Your Marriage Masterpiece by Al Janssen

Author:Al Janssen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Marriage;REL012050
ISBN: 9781441230478
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

How to Have a Good Fight

It occurs to me as I review passage after passage of God’s challenges to His beloved that maybe His anger shows us when and how to fight within a marriage. First, God’s complaints are based on the covenant. It’s interesting that He held the people of Israel to a much higher standard than other nations. He had given Himself to them as their God, and they had agreed to be faithful to Him alone. Heaven forbid that God should ever go back on His word, but if He had, the people could have rightly called Him to account.

In fact, there is one situation where that happened. God was angry with His people after they built a golden calf to worship while God was giving Moses the law on Mount Sinai. God told Moses to get out of His way so He could destroy them. “Then,” He said, “I will make you into a great nation.”7 You’d think this was a golden opportunity for Moses. But Moses didn’t see it that way. He appealed to God: “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.’”8

Moses had every right to challenge God based on the covenant. Because of that appeal, God relented and did not follow through on His threat. God, likewise, had every right to challenge Israel’s unfaithfulness, and He did so based on the fact that they were married.

A friend of mine, Pete*, struggled with an addiction to pornography. When his wife discovered the problem, she confronted him. At first he dismissed her accusations. “This is no big deal,” he said. “Why are you upset?”

“Because we’re married,” she calmly explained through her tears. “I love you. I’m here for you. You don’t need these other women.”

“But they’re just pictures!” he protested. “They mean nothing.”

“Then give them up,” his wife pleaded.

But my friend didn’t. Pete simply did a better job of hiding the evidence. Once I became aware of his struggle, I would occasionally ask him how he was doing, and every time he would say he had the problem under control. But gradually I saw him less and less frequently. Pete’s wife was right to be concerned, for over time her husband’s problems increased. He started calling 900 numbers and visiting strip clubs. When she discovered the evidence on credit card bills, they had a far greater confrontation. Despite her evidence, Pete refused to admit he had a problem and get help. We’ll come back to Pete in a minute.

My second observation is God’s astonishing patience. I find this hard to understand, for in our culture we have a quick-fix mentality. We don’t allow much time for a person to change. But God spent hundreds of years fighting for this marriage. He continually reached out to His beloved. “Come back to me!” He’d plead. Sometimes she did. Occasionally hard times were required—famine or conquest by enemies—to bring her to her senses.

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