Journey to Surrender

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Grace-Full Marriage – Does Grace Mean Not Caring?

1:44 PM | Posted by Scott | Edit Post

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:

Does showing grace to my spouse over their mistakes, shortcomings and annoyances mean that these things shouldn’t bother me??

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?

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?

Seek a Heart Change

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.

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.

Labels: Differences, Difficulties, Grace, Intimacy, Prayer, Surrender | 3 comments

Saturday, June 9, 2012

A Grace-Full Marriage Part 3 – Beware the Toxic Mixture

9:34 AM | Posted by Scott | Edit Post

This is the third post in my series on grace in marriage. Because these build on each other, I encourage you to catch up on the other posts, Introduction and The Big But, before you read on.

Today I want to expand a bit more on grace and law and how those work in marriage.

Biblical Warning Bells

We have trouble apprehending the radical nature of the Gospel of grace. Apparently the early church did too. Much of Paul’s letter to the Galatians is dedicated to the grace vs. law debate. Perhaps this one verse sums it up best:

You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

Galatians 5:4

The law says we have to earn God’s love, acceptance, blessing and forgiveness based solely on what we do or don’t do. Grace says we have God’s love, acceptance, blessing and forgiveness regardless of what we do or don’t do. A right understanding of grace allows us to do for God out of a place of total being totally loved and accepted.

Between law and grace lies a dangerous middle ground, a toxic wasteland which says that even though we have God’s forgiveness, our standing with him is only as good as our human efforts to “live right.” Do you feel like you can’t go to church until you clean up your act? Are you hesitant to pray when haven’t had a quiet time in a week? Do you feel less “spiritual, because you haven’t read your Bible like you feel you should? Does shame over sin in your life cause you to run away from God instead of running to him for mercy and strength? Is your ability to engage with God in worship on Sunday affected by how “good” you were during week?

All of these are signs that you are stuck in the toxic wasteland between law and grace.

What’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that all of our law-based behaviors destroy intimacy with God. They focus us on our shortcomings instead of Jesus’ provision for them. They cause us to try to hide from God instead of embrace him. They leave us trapped by fear and shame. They keep us from living in the fullness and abundant blessing that Jesus died to give us.

The Law/ Grace Mix in Marriage

This toxic mixture shows up in marriage all the time with the same kind of harmful effects.

We all know that a law-based marriage is wrong. It’s the kind of legalistic relationship where one wrong move sends you to the proverbial doghouse. A law-filled marriage is full of harsh judgment, retribution and fear. Living in that kind of relationship is exhausting and fruitless.

But almost equally as bleak is a relationship where law and grace are mixed together; where we speak grace, but hold the law in our hearts; where we give grace to an extent but still base our actions on what our partner does or doesn’t do or how much they give to us.

For example, as you are doing an unusually kind deed for your husband, are you simply delighting in how much it will bless him or are you secretly thinking about the leverage it will give you in getting him to do the dishes later? A grace-filled perspective allows you to give without the expectation of getting something in return.

When your wife says something to you that feels disrespectful, do you immediately shoot her a comeback line or withdraw in frustration and hurt? Or do you stay engaged with her, gently bring it to her attention and seek to understand the why behind her comment? Grace assumes the best, forgives quickly and maintains your connection above all.

What is your first instinct when you do something stupid that is going to negatively impact your spouse, maybe even as result of directly going against his or her wishes? Do you want to hide it for fear of judgment and retribution? Or do you want to quickly go to them, repair the damage and make it right? If your marriage is grace-based, you know that the relationship matters more than being able to follow all the rules.

When you have been unable to stay connected for some reason, physical separation, busyness, disagreement or whatever, do you feel like you have to “earn” back your intimacy? Do you wait for the other to make the first move? Do you need things to “feel” better before you act on the intimacy that is yours by virtue of being one flesh?

When your partner does something out of character that hurts you, do you react with anger or fear or judgment? Or are you able to love them “as if?” Can you love them for who you know them to be despite their behavior? Do you lovingly work to understand the why behind their behavior? Are you willing to seek to make things right, even if your spouse doesn’t initiate the reconciliation?

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of the grace-law paradigm and the grace-full paradigm:

Law/Grace Mix Marriage		Grace-Full Marriage
I will only show love to you in the proportion you show love to me		I will show love to you freely, regardless of the love you show me in return
I will withhold intimacy from you until you do the things I expect		I desire intimacy with you more than I desire your perfection
We need a 50-50 relationship with everything split down the middle		A 100-100 relationship means we both give 100%. All I am is yours.
I love you because of what you do for me and what I get out of our relationship		I love you because of who you are and because we are one

Living a grace-full marriage 100% is neither easy nor natural. Our reactive, self-protective and selfish instincts will fight grace all the way. We aren’t going to be as good at grace as God is because we are fallible people, with flaws and wrong thinking that will try to get in the way of grace. Yet grace should be our goal.

I’m convinced that God’s intention for our marriages is that they be entirely grace-filled and that we should shift our thinking toward grace and away from the toxic mixture that is law and grace.

How does this resonate with you?

Next time: Does giving grace mean I don’t care?

Labels: Being One Flesh, Grace, Intimacy | 3 comments