ntbel interlude

So one of the reasons that marriage should not be entered into lightly is that many of us don't even know what it is
Marriage is a God thing and many are trying to do a God thing without the God factor which is a recipe for disaster
For example
Sex is a God thing
But when we remove the God factor you're left with awful things like unwanted pregnancies which typically lead to murd.abortions, kids growing up without both parents in the home, pornography, sex trafficking
You get the picture
Disaster
But back to marriage
One of the issues is we go into marriage with conditions
This person needs to make me happy or else
You know what's funny?
God himself is not able to make some of us happy so to expect that from your spouse is unfair to say the least
One of the actual purposes of marriage is sanctification
Which is a fancy Christian word for the refining process that sheds enough selfishness and bad habits to get you as close to looking like Jesus as possible
So this means that friction is inevitable
This means you should not get married if you're not ready to accept accountability when you're wrong or give a lot of grace and forgiveness when your spouse is in the hot seat
Husbands you have to be willing to love your spouse without conditions
Wives you must be willing to respect your spouse without conditions
You pull that off for long enough, not only will you tap into happiness
But even when happiness is out of the question you'll still have access to joy, peace
Plus you get the opportunity to watch God make a love story out of the horror movie that you're quite possibly experiencing right now
If you can sit through the discomfort long enough for God to prove that He is competent and reliable you might develop a habit of worrying less and trusting Him more