However, one significant is my new marriage convent with my lovely bride, Beth. It has been quite a journey so far. I have realized that nothing can really prepare you for the way God refines you through marriage. I have been able to see with my own eyes the greatest heights of God's mercy, patience, and grace with me, as well as the depths of my own sinfulness that I never knew even existed.
I have been so thankful to see how the Lord has used Beth to teach me how to look past myself and die to myself in the decisions that I make and the desires that I have. Naturally, men in their fallen state tend to be incredibly selfish, materialistic, and--in America--stuck in a boyish state throughout their adult life. The rewards of Biblical manhood are indescribable, which I have barely got to the foothills of so far, but one thing I know for sure is that dying to self is often painful, frustrating, and often scary because before the Spirit of God in me can kill a fleshly part of me, it is brought to the surface and I must stare down my own sinfulness. My inner man can be seen clearly in the mirror, and he is very ugly. All that to say, the glorious truth I have been constantly reminded of is "surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed," as well as "He who seeks to save his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."
I must not make decisions to satisfy my own selfish desires anymore. There is another person who I affect with the decisions I make now. I must learn to show the same unconditional love that my Savior has shown me. "Husbands love your wives like Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." I desire so much that the Lord give me the grace to just be a man and love Beth the way I should. I praise God that His grace is greater than my sin, and He is doing the work to make Beth and I more like Him. We must just put ourselves at His disposal and say, "Here we are, Lord."
Right now we are working on getting a consistent time of prayer, worship, and study of the Word together. This is certainly a more elementary thing, but it is of the greatest importance over all else for a marriage to be Christ-exalting and therefore full of peace and joy. It's so easy for our materialism to get in the way of such important things. Our culture is so full of it all over the place. Our love of it is destroying marriages, creating derelict parents, and creating border-lined professors of faith in Christ who treat Jesus as a flavor of the week as long as their checkbooks balance and their car payments get in on time.
I pray to God that we would not be that couple. God's grace is not cheap. It demands all, yet it offers quadruple more than what it demands. Jesus offers us two things--one of which is not a car, house, or happy life--a cross to die on and resulting everlasting life searching the endless treasures of the knowledge of God. I pray the Lord would rip us from the world and make our hearts want more than cheap toys.
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