Is There Hope for My Marriage? One Good Reason to Stay TogetherSample

Hidden Treasure

Our first years as church-planting missionaries were spent counseling many church members. During that time, we watched seasoned marriages fall apart. Some ended in divorce. Marriages were crumbling all around us, and we felt incapable of helping any of them.

Something was going on that we didn’t anticipate as young, naive missionaries. We were committed to church planting, but how could we plant a church in the middle of these broken marriages? Our work had stopped because none of our leaders could effectively lead with such chaos going on at home.

That was just one result. There was another, even more personal effect: The destruction of marriage destroys one of the ways we can see who God is.

What better way to distort our view of God than to distort that image into pain and unhappiness? In our brokenness, we are enticed to run from the very gift God has given us in our marriage—oneness. Oneness in marriage is choosing one another over the problem before you. It’s seeing glimpses of God and how He chooses us despite our sins. Oneness is remembering the covenantal promise you both made before God when you became one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Oneness in marriage is a treasure!

It is a glimpse at God's very nature. In experiencing oneness, we step into God’s presence.

Godly oneness has little to do with the dysfunctional way my husband and I often act as one, but every so often, we catch a glimpse of what God has for us in this tattered marriage we wear every day. God wants us to have Himself, and we get to experience that in the oneness of marriage.

Oh, what a treasure to have a glimpse of God Himself!