.

That’s not a bad picture of what can be made of a marriage. It is possible, with faith and effort, to begin with a relationship that is unproductive and perhaps even unwanted and end up spiritually feeding others from its fruits. Maybe you feel like you have nothing left to give to your marriage. Perhaps it’s difficult to even imagine that your relationship could be satisfying, much less inspiring to others. You may feel, like many do, that your marriage is stuck in a rut that grows deeper by the day, or that you and your spouse lack the raw materials or “natural resources” of compatibility and intimacy skills to ever achieve anything even resembling happiness. Is it possible that a relationship like yours could become a source of profound joy, rich togetherness, and powerful witness?

You may have dreamed of an intimate, lifelong love but now wonder if you can make it to the end of this year without losing your mind to boredom, frustration, or animosity.

Or maybe you’re actually in a good place in your relationship, but you’re wondering if you’ve got what it takes to make it last. You’ve seen so many couples start out well and end miserably, and you don’t want that.

How do I know all this? I’ve met you! I’ve received countless emails, sat down with many people just like you, and faced plenty of challenging seasons in my own thirty-plus years of marriage. One thing three decades of marriage gives you (as well as being a pastor in the nation’s fourth largest city) is a realistic understanding of just how difficult marriage can be at times. Marriage has such amazing potential and can often be a rich, joyous, and life-giving relationship. But at times it can seem as though it’s sucking the very life out of you. And the bounce between these two extremes can happen faster than it takes an ice cream cone to melt in August.

The spiritual principle we can take from Belize and that gives us hope as we look forward to building a lifelong love is this: It’s not what you have; it’s what you do with it. When God becomes part of the equation, it’s not what we bring into our marriages, what we can learn, or what we can figure out on our own. It’s what we do with His empowering presence that lays the foundation for an ever deepening, rich intimacy and a beautiful, satisfying relationship.

The prophet Jeremiah proclaimed a bold promise from God to His people:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt.” (Jeremiah 31:3–4 nasb)

Time and time again, I have seen the dynamic in this passage manifested in my own marriage. (I realize it is poor scriptural interpretation to take a promise made to the children of Israel and arbitrarily apply it to marriage. I am not intending to proof-text here, but rather, to use biblical language to paint for you a picture.)

Time and time again, this passage has been proven to me in my marriage. Discouraged like you at times, recognizing that we had fallen into the same old rut, occasionally even wondering if perhaps we just weren’t even a good “match,” three big spiritual truths with a lot of little implications have given me a glimpse of a new way forward.

I want as much as anybody has ever wanted to experience a lifelong love. I don’t want a marriage that limps to the finish line; I desire to see renewed affection, new passion, and a deeper intimacy through the years.

Here’s what I have found and am continually finding—that for two sinners to grow in affection for each other even as they learn more about each other requires more than a few romantic gimmicks and marital tricks to pull it off. Experiencing a lifelong love requires that both husband and wife have:

1.   A “magnificent obsession” with God and His kingdom. This will give us the motivation to love each other in the face of repeated disappointment. This obsession enriches and gives meaning to our lives, which in turn enriches and gives meaning to our marriages. Profoundly so. This is about spiritual intimacy.

2.   A passion to fight normal marital drift by intentionally growing together. In a world that seems bent on pulling us apart, we must be thoughtful and purposeful in growing together. This is about relational intimacy.

3.   A new understanding of love as God defines it. Marriage is frustrating if we live with a different agenda than God’s. If we don’t learn and embrace what love is from God’s perspective, we will resent what God created marriage to celebrate and showcase. This is about devotional intimacy.

Think of these three elements—a magnificent obsession with God, a passionate pursuit of relational intimacy, and a new understanding of love—as three legs of a stool. Together, they provide a sturdy foundation to support a lifelong love. If you take away just one of these legs—for example, focusing on God and love but not intentionally growing together—the stool will be unbalanced and your relationship headed for a fall. Likewise, if you focus on love and an intimate union but ignore God, you will eventually lose your way and the relationship will come crashing down.

The point of this three-point approach is to acknowledge the triune God as the center, the model, and the empowering agent of our marriages. He sets the agenda for what we should desire, what we should strive for, and how we can get there. He even promises to make it happen: “I will build you and you will be rebuilt.” This makes the meaning of our marriages something much bigger and grander than we ever could have dreamed.

This approach will address virtually any season or condition of marriage: people who are frustrated with the person they married and who wonder how they can find fulfillment in the midst of it; those who believe they’ve made generally good choices but whose marriage hasn’t lived up to all they hoped it might be; or those who simply desire to take their marriage to new levels by bolstering it with a spiritual purpose and dynamic that has been lacking up till now.

Here’s the question we seek to answer: How can we remake our marriages to become fruitful relationships that breathe spiritual life, that create an intimate union, that enables us to grow together through the years, and that God can use to encourage others?

Note: this week’s post is the introduction to the newly revised and updated edition of A Lifelong Love: Discovering How Intimacy with God Breathes Passion Into Your Marriage. It lays out how we can push into new levels of spiritual, relational, and devotional intimacy to enhance the quality of our relationship.

Because I feel I have a real bond with my readers, I want to be honest here: if you have read the previous edition, I don’t think it’s worth your money to get the updated one. More than adding new information, I trimmed the book down, focused the message, and clarified the thoughts. However, if you have enjoyed Cherish or Sacred Marriage and haven’t gotten around to this one, now would be a good time to do just that.

I’m not a marriage therapist, so this book is not based on typical how-tos (which I value and appreciate; I’m just not qualified to offer them). It’s based on the spiritual qualities and realities that breathe life into our efforts and keep us motivated when the “how-tos” take a while to work.

The post It’s What You Do with It appeared first on Gary Thomas.