MARRIAGE IS A CATALYST

A catalyst is something that is introduced to create change and or to accelerate progress. Marriage is a catalyst; it will instigate change and acceleration in your life! During our single years, there are so many things that God teaches us and develops in us, but there are new lessons and new ways that he challenges us and transforms us through marriage. The primary experience of marriage is the gift of love and connection, and the secondary is the function of shaping and purifying our lives. Nothing in my world brings me more face-to-face with my areas of dysfunction than marriage. This can be scary, but if you open up your life and heart, you’ll find that your spouse is perfectly designed to help you overcome those areas. Marriage is the only place strong enough to secure us while we’re in that perfecting state.

The question is whether or not I’ll allow marriage to do in me what God designed it to do. Will I allow my spouse to speak into my world? Will I allow the tension of two imperfect people coming together to teach me the lessons of grace, forgiveness, mercy, and strength that it’s designed to teach? Or will I push against the lessons and remain unchanged?

Your Spouse has what You Need!

The Bible calls Eve, Adam’s helpmate because our spouse is our partner and greatest source of strength on earth. If you’re open to it, your husband or wife will be the perfect help you need to mature and grow into your calling. My pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, tells a hilarious and confronting story about the early years of their marriage. He was unhappy with how his wife, Leanne, was acting, and she had finally had enough of his name-calling that she threatened divorce. So, in a tantrum, he went to God to pray and complain about her, which didn’t end up being a good move! Ha! As he was praying, God asked him, “What kind of wife would you like to have?” Jurgen was pumped about that question and started listing things like, “I’d like her to carry herself like a princess.” God replied to him by asking, “When’s the last time you called her a princess?” And my pastor responded with, “When she acts like a princess, then I’ll start calling her one and treating her like one.” At that moment, he felt the Holy Spirit say,

“Your wife is a product of your husbandry.”

This was to say that if you want a princess, you need to start calling her one and treating her like one, even before she’s acting like one. The truth is that we form with our words, and as a husband or wife, we have the extreme privilege to help shape and encourage our spouse. The truth is, if you don’t like what you see in your spouse, then change what you’re saying to your spouse.