Lately I have been feeling really good about myself. Not the confident, self assured good but rather a prideful, put myself on a pedestal, think way to highly of myself kind of good.
It all goes back to the seven thousand people that get engaged and married on my facebook a day. Yes, yes, that may be a slight exaggeration but I just want the full extent of my exasperation to be understood.
Now before you stereotype me as one of the marriage hungry women realize that this little revelation didn't give me feelings of jealously, or fuel a fire of desperation to find a man and get married; quite the opposite actually. I got super prideful about the fact that being a suzy homemaker wasn't on my top 5 to do list, and somehow in my subconscious came to the conclusion that I had achieved some special level of contentment in my relationship with Christ. Whoo - how is that for prideful? And let's be real, pride is not attractive on anyone.
The Lord definitely gave me a spirit of independence, I love my freedom and I love not having to deal with the pressures of a relationship. But no matter how fulfilled I am in the love of Jesus I can't deny that the other part of me (the woman part that I like to ignore because she gets on my nerves) does truly desire a relationship and a godly marriage at some point. And it was like I felt the need to deny this part of myself, because somehow by admitting that desire meant I wasn't truly content.
That is a pretty skewed way of thinking.
The desire for a spouse, is a good and godly desire. It only becomes an issue when we let it get in the way of our present pursuit of Christ and let it morph into apprehension where we begin question if Jesus really knows what He’s doing. That never works out well. (been there, done that) Let's think about it this way, in the book of Matthew, Jesus straight up says that the love we have for our mothers, our fathers, our husbands, our wives, our friends...should pale in comparison to the love we have for Him. Not even pale really, He says it should look like hate. Which is intense, but it paints a picture of how seriously God takes our worship and adoration. Absolutely nothing else should take precedence over Him. Nothing. Yup, that means not even the desire for a relationship because even a desire can serve as an idol.
The bottom line is if you aren't completely in love with Jesus, and if every hole, scar, and insecurity isn't filled by Him, a marriage or relationship will do you no good.
Marriage is not an automatic problem fixer, we are not incomplete beings hoping to find completion in the perfect "soulmate" - we are whole beings made for God. True contentment is not conditional or based on circumstance, it comes from having Jesus. A relationship WILL fail if you place expectations on your man (woman) that only God can satisfy. They aren't your identity, Jesus is.
No comments:
Post a Comment