The next couple of months are chock full of couple chaos for our family. Family friends have a son getting married and there are many wonderful celebrations happening over the next couple months. All the wedding fun has gotten me thinking quite seriously about marriage and relationships and love. I actually was reading some CS Lewis the other day and his take on marriage as it relates to Christianity. The combined effect has me thinking about marriage, Christianity, love and the many ways we humans mess this all up.

The trouble is love. Love is also the key. See, love – true – pure- perfect love can be found in one place. God. God’s love is absolute and perfect. It is this perfect love that we are all called to exude toward God and toward others. The irony is we rush forward into “love” that is seldom love at all. We confuse many feelings for love and then divvy love up into lots of categories. For example, “I love you, but I’m not ‘in love’ with you.” People actually say this as if it is a real thing. Certainly, love is not so easily divvied up into convenient bite sized pieces for human consumption.

This is a big human problem. Trying to finagle the things of God into some comfortable version that will work for our sinful nature. We don’t like doing things the hard or uncomfortable way. We don’t like denying ourselves anything. We don’t like working hard. We are the victims of two terrible vices pretty regularly. First is PRIDE and the second is DISOBEDIENCE. We wallow in pride and strive for disobedience. I’m not beating you up. Trust me, I too struggle in both departments. I say we meaning all of us with heartfelt understanding of the difficulties.

Here at Go Godly our mantra is “God First in All Things!” and each and every day I read that sign on the wall in my office lest I forget that God is my boss and I am NOT His. It sounds so crazy that anyone would think that they could boss God around, but we all fall victim to our pride. We all think we can do it – whatever it is – without God. That includes relationships. This may account for the rate of divorce, single parents, and abuse in relationships. Again – I have been in all three of these positions thanks to a very toxic first marriage and few me leading the charge relationships before I decided I was lousy at love. It took about 20 years for me to understand this. It took longer for me to understand God’s role in perfecting our love and I still am not the expert here. This is just my take on a struggle I personally went through.

The thing is God’s love is like God infinite, perfect, and the absolute definition of who He is. God is Love. Pay close attention to that. God is not about love. God loves everyone is another interesting take on this line. This single line in scripture (not even the entire line, mind you) that gets all twisted around. In fact, recently a dear sweet young cousin of mine said, “You cannot help who you love.” I agreed and told her that nowhere in scripture does it say that we are supposed to not love others. In fact, it is very clear about the fact that we 100% should love one another. However, sex is not love and that is the hinge on which God is pretty clear about things that tend to tick off those who want to do what they want to do in the name of love.

Now, to be clear, sin is sin is sin and not one person on this planet is without sin. Therefore, I am not here to disparage life choices or hurt feelings or be unkind or unloving in this matter. We all make choices in life and sometimes those choices do not align with scripture or God or righteous living. My point in all this has to do with everyone being kind of messed up about what love is and what love is not. To be also transparent, I have also had the not really love mostly sex relationships that were actually terrible emotionally damaging adventures. So, I do not wander into deep waters without almost drowning myself. We are supposed to love one another – even those walking through messy sinful non-belief.

So back to the scripture. God is love. It’s from 1 John 4:8 but God being love is not about God loving everyone, but a deeper discussion on what love looks like. Like most things, the human version of love is certainly not “God is love” quality. We are imperfect and finite. God is perfect and infinite. We will have trouble 100% of the time imagining perfect love from God’s fulfillment of it. Perfect love isn’t about loving despite sin. Perfect love is perfect and without anything beside unadulterated love. The thing is we don’t get it. We don’t understand it. How can we. We don’t even love ourselves. We might puff up with pride and overcompensation with our greatness at times, but the slightest ding and we shrivel into anxiety and fear. This scripture also mentions love being void of fear. It’s void of shame, not because there is not shameful behavior in our versions of love. Godly love is perfect, but ours is filled with pitfalls. God is love. He is pure perfect love.

There is A LOT going on in this scripture and it is easy to want to twist it up and make it about us. In fact, God does love us – quite a lot. Sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. God loved us and wanted to free us from our sins. To be free of sin means we are not actively participating in the sin anymore. Another frequently problematic area for us humans. We tend to hate where sin has led us. We hate what it has done to our lives. We hate how it has broken us and hurt us and destroyed things in our life that were good. We love God’s grace and that forgiveness through Christ. We also often love that sin and struggle, despite knowing full well where it will lead. Forgiveness really isn’t intended to be a rinse white as snow and repeat kind of activity. When we repent – truly from our heart and ask forgiveness, the intent in our heart should be to avoid sinning again.

Sin does not negate God’s love. Yet, scripture clearly tells us that our sin will separate us from God, because God cannot be in the presence of sin. So, although God created a way to free us from our human sinfulness through Jesus Christ, that love isn’t a get out of jail free for eternity card we can play day in and day out while doing whatever debauchery brings us joy. Before all you pastoral folk jump in here with side bars, God’s grace is forever. It isn’t a gift that can be returned. So in accepting it and transforming our lives through forgiveness and salvation in Christ it is ours – forever. However, choices have consequences always. The best I can do to in my very limited understanding of God – which is quite extensive yet completely limited due to my humanness, is to oversimplify the complexity of God. God’s love for us surpasses all understanding, so that love may not be quite what we interpret love to be as humans. God loved Adam and Eve, yet they disobeyed and were cast out of Eden, forever and sentenced to death. Yet, God clothed them and watched over them. He even tried to prevent Cain from giving into his sinfulness and ultimately killing his brother. Then, when Cain did what God knew he would, God did not kill him nor would he allow anyone else to kill him, but he too was outcast. So, God’s love is despite us and our own punishment to ourselves can be quite harsh, but God who is capable of anger and wrath – again not as we understand those though because God’s emotional quality isn’t truly emotional. God isn’t human – He is God and we try to humanize him to understand him, but it’s far more complicated and that won’t ever work. Yet we do persist on trying. I imagine that God is pleased by our pursuit of trying to understand what we cannot understand though, as long as we draw nearer to him in the fascination.

