Faith Forward with Jason McKnight: GPS for a Great Marriage
I’ve married 45 couples over the last two decades. It’s a joy to help a man and woman stand before God, family and friends, and step into a whole new life: oneness, family, covenant from God. You’d think, since God gave humans the gift of marriage, it would be filled with power, ease and endless delights. In reality, it is a LOT of hard work.
In the course of pre-marital coaching, I tell couples they now share three identities. To build their new marriage stronger, they need to live into them.
These three truths form the acronym GPS. “If you use this GPS system,” I tell them, “you will get farther along the good roads of a great marriage, and avoid all sorts of traffic, detours, and ditches.”
The first identity is Gift: “your spouse is God’s chosen GIFT for you.” Of all the potential mates in the world, a gracious God gave you to each other. God’s good hand of providence is behind all of our freely taken choices, so we can give thanks for the gifts he gives us.
Our spouse, surely, is the best of all gifts. At least in the ideal; which is why we married them in the first place. Our spouse is the one we want to spend our lives with, to build our homes with, to do adventure and rest, joy and mourning with, to have and raise kids with.
What do you do with a gift? You thank the Giver and then treat the gift to honor the Giver. Practice gratitude—tell God how thankful you are for your spouse; list the beautiful things, count the ways they enrich you. Thank Him even for the frustrating things—“you must be doing something in me through this!”
Then, honor the Giver by treating the gift well. When you give your kids a new car, and they trash it, you feel disrespected; because it is disrespectful. Same with your wife. Same with your husband. When you trash them, you are disrespecting God.
Elevate her in your attitude; build him up with your words. Every action to honor your spouse is pleasing to a Generous God who handpicked them for you. Your spouse is a GIFT.
The second identity is Pastor. When a couple gets married, they have the opportunity to be the most important pastor for their spouse (and kids). What do I mean?
Stick with me here. When you get married, you intertwine your lives. That means, your actions, attitudes and words affect your spouse more than anyone else. For good or ill. As a “pastor” you can grid: how can I be an upbuilding effect on my wife? How can I show my husband the grace and truth of Christ? Can we help each other grow to maturity? Can I be a voice of godly comfort, wisdom, discernment? What if we unpacked God’s Word together?
All these things are what a pastor is generally supposed to do. Take that on: be a force for God’s grace, Christ’s love and the Spirit’s energizing power. Let him work through you to help shape your spouse’s character towards his joy and maturity. Serve as a Gentle Shepherd who answers to the Good Shepherd. Your marriage will be stronger!
The third identity is not new at the wedding: We are each a Sinner. Hope I didn’t offend you. The fact is that two sinners stand at the altar and say “I Do”. If you grasp this you are well along the way to freedom.
“Sinner” simply means this: you are not right 100% the time. There are moments when you get it wrong, do it wrong, say it wrong. While you may not be egregiously evil (few are), you’re not perfectly good. Francis Spufford gives a street level definition of what sin is: “the human propensity to mess things up.”
Now, if you accept that idea—that I do often make messes, and cannot stop it—then you are primed for the only way out of that mess: forgiveness.
God gave us one single pathway out of this cycle of harm, injustice, impurity, ugliness. Whether you are the perpetrator or the victim of any given “sin”, the way out is not revenge, retribution, compensation, avoiding, ignoring or pretending it didn’t happen. The only way out of sin’s clutches is forgiveness. For the wronged person to say, “I will not exact revenge; I’ll absorb the loss and won’t hold it against you. I forgive you.” And for the one in the wrong to say, “I’m so sorry, that was wrong. Will you please forgive me. I know I don’t deserve it.”
This simple heartfelt transaction is forgiveness. It’s the only way to move past actual wrongs. Score-keeping and score-settling is death to a marriage.
Of course, your relationship has been strained, and now you will get to work at reconciliation. But you cannot hope to be reconciled until you address the objective wrong that caused the rupture.
The act of forgiveness is also God’s gift to sinners—it’s his posture toward any human who seeks him. And it’s his most accessible tool for our relational flourishing. Humbly recognizing that “I, too, am a sinner” changes everything in life, because it opens us up to a life and home filled with forgiveness.
You married God’s Gift to you. You are the deepest Pastor to them. You’re both Sinners in need of more grace than you think. This GPS of identity-markers will help flood your home with joy, humility, gratitude, peace, and hope. What’s the downside?
Neuse News is a locally-owned small business startup in downtown Kinston. Our goal is to provide free, hyper-local news to Lenoir, Greene and Jones counties. The kind of news our grandparents read in a format fit for today's times.
We provide this by having supportive advertisers and we encourage you to click on their ads, shop with them, and eat with them. Every bit of financial support is important to help us sustain free, hyper-local news.
Please consider supporting Neuse News with as little as $5 one-time or via a monthly option. Every little bit helps us, help you.
