Working as a team takes practice, and my husband and I have been working at it since the very beginning of our relationship.
We now look back on the trials of our relationship as refining, and we are stronger because of them. They forced us to practice moving forward together, as a team, time and time again. We handled life decisions considering the other. We made decisions about jobs we would take or pass up together. We figured out finances together. We were each other’s support when it did not exist. We were each other’s encouragement when it was coming from nowhere else. We were each other’s compass, pointing to Jesus when everything in and around us was telling a different story.
What I’ve learned is that when obstacles come, they are only hard to leap over when we begin thinking and acting as if it is us against each other, instead of us against the issue at hand. That is when things start to go south.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. – Mark 3:25
That is what the Word says, and we can trust that it’s authority and truth is real. What we’ve built starts to slowly disintegrate when there is a division between us. In our marriages, we are called to function as one body. When we begin to lose sight of that, everything else begins to crumble.
The enemy has a grand plan, and disunity is the blueprint. He wants to get us to place our own desires, being right, or getting our own point across before the union. To make butt our heads together and to pit us against each other. He did it in the garden and still does it today! Instead of bearing the other’s burden and taking the equal blame, Adam blamed Eve and Eve made excuses for her actions. And this scheme still works against us time and time again.
The enemy knows that when the team is unified, there is very little we cannot accomplish. When your partner has your back and is holding your hand throughout the process, taking your failures on as their own and championing your accomplishments as if they are their own, something incredible happens.
When one flesh which God has joined together functions in a unified way, seeking the Lord first together in everything, there is no call of His they cannot fulfill.
The choice is ours. We can either fall into the enemy’s tactic and our own fleshly desire to put ourselves first or choose instead to put our union and our partner before ourselves as we are called to do. The result will be amazing things for the kingdom.
