It’s Free Friday! Today is the day you let go of the things in your life that keep you down or hold you back. To celebrate, I’m giving away “Unglued: Making Wise Choices In The Midst of Raw Emotions” 6 session DVD by Lysa TerKeurst. Keep reading to find out how to enter.
A friend of mine, who has been married for almost fifteen years, was talking with me about love and marriage. She told me that several years ago her husband left her. Instead of moving on, she held onto her love for him and decided to win him back. She tried everything she could think of. Month after month passed and he wouldn’t break. He wanted to be free to do his own thing and told her he didn’t feel it anymore. Even when he dated other women, she hung on to her love for him. Four years went by before he realized that he would never find anyone to love him the way she did.
They started dating again and recommitted their marriage. They’ve been together several years since that separation and their marriage is stronger than ever. I asked her how because I couldn’t understand. Her answer was simple, yet difficult. She said, “I choose to love him. When he makes me mad, I tell him that I choose to love him anyway. When he leaves clothes on the floor instead of in the hamper, I choose to love him. When he forgets important dates, I choose to love him. When we get in heated discussions, I choose to love him. No matter what happens, it’s my choice to love him or to let the other things control my thoughts.”
She gets what a marriage relationship is all about. It’s not about feelings, because those go away. It’s not about looks, because those go away. It’s not about feeling trapped. It’s about making a daily choice to stay in love. It’s about making a choice to fight for the relationship you are in and fighting off the temptations that try to pull you out of it. It’s a choice to find new ways to keep the flame burning. It’s a choice to look beyond the things that drive you nuts and to focus on the qualities you love. It’s not easy to make those choices.
In fact, I tell people who are getting married that marriage is the hardest thing they will ever do in life. They will have to fight for that relationship every day for the rest of their life. They will have to set boundaries to protect their love. They will have to communicate when they don’t want to. They will have to force themselves to eat crow even when they think they’re right for the sake of the relationship. They will have to lose the mentality that they are two separate people and adopt the idea that they are one and a house divided cannot stand. They will have to choose daily to be in love with the same person day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Love is worth fighting for.
No marriage is perfect because it involves two imperfect people. It takes both of them freeing themselves of selfish motives and putting the other’s needs above their own. It takes one person carrying the heavy load while the other can’t or won’t. It takes understanding that marriage is not 50/50, it’s 100/100. Both parties have to give it their all for it to work. Marriage comes down to making the same decision day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Both parties have to choose to love the other more than they love themselves every day, not just on days where Hallmark tells them to. They have to put thought and effort into the relationship 365 days a year. Love is a choice.
If you would like to win the “Unglued” DVD by Lysa TerKeurst, all you have to do is go to my Facebook page here and “like” it. I will randomly pick one person tomorrow (February 15, 2014) who has liked my page. If you have already liked my page and enjoy reading these daily devotionals, you are already entered. Please invite your friends to like my page so they can receive encouragement from God’s Word too.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 