“Love is a Covenant,” Part 2
As we conclude the Love Dare series, I hope you took a moment after last week’s discussion to reflect on your wedding vow. Throughout these messages, we have repeatedly seen that on our own, we cannot love unconditionally. Along those same lines, we are also unable to keep covenants without divine help. God is the one who initiates covenants with His people because He is the only one who can fulfill the promises as well as forgive us when we fail to uphold our part of the agreement. Yet through His Spirit who resides within us, we are equipped to carry out our covenant roles with our spouse, no matter what challenges may arise.
Challenges do arise for each of us. When they do, we want to guard our marriage and protect each other, looking to God to help us see the best in each other, and trusting in God to guide us. We want to honor our spouse and not harden our hearts toward them. We want to grow in partnership rather than treat each other as opponents. The source of this kind of love, as we have seen throughout the series, is to rest in the love, grace, and mercy that God has for us, allowing His love to overflow from ourselves to our spouse. As we have often said, we also need others we can trust - friends who can pray for us, share their own stories, and help us process what we are going through. Counselors and pastors are important resources as well, especially when we feel stuck in a repeating cycle, when the challenge seems intense, or when it lasts a long time.
In the Art of Marriage series, one speaker addresses challenges in marriage, saying, “God will not protect us from what He will perfect us through.” Even when we don’t understand all the reasons for the difficulties we face, our role is to trust God, remain faithful to His plan for our lives, and continue honoring our marital covenant.
During a recent trip, I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. While the book is about our relationship with God, not about marriage, Lewis highlights the significance of choices. In the introduction, he comments on a common false belief that reality never offers us unavoidable ‘either-or’ choices. We reason that given enough skill, patience, and time, we can find compromise solutions on our own that avoid such choices. But Lewis describes life as a journey where we constantly come to forks in the road; where clear-cut choices must be made. I cite this because God gives us free will and life is about choices. We have demonstrated throughout the Love Dare series that genuine love is not a feeling — it is an action and a choice.
The time is now to renew your covenant of love in all sincerity. Love is too holy to trade in for a substitute and too powerful a bond to be broken without consequences. Seek God’s love, let it fill you up, and let it flow freely from you to your spouse. God gave you a special gift — a person that you vowed to love, honor, and cherish no matter what. So focus your love anew on your spouse. Your life together lies before you. Choose to take hold of it and never let go!