"Love Protects — A Different Perspective" (Part 1)
/Protecting our marriage is crucial because it does not exist in a vacuum; it exists within the battlefield of spiritual warfare. Marriages not only face external threats, but can also be undermined from within. Paul Tripp lists six fundamentals for a healthy Christian marriage, including “We will work to protect our marriage.” We recently studied the need to protect against harmful behaviors and catastrophic issues. Tripp focuses on a different perspective — how marriages can suffer from a culmination of little things that causes a couple to drift apart.
When trials confront a marriage, there are two response options. A couple can stand together to fight what threatens it, or they can stand apart and keep a record of what their spouse does to make the marriage difficult. The first choice leads to seeking God, sacrificing for each other, and knowing that love requires work. The second leads to escaping separately, looking out for themselves, and is done with the work of love.
Tripp contends that marriages often fail not because they were bad. Rather, it was a good marriage that reached the point where a couple felt they could relax. They quit watching, working and praying. They started coasting. This side of heaven, we can’t be sinners living with a sinner and coast. We need to accept the call to work on our marriage daily to make it what God intends it to be. We need to learn to live with our eyes and heart wide open.
Your marriage may be great, but it is not safe! Daily temptations are constant threats and things will go wrong if you believe you no longer have to work on your marriage. Here is what coasting may look like:
Visual lethargy. We don’t notice changes because at some point we stopped looking and paying attention.
Habit inconsistency. A good marriage is the result of good attitudes which results in practicing good habits. Falling into complacency leads to habit inconsistency until eventually, the marriage reaches a point of seemingly insurmountable problems.
Laziness. This is destructive to anything that needs to be maintained, including marriage. We simply lack the desire to do the necessary work.
Impatience. Every marriage is in the middle of a lifelong process of change. But in our impatience, we often repeat the same problems over and over rather than learn how to solve them.
Responding in Discouragement. There is a point in life where many couples quit responding in faith, hope, and love. Instead, they begin to respond with discouragement and fear. We tend not to make our best decisions when discouraged, and we usually regret decisions made out of fear.
Dining with the enemy. Doing any of the above invites Satan into a marriage to do his nasty work of deceit, division, and destruction. Remember, marriage is spiritual warfare!
God stands ready to help us protect our marriage against all threats, but we must be willingly to do the necessary work. We need to be committed to watch and pray no matter how good things are, respond in hope no matter how bad things seem, and remember that we are never alone!