HANDMAIDENS OF THE LORD

Issue 142 Jul/Aug 2004
The night Lisa and I got engaged was the most emotionally intense I’ve ever known. That night, we had more hopes, plans, and dreams than we could count. Some of those dreams started to come true soon after we were married; others never saw the light of day. Many were buried under the reality of suburban living. I remember one night in particular.
We were barely making it financially as we raised our small children in a town home. We were about to enter into our Friday night ritual: laundry and a video from Blockbuster.
“What do you want to watch?�?I asked my wife.
“How about a nice romantic comedy?�?BR>I cringed. The last three movies we’d watched had been nice romantic comedies. If I had to watch another impossibly beautiful couple meet under improbable circumstances, fall in love, get in a fight, then spend the last 60 minutes falling in love again, I thought I’d die.
“I’m sorry,�?I said. “But I need to see at least one building blow up and three cars crash. If I can find something like that with a little romance too, I’ll get it.�?BR>Three steps out the door, I thought When did “God, change the world through us�?become “Should we watch Arnold Schwarzenegger or Julia Roberts?�?I didn’t remember that fork in the road, but somewhere we had taken it. Reality had set in: This was what our marriage had become.
That night, an honest look at my situation shook me awake. What was this thing called marriage? What did God really want to accomplish in our relationship?
These are important questions, and we can begin answering them by looking at what God has said He wants to accomplish in His marriage relationship with us. That’s right: The Bible uses marital metaphors to describe the story of God’s relationship with Israel and Jesus�?relationship with the church. Understanding these analogies is crucial, as they will help us construct the foundation upon which a truly Christian marriage is built.
Happy or Holy?
Many people assume that the primary purpose of marriage is to make us happy. They base the condition of their marriage on this question: “Am I happier today than I was yesterday?�?If their answer is yes, they feel satisfied. If the answer is no, they’re likely to feel disappointed or disillusioned, and they may reevaluate their commitment to the marriage.
When we look at how Scripture describes Jesus�?relationship to the church, however, it’s clear that His purposes are different. Paul writes,
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
—Eph. 5:25�?7 , emphasis mine
Paul gives several instructions to husbands in this passage. Perhaps the one that stands out the most to me, however, is his command “to make her holy.�?Though Paul is talking to husbands, I believe marriage offers an unparalleled context for both partners to help one another grow in holiness.
In no other relationship do we live in such intimate proximity to another human being who can see our faults and encourage our growth in righteousness. If ever there were a place where “iron sharpens iron,�?surely marriage is that place. In marriage, we grow as people who love sacrificially, who learn to forgive, and who point one another toward Christ in our words and actions.
Here’s an example from my own marriage. When air travel resumed after 9/11, my life got frustrating. Gone were the days when I could show up at our small airport 30 minutes before a flight. In fact, the airline I flew closed down all flights from my home in Bellingham, Washington. Now I have to drive 90 miles to the Seattle airport.
To wait in lines.
To be asked to take off my shoes and walk in my socks through the metal detector and occasionally unbuckle my belt.
To have a complete stranger open my suitcase and rifle through my underwear.
I grew irritable at this weekly harassment. I just wanted to get through the airport, catch my flight, and reach my destination.
Several months later, Lisa was traveling with me. She saw the brusque way I pushed through the airport, the lack of grace evident in my life when I muttered under my breath. She was appalled by my overall demeanor.
“Gary, would you just dial it back a bit? What’s the matter with you?�?BR>She was right. I had become a functional atheist when I traveled. My behavior was no different from those who didn’t know Christ. I was trying to survive and doing so with a critical spirit.
I’m so thankful for the mirror God has given me in my wife. We easily become blinded to our faults. But our spouses, who know us best, can lovingly point them out. Marriage, then, can be a place of continuing conformity to Christ’s character.
Covenant Love
God accomplishes this transformation of our character by inviting us into a covenant relationship. That relationship is marked by permanency and delight. Hosea 2:19 says, “I will betroth you to me forever�?(emphasis mine). There’s no wavering here, no “I’ll love you if you keep making me happy,�?or “I’ll stay with you as long as you behave.�?It’s an unconditional commitment to accept the other person. Our commitment to our mates, like God’s to His people, is absolute and permanent.
Another aspect of the covenant relationship between God and His people is His delight in us. Isaiah uses marital imagery to show how God delights and rejoices in His people:
The Lord will take delight in you�? As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.
—Is. 62:4�? , emphasis mine
We live in a world where most people are too busy or preoccupied to notice us. In contrast, God delights in us. We make His heart skip a beat. And God doesn’t delight in us because we’ve earned His love. Rather, His delight flows from His choice to bring us into a permanent covenant relationship with Him.
I believe the choice to make a permanent commitment in marriage opens the door to deepening our delight in each other over a lifetime. In the first intoxicating days of marriage, love grows naturally as we experience the beauty and mystery of our mates. Almost imperceptibly, however, these mysteries grow familiar—and our delight can seep away. Love is no longer automatic, but a choice we make—and keep making. Our covenant with our spouses is the catalyst for each decision to keep loving him or her.
Mark Twain tells a sobering tale about exploring the Mississippi River he loved so. After virtually memorizing the river’s bends, twists, and turns—and after navigating its waters with admiration—he was chagrined to find one day that the river had lost much of its poetry. The mystery of the mighty Miss had been replaced with boring predictability.
