05/06/2021
Excellent article from Paul David Tripp....I'm breaking it into three separate posts. Here's part 1 of his
Three Reality Checks for Your Marriage
Wisdom Perspectives: what are the essential wisdom perspectives that Scripture gives that enable us to have realistic expectations for our marriage?
1. You Are Conducting Your Marriage in a Fallen World
Our marriages live in the middle of a world that does not function as God intended. Somehow, someway, your marriage is touched every day by the brokenness of our world. Maybe it simply has to do with the necessity of living with the low-grade hassles of a broken world, or maybe you are facing major issues that have altered the course of your life and your marriage.
But there is one thing for sure: you will not escape the environment in which God has chosen you to live. It is not an accident that you are conducting your marriage in this broken world.
It is not an accident that you have to deal with the things you do. None of this is fate, chance, or luck. It is all a part of God’s redemptive plan. Acts 17 says that He determines the exact place where you live and the exact length of your life. He knows where you live, and he is not surprised at what you are facing.
Even though you face things that make no sense to you, there is meaning and purpose to everything you face. I am persuaded that understanding your fallen world and God’s purpose for keeping you in it is foundational to building a marriage of unity, understanding, and love.
There is no better window on what we face in the here-and-now world in which we live than the descriptive words that the Bible uses: “grieved,” “trials,” and “tested” (1 Pet. 1:6–7).
Now, these words should cause you to pause. Of all the descriptive words that Peter has at his disposal to describe what God is doing in us through the environment in which we live, it is very significant that He uses these three words. Each is instructive and interpretive.
First, you will not escape the grief of life in the fallen world. That grief can be the momentary pain of a little disappointment or the long-term mourning of a significant moment of loss. The point is that, along the way, grief touches us all in little or significant ways.
Second, we all face trials. We will deal with things we would never have planned for ourselves or inserted into our schedules. We will grieve because we will face difficulty that we neither anticipated nor planned.
The final word brings the portrait of life in this fallen world together. The word tested does not mean tested like in an exam. No, it means “tempered” or “refined.”
With this word "tested" God tells you one of the most significant things you will ever understand about your marriage in the here and now. God decided to leave you in this fallen world to live, love, and work, because He intended to use the difficulties you face to do something in you that couldn’t be done any other way.
You see, most of us have a personal happiness paradigm. Now, it is not wrong to want to be happy, and it is not wrong to work toward marital happiness. God has given you the capacity for enjoyment and placed wonderful things around you to enjoy.
The problem is not that this is a wrong goal, but that it is way too small a goal. God is working on something deep, necessary, and eternal. If He was not working on this, He would not be faithful to His promises to you. God has a personal holiness paradigm.
Don’t be put off by the language here. The words mean that God is working through your daily circumstances to change you. In His love, He knows that you are not all that you were created to be. Even though it may be hard to admit, there is still sin inside you, and that sin gets in the way of what you are meant to be and designed to do.
And, by the way, that sin is the biggest obstacle of all to a marriage of unity, understanding, and love. God is using the difficulties of the here and now to transform you, that is, to rescue you from you.
And because He loves you, He will willingly interrupt or compromise your momentary happiness in order to accomplish one more step in the process of rescue and transformation, which He is unshakably committed to.
When you begin to get on God’s paradigm page, life not only makes sense (the things you face are not irrational troubles, but transforming tools) but immediately becomes more hopeful.
There is hope for you and your marriage because God is in the middle of your circumstances, and He is using them to mold you into what he created you to be. As He does this, you not only respond to life better, but you become a better person to live with, which results in a better marriage.
This does not mean that you will stop being grieved. In fact, Jesus wept when he walked the roads of our world. But this grief is not a dark tunnel that fate has sent your way. It is a wise tool in the hands of a loving God who knows how deep your need is and wants to give you gifts of grace that will last forever.
So, somehow, someway, this fallen world and what it contains will enter your door, but you do not have to be afraid. God is with you, and He is working so that these grieving things will result in good things in and through you.
(That's the end of Part 1, Part 2 coming tomorrow.)
