Welcome to 28 Days, 28 Ways: Investing in Your Marriage! All month long I’ll be sharing ideas and tips for investing in your marriage. You can find a list of all the posts here.
Our church is having a DNow {Disciple Now} for our youth group this weekend. As of last night at 9:00 our home was invaded by a herd {or maybe just eight … so hard to tell} of 8th and 9th grade girls. The goal of DNow is two-fold: to strengthen the discipleship of students and to build their relationships with each other. So, from 5 pm Friday until noon on Sunday these girls will be together nonstop.
I have to say, this is a great group of girls and I love having them all here. But let’s face it, teenage girls are a finicky breed. One minute all is well and the next, the herd has split into factions and no one can really give a good answer why.
The thing is, when you’re together for almost 48 hours, you only have two choices: be miserable or work through it.
There’s a lesson in there for all us married folk, you know? We’re going to have times of conflict in our marriages. It’s going to happen. But when it does, we also only have two choices: be miserable or work through it.
Sometimes there isn’t an easy answer to conflict. Sometimes there isn’t a compromise. And sometimes we don’t want to work through it. I get that. But there’s this verse {isn’t there always?} … it’s right before the infamous “Wives, submit … husbands love” section in Ephesians 5. Here’s what it says,
Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. {Ephesians 5:21}
Submitting to one another.
When conflict comes, what if we submit our desires, our wants, our preference, to one another? What happens then? What if we give up our need to be right? What if we willingly make the sacrifice {whether it’s big or small}?
Out of reverence for Christ.
When conflict comes, what if we remember our commitment isn’t just to the man who is driving us crazy, but also to Christ? What if we choose to listen and speak kindly? What happens then?
I’m pretty sure what happens then is our marriages become a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God {Romans 12:1}. I don’t know about you, but that’s the testimony I really want.
What are some of the ways you have learned to work through the conflict in your marriage?
Cheering you on,
TL
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