Are you ready to give up on your marriage?
Perhaps you have reasons such as these: You are the only one trying to making it work. It takes too much effort. Nothing ever gets better. It is too painful.
What if you discovered that God’s gift of hope is greater than your pit of despair? What if you learned six powerful reasons for not giving up?
1. Just one person can make a huge difference in a marriage. Just one person—you!—can make enough difference in a marriage to change the entire dynamic of the relationship.
We tend to think that it takes two people working together to build a marriage. But is that true?
Imagine this: think of two people standing back-to-back in conflict. If both people are willing to turn around, then the couple will be face-to-face in good relationship again. However, what happens when one person in that back-to-back situation remains motionless while the other person walks around to face the one who did not move? The two people become face-to-face again, even though only one person moved.
If both people in a marriage will make changes, that is great. However, it takes only one spouse to make a dramatic difference. You can be the one!
2. We easily give away our worthless junk, but we guard our treasures. If we don’t realize that what we have is valuable, we may allow ourselves to be robbed of great riches. Your marriage is a treasure because your marriage contains two priceless people! Your spouse is worth loving, and your marriage is worth fighting for.
Your spiritual enemy knows that your marriage is extremely valuable, so he is relentless in trying to steal it from you. Don’t let him! He will urge you to let go of your marriage; he will tell you that your marriage is not worth all the effort that you are making. He is lying.
He is lying because he wants your marriage! He knows its great value. When Satan destroys a marriage, not only does he harm the husband and the wife, but he also devastates their children, damages other marriages, weakens society, and discredits the gospel.
Conversely, when you fight for your marriage, not only do you and your spouse benefit, but your children are powerfully blessed, the marriages around you are encouraged, society is strengthened, and the Kingdom of God advances. That is a lot to keep fighting for!
3. Sometimes we think that if our marriages aren’t perfect, or if our spouses are not honoring God, then we are not able to glorify God through our marriages. That is not true! Regardless of what your marriage looks like or what your spouse is doing, you are able to reveal God through your choices in your marriage.
When you keep your promises, even though others are not, you are a powerful reflection of God. When you are faithful to your covenant partner, you glorify God as the loyal Covenant Partner of His people. When you daily make the choice to love your spouse, you display the unfailing love of God.
Your spouse’s failures do not lessen your ability to glorify God. There is never a time in our marriages where we cannot reveal the unshakeable commitment of God to His covenant people.
If “we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13, NIV)
4. We often fear that other people are ruining our lives, but we know that as believers in Christ, this simply cannot happen. God says that His plans for us are good; unless we ourselves reject or resist the work of God in our lives, those good plans cannot thwarted.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11, NLT)
“I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2, HSCB)
When we are walking in yieldedness to the Spirit of God, then we have the amazing confidence that God is working through our suffering for our good and for His glory. Our God-ordained suffering actually shapes us for greater joy.
Instead of being afraid that we will be inwardly deformed by our difficulties, we find that our God-ordained suffering actually heals us and advances us. When we trust the goodness of God, instead of being controlled by fear, we rest in His perfect love for us. We allow God to build a core of strength and peace within us that we had never known before.
The reason we don’t give up on our difficult marriages is because we are convinced that God knows how to redeem our pain, how to make our spirits thrive, and how to create a glory that far outweighs our troubles.
“For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.” (2 Corinthians 4:17, HCSB)
5. It is very hard to keep working at a marriage when we don’t see anything happening. But God is working! The roots of our obedience must often grow deep and sturdy before we can see the plant and long before we can taste sweet fruit. Our sincere attempts to please God are always seen by Him, valued by Him, and rewarded by Him: He honors those who honor Him (1 Samuel 2:30).
Everything that we offer to Christ has spiritual force; it is used by God to advance His purposes. God uses our obedience like spiritual scaffolding in our marriages. Our willingness to cooperate with God in our marriages becomes the platform upon which God works.
We “dare not despise the day of small things” because God sees every act of obedience, however small, and pours His mighty power into it (Zechariah 4:10, NIV).
6. You will not regret trusting God. You will not regret obeying Him.
We struggle; we fret; we rack our brains trying to figure things out. But the reason we wrestle with God is that we do not know what He knows. We would do well to remember this: God knows something that we do not know. We can trust Him.
God keeps His promises; He is absolutely trustworthy. He loves us much more and far better than we love ourselves, and He has the power to pull it all off. His mighty arm has the strength to fulfill all that His wise mind plans for us and all that His loving heart desires for us.
Don’t give up! You can make a difference.
Don’t give up! Your marriage is worth fighting for.
Don’t give up! You honor God as you honor your marriage.
Don’t give up! Your God-ordained suffering will enrich you.
Don’t give up! God is working through your obedience.
Don’t give up! You will not regret trusting and obeying God.
