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Tuesday, June 12, 2012
A Grace-Full Marriage – Does Grace Mean Not Caring?
1:44 PM | Posted by
Scott |
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This is my fourth
post in this series on grace in marriage.
You can read it as a stand alone, but if you want the context, I encourage you to catch up on the whole series starting here.
Today I want
to tackle another misconception about grace in marriage. I’ll pose it in the
form of a question:
It’s a good
question and probably a common one for many who are seeking to grow in
grace. What do you do when your husband makes
a bad financial decision that genuinely impacts you negatively? Do you just shrug it off and hope for the
best? Are you supposed to pretend you don’t care when your wife consistently refuses
you sexually? What do you do with the
negative emotions that rise up when your spouse does that thing they know
grates on your nerves for the tenth time, seemingly on purpose? Do you just
stuff it down or suck it up and pretend it doesn’t matter to you?
Does showing grace to my spouse over their mistakes, shortcomings and annoyances mean that these things shouldn’t bother me??
My short
answer is no. Stuffing it down and sucking it up do not fit with my understanding
of grace.
A Few Reminders
It’s
important to keep in mind that grace, by definition, is undeserved. The very
fact that you are choosing the way of grace indicates your willingness to let
go of your justification for offense. That’s hard, but that’s grace.
Don’t fool
yourself into thinking you are showing grace simply by suffering in silence or by
hiding your ill feelings from your spouse.
True grace requires that you be willing to lay down your rights for the good
of your marriage. If you are just keeping quiet, eventually things are going to
boil over or explode in a flash of emotion.
Stuffing it down isn’t grace, and it doesn’t work in the long run.
So what do
you do when you are genuinely bothered by something your spouse does? How do you approach a matter in which you are
struggling to find the grace to forgive and forget?
For some things,
especially those that are merely an annoyance or inconvenience, my first
suggestion is to ask God to change your heart.
Do you recall
how in my “Grace
and the Big But” post I suggested that you “let grace work on you” as the
first important step in getting to a grace-full marriage? It’s true that as we more
fully understand the grace we have been shown by Jesus, we are more able to
give the same kind of grace to others, especially to our spouse. Remember that marriage is designed to reflect
our relationship with Jesus, and that includes the same kind of grace.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)
What Stands in the Way of Love?
Does God care
when we mess up? We know his grace is sufficient to cover all of our sins, past,
present and future. We know that when he
looks at us through the finished work of the cross, he sees us in
perfection. Jesus won for himself a pure
and spotless bride. Awesome and amazing truth!
So does God
care about our shortcomings, mistakes and ungodly habits?
The key to
understanding grace in marriage is to understand that the fiery and passionate
love of God does not wax and wane with our behavior. He is love. Period. It’s who he is. He cannot help it. By grace we are covered by that love.
But remember what
I said at the beginning of this series: the real purpose of grace is intimacy. So that’s God’s only agenda in response to our
mistakes. He wants to get rid of
everything in our lives that hinders love and intimacy with him. Everything. He
is a zealous and a jealous lover. He wants nothing to stand between us and him, and is relentlessly in pursuit of intimacy with us. He wants to have all of us.
So when you
are seeking the answer to the question of whether or not you should care about
something your spouse is doing, the real question is whether or not that thing
is a barrier to intimacy. Does it hinder your love relationship or is it just a personal
preference you’ve clung to selfishly.
The key to
understanding grace is that it should come freely and automatically, without any
conditions attached. It should be made clear to your spouse that their mistakes
and foibles don’t change how you feel about them. Let love and forgiveness be complete
and unconditional, then focus on whatever hinders intimacy, and make it clear
that your marriage relationship is the only motivation for seeking solutions to
these things.
Be a relentless pursuer of intimacy with your spouse.
Be a relentless pursuer of intimacy with your spouse.
The Role of the Holy Spirit
As I’ve said,
we aren’t as good at grace as God is. We get tangled up in our human emotions,
and that can make it hard to see clearly past the issue and into the true heart
of the matter. Our vision gets clouded and we can’t see who our spouse really is
in God’s eyes.
That’s why we
need the Holy Spirit. He guides us into all truth. So when you are faced with
something your spouse has done or continues to do that is hard for you to
accept, ask for the Holy Spirit to show you what is really going on. Is it simply a pet peeve that you need to let
go of? Is it something that is limiting
intimacy in your relationship (spiritual, emotional or physical)? Is it
motivated by selfishness or by love? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how God
sees your spouse and the situation.
You’ll be
shocked how things can become so much clearer when you step back from your emotions
and ask for heavenly insight.
Natural Consequences
Some mistakes
your spouse makes will result in natural negative consequences. Mistakes with money or that involve other
people certainly can. A car wreck, a bad
investment decision are minor examples.
More serious matters, like infidelity or drug use, also carry significant natural
consequences.
Regardless, the thing to
remember in working through the consequences, is still to stay focused
on what really matters: wholeness in your marriage, which necessitates
wholeness in the individuals. Focus on eliminating everything that hinders
love. Your relationship matters most above all else.
Getting Unstuck
I understand the
fear that by giving grace you’ll be stuck with your spouse’s bad behavior
forever. But the truth is that grace can actually be the very mechanism to get
you unstuck!
Grace, as a
component of unconditional love, is a compelling force.
Of course your
spouse still has free will to ignore the love and grace you show. It’s not a
guarantee, but grace is the most likely course to getting and keeping your marriage
strong and growing in love and intimacy.
Grace doesn’t mean you
don’t care. It just means you care about something different: intimacy.
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3 comments:
I am loving your series on grace in marriage. I am sure that you have helped plenty of people change the way they treat their spouses and their relationship. I do agree with you in what you said that holding back on the things that bother us and pretending that nothing is wrong only hinders us from being truly close with our spouses, and that we should be open to them about these things. And also to be more patient with them about things that are everyday annoyances like not refilling the coffee or taking out the garbage when they're supposed to. So thank you for this!
Scott, this is really good stuff. Grace means you care about something different-- love this! It is a game changer way of thinking. I think it is an excellent approach to parenting in Grace as well. It doesn't me we don't care about behavior, but it does mean that the focus of our care is not the behavior, but intimacy in relationship. Lots for me to process here. Thanks!
I enjoy reading these articles. To the 'thing' that challenges our marriage my husband responds 'it is what it is'. I have no choice but to place my confidence in the grace of God because I do believe it is sufficient for me.
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