Every marriage goes through something similar. An enraptured love quiets down into predictable routine. Familiarity, as the saying goes, breeds contempt. And contempt is the enemy of delight. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even in the daily grind, marriage can prove fertile soil for growing in delight for one another.
Almost accidentally, my wife and I discovered that understanding one another’s lives better could rekindle our love and respect. When I became self-employed, we decided that I would work out of our home to save money. Surprisingly, working at home did wonders for our marriage. For the first time, I could see what it was like to spend an entire day being Lisa. I witnessed the cumulative, day-in-and-day-out responsibility of raising and teaching our kids in a home-schooling environment. Not to mention cleaning the house, planning meals, and preparing for her own Bible study.
On the other hand, my wife saw what it was like for me to sit in front of a computer all day. Some days I was tired. Some days I made phone calls I didn’t want to make. She saw my determination and discipline. She also had a front-row seat to witn ess the pressure of meeting deadlines and accepting assignments to generate our income.
Over time, we developed a profound appreciation for one another. Both of us now understand why it can be so hard to act like the perfect husband or wife: We’re not married in a carefree Garden of Eden. This new understanding has ushered in more empathy for Lisa as she sacrificially serves me and our family.
Is your delight in your spouse flagging? As a spiritual exercise, find out what your mate’s day is like. Draw out your spouse with questions: What’s the most difficult part of your day? When do you feel like giving up? What’s monotonous? What do you fear? Do an inventory of your spouse’s life. You might be amazed at how it stirs your heart.
The opportunity to cultivate love for one another, year in and year out, is one of the unique privileges of the marriage covenant—a covenant that models and reflects God’s reconciling love.
A Blaze of Glory
The Scriptures use marriage metaphors to paint a picture of God’s reconciling work in our lives. When we model our marriages on God’s faithful love, we, too, can display His redemptive power to others.
In Hosea, God compares Israel to an adulterous wife who has given herself to prostitution instead of faithfully loving Him (Hos. 1:2 , 2:2 , 4:10 ). Despite Israel’s unfaithfulness, God pursues her and promises to restore their relationship:
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her�? In that day,�?declares the Lord, “You will call me ‘my husband�? you will no longer call me ‘my master.�?…I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.�?BR>—Hos. 2:14 , 16 , 19�?0
In the same way, God calls us out of sin into right relationship with Him. He longs for us to experience the life that He alone can offer us. God reconciles us to Himself for the purpose of displaying His glory through us, His beloved. He promises to restore us, to make us whole and radiant again—and in a way that’s impossible to ignore.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will bestow. You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
—Is. 62:1�?
God promises to restore us and make us beautiful, to redeem us from our sin and to draw others to Him by displaying His glory in our lives. He accomplishes this through the reconciling work of Jesus: “God …reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation�?(2 Cor. 5:18 ). Our marriages offer a ready-made context for us to apply this truth. When we relate to our spouses the way God relates to us, we demonstrate His reconciling power to those who don’t know Him.
Everything we say and do should embody this ministry of reconciliation. A marriage marked by discord, animosity, or the threat of divorce fails to glorify God. But a marriage marked by forgiveness, determination to resolve conflict, and a growing sense of unity will attract those who see it.
Years ago, I had a young friend who grew up in the public housing projects outside Washington, D.C. He had never lived with his father. He seemed to take delight in the smallest things he did with us—such as our family’s apple-picking trips in the country. He saw how Lisa and I treated each other and the way we spent time with our children. Once he said, “You know, Gary, I used to want to be you. But now, if I had my choice, I think I’d want to be Graham [my son]—just to have a dad who was committed to me like that and to be in your family, with a mom and dad who love each other.�?BR>His comment opened the door to a great discussion about the fatherhood of God—how He calls us, loves us, and parents us. Our marriage demonstrated a powerful theological idea to that young man; he saw things he had never experienced personally, and his heart was opened to spiritual truth because of them.
This perspective on marriage challenges our self-centered views of it as something that exists primarily for our happiness. If our marriage is only about being happy, we will maintain it as long as our earthly comforts, desires, and expectations are met. In the God-centered view, however, we’re challenged to preserve our marriages because they bring glory to God and point a sinful world to a reconciling Creator.
So rather than asking, “What will make me happy?�?I’m learning to ask, “What will glorify God and reflect His love?�?To do those things, I have to die to my desires. I have to crucify the narcissistic inclination to measure every action and decision by what is most appealing to me.
Determined Commitment
Here’s the great irony of my life: Once I saw how Scripture’s marriage analogies related to my relationship with Lisa, I grew happier than I’d ever been in our marriage. I was surprised by the joy that came from reordered priorities and renewed purpose.
All of us enter marriage with unfinished business and past hurts. That baggage can make marriage a weary journey at times. But instead of divorcing your spouse, consider divorcing your faulty views of marriage. Instead of trying to change your spouse, ask how your marriage can change you. Instead of wondering where all the dreams have gone, create new dreams of how your commitment to one another can point others to the most important message of all: a world reconciled to its Creator.
I am determined to keep my marriage together—not because doing so will make me happier (though I believe it will); not because I want my kids to have a secure home (though I certainly want that for them); not because it would tear me up to see my wife have to “start over�?(though it would). No, the first reason I keep my marriage together is because doing so reflects God’s redeeming love.
If my life is based on proclaiming that message to the world, I don’t want to undermine it in my most important relationship. God’s love for Israel and Christ’s love for the church show us how our marriages can be transforming relationships of delight and reconciliation.

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