THE GREATEST CHALLANGE IN THE WORLD-A call to Holiness more than Happiness!

We can use the challenges, joys, struggles, and celebrations of marriage to draw closer to God and to grow in Christian character. To spiritually benefit from marriage, we have to be honest. We have to look at our disappointments, own up to our ugly attitudes, and confront our selfishness. We also have to rid ourselves of the notion that the difficulties of marriage can be overcome if we simply pray harder or learn a few simple principles. Most of us have discovered that these "simple steps" work only on a superficial level. Why? Because there's a deeper question that needs to be addressed beyond how we can "improve" our marriage.
What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness, our comfort, and our desire to be infatuated and happy as if the world were a perfect place?

What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy???
What if we are to accept the "bitter juice" because out of it we may learn to draw the resources we need with which to make "the honey of a holy life"?

Romantic love has no elasticity to it. It can never be stretched; it simple shatters. Mature love, the kind demanded of a good marriage, must stretch, as the sinful human condition is such that all of us bear conflicting emotions. "Her hatred is real as her love is real" This is the reality of the human heart, the inevitability of two sinful people pledging to live together, with all their faults, for the rest of their lives.

A wedding calls us to our highest and best-in fact, to almost impossible-ideals. It's the way we want to live. But marriage reminds us of the daily reality of living as sinful human beings in a radically broken world. We aspire after love but far too often descend into hate.

Any mature, spiritually sensitive view of marriage must be built on the foundation of mature love rather than romanticism.

If you want to become more like Jesus, I can't imagine any better thing to do than to get married. Being married forces you to face character issues you'd never have to face otherwise.
Marriage is the preferred route to becoming more like HIM.
The real transforming work of marriage is the twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week commitment. This is the crucible that grinds and shapes us into the character of Jesus Christ.
Marriage calls us to an entirely new and selfless life. Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly begin to understand that the real purpose of marriage may not be happiness as much as it is holiness.
Not that God has anything against happiness, or that happiness and holiness are by nature mutually exclusive, but looking at marriage through the lens of holiness begins to put it into an entirely new perspective for me.

Taken from the book "Sacred Marriage" chapter one.

I will share more of this chapter in my next post. This book has opened my eyes to what God wants from my marriage. I just wish I had read it in the beginning of my marriage not 21 years later, but, better late than never :-) I was one that aspired after love and descended into hate.