How to Save Your Marriage
There’s a piece of reality which most people try to romanticize in order to veer away from: the reality that there is no such thing as a perfect person, let alone a perfect partner. Given that reality, what marriage actually does is to join two imperfect individuals to become one through the perfect love of Jesus Christ.
We, who are flawed and foolish beings, cannot love perfectly. Only Jesus can. This is why we, no matter what we do, cannot escape the occasional bumps we will face in our marriages. But what we can do in these situations is to forgive and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness saves marriages.
So, why forgive? The urgency of forgiveness is seen in God’s desire to engage Adam and Eve after they sinned. God, who saw Adam and Eve sin against Him, immediately made His way to the Garden to engage them and get them to come to the place of admitting their sin.
Nothing could be more treacherous than to turn away from the God who gave you life; a God who gave you nothing but the best of what He had. And Adam and Eve did just that. They stabbed Him in the back by siding with His enemy, the serpent.
Learning to Forgive
The best way to learn how to forgive is to first experience being forgiven. We cannot do something if we don’t even know what it is. It is when we receive forgiveness that we understand what it looks like. Going back to “The Fall” story, it was God’s immediate desire was to show Adam and Eve what forgiveness looks like.
But in order to be forgiven, they needed to acknowledge the offense and infraction they committed against God. If one does not own up to his/her errors then there is nothing to forgive. This is why last week’s point on humility is so vital.
It is only when we put ourselves in a vulnerable position of humility by acknowledging our faults and shortcomings that we allow others to forgive us. This also teaches us firsthand what forgiveness looks and feels like.
Creating the Atmosphere
To live in a home of forgiveness, one must create the atmosphere that promotes and espouses it. When we as a couple learn to live humbly by acknowledging our neglect, asking for forgiveness and freely forgiving one another, we create an atmosphere of forgiveness. The effect of this is that even our children will learn to forgive us and their siblings freely.
Let’s look at what happens when we do the opposite: when Adam and Eve insisted on pride by refusing to acknowledge their sin, they modeled a life of pride instead of humility; a life of cover-up instead of transparency.
The result of their actions was seen years later when their children came before the Lord. Abel gave an acceptable offering while Cain gave what God had previously cursed. But instead of humbly acknowledging his deficiencies, Cain reacted by not wanting to own up to his failures. (I wonder where he got that attitude from?) His non-admission was equivalent to his refusal to be forgiven. What’s there to forgive if you don’t acknowledge any wrongdoing?
The Door to Death
God was urgently teaching the first couple what forgiveness looked like so that their family would know, understand and live in an atmosphere of forgiveness. Unfortunately, their resistance to God’s way resulted in a son who did not know how to ask for forgiveness.
When forgiveness is taken away from the equation of our relationships, we open the door that leads to death. Cain, who never knew what forgiveness was, had no release from his guilt and shame and no way of rebooting his soul. That’s why he killed his own brother.
The Harsh Reality
People often say that God is harsh, not realizing that the first killing in the Bible was not done by Him but by man. Not being able to forgive others is the same as killing them in your mind. It’s murder because what you are actually doing is writing them off as insignificant and killing all possibilities of reentering into a relationship with that person.
And as I have said last week, this this happens quite often between us and our spouses if only because they are who we interface with regularly.
It is impossible to not make mistakes in our relationships, and just as impossible to fix them without forgiveness coming from both sides of the equation. So ask forgiveness because we are imperfect and forgive, just as we have once been forgiven.
Read related articles:
How to Kill your Marriage
Love Strained
The Love Fruit
The One Lesson That Changed my Christmas
Why We Keep Watching Love Stories
Love and a Warm Heart
Love is not a Verb
How to trust in Troubled Waters
The Truth about Bad Breath
The True North of Trust
The One Lesson That Changed My Marriage
How to Turn the One Lesson Into Reality
The Risk and Responsibility of Trust
The History of Trust
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