Use Five biblical purposes
to give direction to your marriage.
By Rick Warren
I suppose you'd expect a man who's been married
30 years to a beautiful, intelligent woman would be able
to share with you the intimate secrets to having a
perfect marriage.
But I'm going to disappoint you! That's because my wife
and I don't have a perfect marriage. Kay is without a
doubt my best friend, and we have a wonderful
relationship-but as far as a perfect marriage, well,
there's no such thing.
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"For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united
to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
This is a profound mystery-but I am talking
about Christ and the church" (Ephesians
5:31-32). |
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What Kay and I do have is a marriage centered on Christ,
specifically focused on glorifying God. We remain
committed to each other because we remain committed to
Christ and his work within us.
No easy road
After three decades in ministry, I've noticed that it's
not unusual for couples to float through their first
year or two of marriage in a love-blinded bliss.
But, frankly, that didn't happen for Kay and me. Our
first two years together were the most difficult. In
fact, we were ready to throw in the towel. If we both
hadn't been committed to Jesus Christ and we both hadn't
agreed that divorce was not an option, we wouldn't have
stayed together. It was simply too difficult.
Kay even said that in those first few years of marriage,
she often wished that one of two things would happen:
either she'd be widowed, or God would change his mind
and say divorce was now okay!
Since then, we've met many couples who were convinced
their marital struggles meant there was no hope for
healing. We can say from experience that's not true;
there's always hope!
Part of the difficulty for Kay and me is that we were
virtual strangers when we got married, but we began
finding out things about each other immediately-like the
fact that apart from our love for God, we were about as
opposite in nature as two people could be.
We
viewed life from two different angles and argued over
just about everything. I remember Kay's father sat us
down the night before we were married and said, "There
are five areas where marriages usually have conflict:
money, sex, in-laws, children, and communication."
He
proved to be prophetic: Kay and I went five for five! We
fought over every single one of those items.
Not only did we disagree over those things, we couldn't
even agree about how to disagree! Kay is an intense
person who needs to talk. My preferred method of dealing
with problems was just to walk away. That was a volatile
combination!
The single factor that kept us married in those early
years was that we agreed on one thing: divorce would
never be an option for us. You can't leave the door open
even a little bit, or eventually one of you will try to
escape.
Because we knew we were in it for the long haul, we were
forced to accept each other's differences. What else
were we going to do?
Slowly, over time, God helped us not only to accept our
differences, but to appreciate them. Through the process
we learned that any successful marriage is built upon
the biblical truth that God designed each of us with
five purposes in mind: worship, fellowship,
discipleship, ministry, and missions.
In
other words, until you realize you were placed
here for God's purposes, then your life-and your
marriage-will be difficult, complicated, and exhausting.
But once you understand God's plan, your life-and
your marriage-take on new meaning.
And once you and your spouse both get this-when
both of you are living purpose-driven lives-then guess
what happens?
Your marriage becomes a purpose-driven marriage!
Balancing biblical purposes
Here are the five biblical purposes you should keep
balanced in your marriage:
1. You and your spouse were both planned for God's
pleasure. How would your marriage immediately change
if you understood deeply that your spouse was created
for God's pleasure? Or if your spouse understood deeply
that you were planned for God's pleasure?
A
man once asked Jesus, "What's the most important
commandment?" Jesus replied, "I can summarize the entire
Bible in two statements: Love God, and love other
people!" (Matthew 22:36-39).
That includes your spouse.
Life is about relationships, not achievements. First and
foremost, it's about developing a relationship with God
that will last forever-we call that worship. You also
worship God when you love and sacrifice for your spouse
(just read through Romans 12
with a view of what its applications would mean to your
marriage).
Any time you give pleasure to God, you're worshiping
him, and the Bible teaches that loving your spouse-the
mate God gave you for a lifetime-brings pleasure to him.
2. You and your spouse were formed for God's family.
God made an incredible promise about the gathering of
even just two believers: "For where two or three have
gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst"
(Matthew 18:20, nasb).
So
if both you and your spouse are believers, God is
already in your marriage working to transform the two of
you into a purpose-driven family unit! Isn't that
incredibly great news?
But Jesus wants us to love real people-not ideal
people-and your marriage is a lab for learning how to
love like Jesus loves.
It
seems funny now, but one conflict between Kay and me in
marriage was over the really trivial issue of soap! For
me, a hot steamy shower is a spiritual experience-right
up there with eating fresh cinnamon rolls. I also happen
to be a person who gets bored quickly, so I like
variety; I don't want to use the same kind of soap all
the time.
