Abandon This One Thing to have a Strong Marriage

The short answer to the one thing you have to abandon to have a strong marriage is: expectations. For those of you who want more than the short answer, read on...

I recently read an article (read it here) that a friend posted on Facebook. It's a good article, but I want to take the author's concept deeper.

The article says unmet expectations are the biggest marriage killers. Yes, I agree that unmet expectations are certainly marriage killers, or at the very least, marriage damaging factors.

I want to look at how evangelical churches fuel this marriage killer, doing much more harm than good.

One thing churches do is isolate portions of Scripture to one gender. They say, "Men, love your wives!" and "Women, submit!" and they seem to think this is how marriage works. They are wrong, this is not how marriage works. Loving and submission are not gender-specific concepts. Scripture teaches mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21 and personal humility without gender specificity in Philippians 2:3.

One could argue that the Bible does tell husbands to love and it does tell wives to submit and they would be right. But what the Bible does not do is teach love and submission as gender-exclusive concepts. However, many churches do teach them as gender-exclusive concepts and some even teach them as roles. Love is not just for husbands and submission is not just for wives.  Scripture is filled with examples that showcase this idea, like when God told Abraham to obey the voice of his wife, Sara. (Genesis 21:12)

Teaching love and submission as gender-exclusive concepts creates expectations that will certainly never be met. In this way, the church fuels expectations and this leads to an array of different results, including frustration, abuse, disappointment, disillusionment, and divorce. .

Love and submission are not roles. I've heard many evangelical pastors teach that a man's role is to love his wife and a wife's role is to submit to her husband. This is wrong. Through this teaching, the church is again creating expectations that can and will never be met. I've had many well-meaning women send private messages to my inbox telling me how God is not going to bless me unless I remain in "His assigned role for me," which they think is submission.

What these poor women do not understand is, submission is not my role. My "role" is the exact same thing it is for every Christian, male or female, across the globe: Love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and love my neighbor as myself. That's my role and God and I are the only ones who get to decide what that looks like because He told me to work out my own salvation (work out what my salvation means and looks like in my life).

Love and submission are not roles and love and submission are not gender-exclusive. If you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, you will love your spouse and you will submit to your spouse. The expectations are put on the Lord, not your spouse.

Put your expectations on Jesus, alone. He has invited you to do so and He cannot let you down. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to look to "Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith..." and He has kept no secrets, but laid out exactly what you can expect. You can expect eternal (abundant) life, you can expect an-ever present comfort in the Holy Spirit, you can expect guidance, peace that passes all understanding, a lack of anxiety, answered prayers, strength for each day, eternal hope, and on and on the list could go.

You cannot have these expectations of a spouse. What expectations can you have? Hmmm, very few. To even put any expectations on a spouse is tricky. If you communicate a few, like a joint commitment to stay out of debt or a joint commitment to raise the kids in a certain way, then an expectation can be ok. Even expectations like this can lead to frustration because each person processes these things in a different way. A wife might express that she wants the children to be raised on a strict daily schedule to keep order, but a husband might interpret that very differently on days he's in charge of the kids. This leads to chaos and frustration on the wife's part and if she says, "We agreed to the schedule," the husband could justifiably say, "We did have a schedule!" and her expectations are dashed. It gets cumbersome to lay down expectations when definitions are also required. Where does that even stop?

I'll tell you what you can expect. You can expect that God will continue to love you for eternity, that God will continue to be an ever-present help in times of trouble, that God will continue to meet your every need, that God is everything He has claimed to be - and more.

Set your expectations very high - and put them all on Jesus.
Then enjoy a long and happy marriage.
~Tricia