Becoming One…

I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately.  I am wondering if I am doing a good job of it after 27 years.  What does it mean to become one?  When two people marry, does it mean you alter your personality and change who you are to get your spouse’s approval?  If the marriage affects you in that way, it is not of God or the couple is not allowing God to control their lives, as Christians should.   God made each of us unique and special with our own personalities for His plan.  He wants me to alter my SIN, not my personality.  He gave me that personality for His purposes, or He would have made us all the same.  He didn’t make us all the same on purpose.  Besides that, one of me is challenging enough not to have duplicates.  The word of God teaches us in 1 Peter 1:22 that, “We should love one another with a pure heart fervently.  I’m asking myself two things about that verse… pure heart and fervently?  What exactly does that mean?  Do I have a pure heart and am I fervent in my love?  How do I love?  How has becoming one in our love and marriage affected and impacted others?  I love my husband fervently, no question about it, but have I given him fervently enough of the time?  How has our love helped or hurt our families? Is our love the biblical model God left for us in His word?  These questions need answers even after 27 years of marriage.   In 1 Corinthians 13 we learn that Love is patient, love is kind, and envies no one.  Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude.  Love is never selfish and never quick to take offense.  Love keeps no score of wrongs, does not gloat over another’s sins, but delights in truth.  There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.  There are three things that last forever; faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. It is no accident we are instructed on HOW to love and told that doing so is the greatest in importance of all. There is also nothing more painful than having love and losing it.

In this book of the bible, Paul’s letter was written to the church of Corinth to instruct Christians on the way they should conduct themselves, especially in HOW they love.  It is timeless in its wisdom.  So it seems a logical place for me to search for answers about how I’m conducting myself in the LOVE department.  Did you know that Paul was filled with heartache when he wrote it?  He was suffering tremendous grief over the behavior of the people he loved so much.  Out of his heart of brokenness, he cried out for his loved ones to grasp what the Holy Spirit was stirring in him for their benefit. Do you think Paul’s message still applies today?  Do you think he cries out for us to “get it,” like he did for the people he loved in the Corinth Church almost two thousand years ago?  I do, or God would not have left that particular Corinthians book as a guide for all of us, in the art of loving others.  There is so much in this book about HOW to love others.  When I read it I felt like the Kindergartner who looks at the educational road of learning clear through to college graduation.  He knows he has so much to grasp, it seems endless, like school is forever.  Maybe a better way to say it is that I am endlessly ignorant of all I want, and need to know from God’s vast wisdom, about HOW He wants me to conduct my life in love. Time is short. Robert Frost said, “I have miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.” I need to be on the path.  The sooner I grasp the infiniteness of HOW to love others, the better.  I’m just a rookie.

We all love I think, but do we all know HOW to love biblically. It’s still a learning curve for me.  My husband says being married to me is a lot like fishing.  Stop laughing.  He casts the line out there, hooks one (he being the fisherman) and the fish goes for it and just runs with it (me being the fish – of course).  You can almost hear the line “whirring” as I say it can’t you?  Feel the breeze?  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz across the water as the fish races full speed ahead on that line with the zeal of the chase, and the freedom to fly.  I can relate to that fish and I love the sensation of the freedom run.  But then the fisherman ever so gently in all of his wisdom, as the fish and line get too far out there for their own good, steadfastly reels that fish back in so the line does not snap.  The fish may not always like that hook in its mouth, but it knows it is very secure on the end of that line.  Yep, that’s us.  I’m out there often, and he is reeling frequently.  God gave me just the right man.  He’s awesome.  He puts on those thigh high waders due to all he has to live through with me, in my life’s work.  But his casting ability is superb!  He deserves fervently.  I need to measure up.  And most importantly, our love for each other needs to be inclusive not exclusive.  We need to model how God first loved us accepting us where we were at, in all our sin and without judgment, yet giving us an invitation to join Him in pursuit of all that is good and worthy in this life.  We need to fervently serve our God and each other with a pure heart.  That can only happen through our submission to Him and to others, even when we struggle to understand it.  We have to want the other person’s needs to be met more than we want our own needs to be met.  We have to ACT on LOVE.  We have to show them we love them through the actions of a pure heart, as Christ did fervently.  There in lies the test of true pure hearted fervent love. And most importantly, that love is to be for our mate, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our families, our fellow believers in Christ and those unknown to Christ as yet.  From hours in this study of love, I finally realized 27 years after I should have, that being one means being one with Christ as a couple selfless in our love for each other, and for our families, our friends, and for all mankind.  We have to WANT to meet the needs of others in our lives more than we want to meet our own.  Christ gives us a free will to decide whether to love like that or not.  It also does not mean we are always called to sacrifice and do so; we are just always called to WANT to do so.  It is a matter of the heart which becomes evident by our actions.  God gives us the opportunity to LOVE others the right way, wanting what is best for them first.  By “getting it” we learn that being one is learning HOW to love with a pure and fervent heart like God loves us, connected, concerned, genuine, and selfless.  His way not ours…

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