Pastor Ponderings #170: Twenty-five

On this day, twenty-five years ago, I extracted an affirmative answer from the woman standing next to me when asked if she would be my wife. I have often wondered if she has regretted that positive reply. She insists that she doesn’t! Two and a half decades of pure marital bliss punctuated only by moments of even more monumental merriment!

People who tell you such things are storytellers at best. No two normally functioning human beings can sustain a long-term relationship without negotiating difficult seasons. Ours included. There are times we feel exceptionally close and other times too distant. Sometimes we feel both ways on the same day! Despite the shifting sands of our feelings, we have made a commitment to one another and to God which overrides the emotional roller-coaster of life.

Ephesians 5:33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

We decided early that divorce would not be a part of our household vocabulary. We not only hoped for a lasting marriage, we deliberately nurtured one. We still do. Ours remains the conviction that a man and a woman join in holy matrimony for life. All of life. Until life ends for one, maybe both. Until death parts the two. Where this conviction resides you either work out your differences or start casket shopping.

1 Corinthians 7:39 A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

One of the keys to any sustained marriage is a willingness to admit fault, exercise humility and walk in repentance. It is the same recipe for a successful walk with the Lord. Another key is to extend grace to your spouse in the form of forgiveness. Honestly believing your spouse has your best interest in mind and is not ill-willed toward you. There are spouses who struggle to view each other this way. There are some who manipulate the other’s responsibility to absolve themselves of their own. Christ is our example of being willing to lay down His life for His bride. For His unfaithful bride, the church. That is love.

Matthew 19:6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.

My wife and I have decided to make our marriage work. That means we have decided to extend grace and forgiveness to one another. We have had to exercise these things deliberately for the last quarter century. We are deciding the same for the next twenty-five.