More about marriage

Weddings are on my mind a lot currently. This is, of course, partly because my family is busy with weddings-- my eldest son was married in December, and will be followed by my youngest next September, Lord willing. Additionally, many of their friends are getting married. It seems we barely got over the graduation rush, when we couldn't physically get to all the celebrations of graduates, and now we are in a wedding rush as our children, and friends' children, and children's friends are, many of them, marrying. And with weddings come showers, and with showers come devotionals. Below is another wedding devotional I gave: this one on the topic of faithfulness. May God make us faithful to Himself, and to our spouses!

Faithfulness

I thought we would open up our time with God’s Word to us in Proverbs Chapter 3, verse 3. This short verse is in a familiar passage that many of us have known since childhood, or have taught to our children as they have grown.
³Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;

bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.

This verse starts with a command: let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. So let’s look briefly at this command with special emphasis on how we can be faithful and steadfast to our husbands as a reflection of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to us.

This Scripture isn’t just talking about some random idea of steadfast love or faithfulness. These refer to God’s attributes: His character of steadfast love and His faithfulness.

His steadfast love is His deciding to place His affection on something and causing His affection to remain for eternity. It is His mercy to us in promising to love us, though we don’t deserve it. There will likely be times, as hard as it is to imagine before we marry, when we will feel like our husband doesn’t deserve our love and service. In those times, you must remember God’s love to you, and your lack of deserving it, and then you can make the decision to love that man for God’s sake, and for the sake of God’s steadfast love for you.

And God’s faithfulness reflects the changeableness of that steadfast love. It is God’s truthful performing of what He has promised. God’s faithfulness doesn’t have to do with feelings: it has to do with commitment. There will likely be times when you are weary or hurt, and your emotions will tell you to give up or flee the situation. That is when you are called on to reflect God’s faithfulness to your husband, and remain faithful to your promises as God has been faithful to you.

Our job as wives, then, is not to “invent” love and faithfulness, but to reflect God’s love and faithfulness to us into our relationships with Him and with our husbands. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, we need to reflect the steadfastness and faithfulness that God shines upon us.

But how do we, mere creatures that are sinful and fallen, reflect the Creator’s attributes of steadfast love and faithfulness? How do we practically do this? We begin by having integrity in our promises regarding where we place our affections: primarily we have integrity in our love for God, always keeping our relationship to Him our top priority. And our love for our husbands comes next in God’s hierarchy. But how are we supposed to keep love and faithfulness from leaving us? Proverbs 3:3 tells us how.

• First, we are to “bind them on our neck”: that means to adorn ourselves outwardly with them. This refers to the realm of our actions and our words. It means looking for ways as wives to affirm and respect and serve our husbands, instead of criticizing and tearing them down. It means guarding him in our words to others, and supporting him.
• Secondly, we are to “write them on the tablet of our hearts”: this is talking about inwardly guarding our motives, thoughts and emotions. Being faithful inwardly to our husband means always giving him the benefit of the doubt rather than jumping to the worst possible conclusions, or even sometimes the most likely conclusion! Inward faithfulness requires us to guard the way we think about our husbands, always remembering that God thinks on us with love and kindness even when we least deserve it. It means telling ourselves the truth when our emotions would run away with us and indulge us in self-pity.

I know that as a young couple you have already seen abundant evidence of God’s faithfulness in your life, and in your relationship. And now I pray for you, that God’s steadfast love and faithfulness would be reflected in your relationship first with the Lord, who is both the author of steadfast love and faithfulness, and the author of the good work He has begun in you. And secondly, that His steadfast love and faithfulness would be reflected from your heart, where it was received from our Great God, into your relationship, that you may bless Caleb as the Lord has blessed you, and reflect in your marriage that integrity of steadfast love and faithfulness that has been God’s gift to you.