Reason to Continue

On my heart and in my prayers today are several couples very dear to me who are struggling in their marriages.

Sometimes it’s so miserable, so difficult, that you wonder why on earth you should continue. Sometimes we wonder why our spouse just won’t change, just won’t get it — and we throw up our hands in angry surrender.

Hopefully as an encouragement, I’d like to simply share today this excerpt from the marriage book my husband and I are reading together, What Did You Expect by Paul Tripp:

Where will you find the reasons to continue working on your marriage in those disappointing moments when those reasons are most needed? Well, you won’t find them in your spouse. He or she shares your condition; your spouse is still a flawed person in need of God’s transforming grace. You won’t find them in the ease of your circumstances. You still live in a world that is groaning and broken. You won’t find them in surface strategies and techniques; your struggles are deeper than that. You will only find your reasons to continue by looking up.

When your heart rests in the amazing wisdom of the choices of a powerful Creator, you have given yourself reason to continue. When your heart celebrates the myriad of careful choices that were made to bring your stories together, you have given yourself reason to continue. When your heart is filled with gratitude for the amazing grace that you both have been and are being given, you have given yourself reason to continue. You are not alone. Your creating, ruling, transforming Lord is still with you. He has brought your stories together and placed them smack-dab in the middle of His redemptive story. As long as He is Creator, as long as He is Sovereign, and as long as He is Savior, you have reason to get up the morning and love one another, even though you aren’t yet what he created you to be [fully sanctified].

Friends, you are loved. You are lifted in prayer.

Love the Lord your God, and find reason to continue.