Back to John for a minute and relationships. This scripture is designed to instruct the Christians to whom John was writing on how to operate in a loving fashion in the sinful world without participating in it. In other words love the sinner, not the sins. It speaks of walking out love as Jesus did. Jesus had a wonderful way of exhibiting love through healing, teaching and even in pointing out sin so the person could be freed of the thing or things that had broken their faith and led them away from God. See, when we are away from God wallowing in sin – we actually are away from the only love that can change everything in our lives and for eternity. God is love. We are to aspire to that Godly love. A love that forgives. A love that heals the broken. A love that leads people to God. A love that doesn’t cause shame, fear, worry or require deceit. A love that is perfected through God.

Which is where we started. Love and marriage. Marriage is a union not just between two people, but between a man and a woman and God. Just like the good old days in Eden before the fall of man, all three are united in marriage. Which makes a marriage a whole lot more complicated, but also is the only way in which it is complete. See it is easy to cheat on a spouse. All you need is to be sneaky and a good liar. Human skills most acquire rather simply. However, if God is in the mix. Well, that complicates it quite a lot. Since, technically you’d be stepping out on God too. Plus, as my son learned at a very young age, I may not know what you are up to, but God doesn’t miss a trick and sees it all. And, I am not taking a shot at same sex marriage here either. I am telling you the reality of scriptural marriage. Can you have a “successful” long term relationship that is legally defined as marriage without God in it? I’m sure there are many examples of loving relationships outside of scriptural tennants. But, as the title of this company implies and our tag line reminds, we are aligned to scripture and put God first, and as such we will always give you what the scripture says and take that to be the path we are all meant to walk. God gave us each free will and not all will choose as we do, but we are always hopeful, that you too will find the value and goodness in a Godly path. It isn’t always easy but it is always profoundly rewarding.

When the love of God is in a marriage, it purifies things in ways we may struggle to truly understand. The reality is that in most religious ceremonies the words we recite in the vows clearly do show you exactly how a marriage with God in the center looks. “Do you promise to love?” Truly, love as God loves you with all your heart. Loving God first at the center of your marriage and your family second as a gift of love given to you by God to treasure. “Do you promise honor?” Honor is a big thing. Treating your spouse with honor is putting them above your own needs. Being respectful and kind. Measuring your temperament and behavior toward them. When you honor God would you act the way you do toward your spouse? If not, then you may need to look at working on the honor part. “Do you promise to obey?” This is the women’s version of the vow and the one that women since as long as I remember have been annoyed about, but should we be? We are supposed to in this God centered marriage treat our spouses as the head of our household because they are supposed to be the leader and support system and God chosen person in our life to head up our family. God is our head, and our spouse is the person who should be assuring God remains at the head and we through our obedience are obedient to God and supportive of our husbands in their role. Obedience really isn’t a dirty word here. Obedience to God should be something both husband and wife work on together throughout marriage. This doesn’t mean wives are husbands whipping posts, subservients or servants who are to wash, clean and fetch like dogs. Husbands who have missed this should refer back to the “love” part and pay close attention to the last part of your own vow. “Do you promise to cherish?” Cherishing a person is something so profoundly special and certainly any husband who embraces cherishing their wife will never one day worry about her “obedience”. Cherishing your spouse isn’t about showering gifts, although that is nice if you can do that for the girl who likes flowers and things. It is about aligning your spouse with the way you cherish anything God given. She is God’s chosen for your family. She is a precious and beautiful gift from God, like your children will be should you be blessed with them. Cherishing her and showing her appreciation, adoration, and affection is so very important to the emotional growth and love in your relationship. Her role is supporting you. Your role is cherishing her in return for all she is to you and your family.

When all this focuses around God at the center, there is a Godly super strong glue that will withstand any storms the world throws at you. You will not run to a lawyer. You will run to God. You won’t argue over 50/50. You will both do 100% and assist and support each other for the good of your family and marriage. You won’t always be perfect, but you will forgive each other for mistakes as Christ forgives. You won’t try to tear each other down, but together build each other up. You know what else? The roles may vary in your marriage. The woman may be the strong person of faith with the better job who needs to act as head of the home while the husband builds up to become the leader God intends him to be. The thing is, when that happens or things are maybe not as God centered at the initial time of the marriage, it matters little. If you throw off your pride and make God the pillar within the marriage when you realize He needs to be, it will unite and change your relationship. You will see how God is love within your marriage in ways human love which is fragile and easily broken is not at all the same.

The month I initially wrote this was September. My husband and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. 25 years in which, while I didn’t even get the true meaning of all the above, actually was how it worked out thanks be to God. More on that journey in another blog – I’m sure this one was long enough.