One day I told Kay we needed some different kinds of
soap. But I said it in a way that sounded as though our
marriage was a failure because we used the same kind of
soap all the time. Three or four months later at
Christmas, to "get back at me," she wrapped and placed
27 different bars of soap under the tree!
My
point is that within marriage, God has created an
opportunity for us to develop a true intimacy and
authenticity with another human being. God wants for you
and your spouse to go beyond the superficial chit-chat
that is, unfortunately, so common in many marriages.
To
go this deep requires genuine, heart-to-heart, gut-level
sharing, where you and your spouse get honest about who
you are and what's happening in your lives. This happens
when you both open up to each other and share your
hurts, reveal your feelings, confess your failures,
disclose your doubts, admit your fears, acknowledge your
weaknesses, and ask each other for help and prayer.
3. You and your spouse were both created to become
like Christ. As I mentioned, marriage is a
laboratory for developing God's love in you. He'll use
your spouse to build his values, attitudes, morals, and
character within you.
Once you understand this, a lot of what happens within
your marriage will begin to make more sense. When you
start to ask, "Why is this happening to me?" The answer
is-to make you more like Jesus!
In
fact, the Bible teaches that God builds certain
qualities within our lives by putting us in situations
that make it difficult to show these qualities. In other
words, for God to teach you real love, he'll put you
around some unlovely people. For God to teach you real
joy, he'll allow you to go through times of grief. To
learn inner peace and patience, he'll allow storms of
chaos and stressful situations in your life that test
your patience and teach you to trust him.
In his book Sacred Marriage,
our friend Gary Thomas makes the case that marriage was
not meant to make you happy; it was meant to make you
holy. That was an eye-opener for Kay and me. It made
such sense. If God's purpose for each of our lives is to
make us look more like Jesus, what better tool could he
use than the marriage relationship?
Who better for God to use to chisel you than the person
you live with seven days a week? When the difficult
times come, you just have to realize you're being worked
on! God is using each of you to shape the other person
more and more into the image of Jesus.
4. You and your spouse were both shaped for serving
God. The Bible says, "God has made us what we are.
In Christ Jesus, God has made us to do good works, which
God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing" (Ephesians
2:10, ncv).
We
serve God by serving others, and we serve God by serving
our spouse. God shapes us for service through a variety
of methods, including our spiritual gifts, our passions,
our abilities, our personality, and our experiences.
In
fact, God will use the difficulties in your marriage to
shape you into an effective minister to others. Who
could better help the parents of a Down syndrome child
than other parents with a Down syndrome child? Who could
better help somebody recover from the pain of an
addiction, a business failure, or a prodigal child than
a couple who has been through these things and emerged
with godly insights?
Could it be that the part of your marriage you regret or
resent most-that which you've wanted to hide or
forget-is the very thing God wants to use as your
ministry to help and encourage others sharing the same
struggle? God doesn't just use our strengths; he uses
our weaknesses, and even our failures!
5. You and your spouse were both made for a mission.
Your marriage not only involves ministry, it also
involves mission. Your ministry is to believers and your
mission is to non-believers-allowing God to use your
marriage as a means for telling others about his love.
This may take many forms, from being a witness in your
neighborhood to going overseas on mission trips
together. The fact is, if you want God's blessing on
your marriage, then you must care about what God cares
about most. What is that? He wants his lost children
found! He wants everyone to know him and his purposes
for their lives.
If
you want to see how much God cares about the people
around you, just look at the Cross. With outstretched
arms, Jesus says, "I love them this much!"
Marriage is a life-long process designed to teach you to
see the needs of another person as more important than
your own. It's a difficult transition because it's not
natural. It's not natural for me to look at life from
Kay's point of view, and it's not natural for her to
look at life from my point of view.
To
think this way requires an intentional shift that can be
made only through the power of God in your life. As you
and your spouse make that shift, your marriage will
become more and more purpose-driven-focused on the needs
of others and balancing the purposes of worship,
fellowship, discipleship, service, and missions.
The reward is greater than anything you could ever
imagine. I've often thought what would have happened-or
not happened-had Kay and I thrown in the towel many
years ago. There would be no Saddleback Church, no
purpose-driven ministry, and no "Purpose-Driven Life"!
God's plan for you and your spouse-for your marriage-is
wider and deeper than anything in your wildest, craziest
dreams. May our heavenly Father help you to catch this
vision as you chase it into the future.
Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback
Church in Southern California, is best-selling author of
The Purpose-Driven Life
(Zondervan).