Sacred Marriage Chapter 1

This is week one of the Virtual Bible Study I am participating in, we are reading Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. As you can imagine Chapter 1 is used as an overview to set the objectives for the rest of the book.

I feel so far the main focus of this book is to grow your spiritual life through your marriage, not your marriage through your spiritual life. I think this is such a great concept. One of Gary's thoughts is what if marriage was to make us more holy than happy. This is so thought provoking. I think he is right on with this I am just not sure if I live this way. In the intimate union of marriage we should do everything we can to better one another and be a sharpening tool. What greater way can we show our spouse love than to hold them accountable and encourage them to fight for the kingdom. I think so many times we forget this or don't want to ruffle each others feathers. Do we call out our spouse (in the appropriate setting) when we see sin in their life? I feel if we lived to make each other holier we would ultimately be happier as well. However I think many times we just focus on immediate satisfaction and do what is easy to maintain happiness and peace in our marriage. Also I think we get so caught up in the day to day of managing life in our marriage we forget what is really important. Gary refers to when did God change the world through us become what  movie do we want to watch this Friday night. We use our marriage as a place of comfort and consistency rather than challenge.

In this chapter it touches on how many of us live our marriages with the conviction that our spouse is supposed to meet all of our needs and satisfy the void in our hearts. This is such a dangerous way to live our our marriage, we are setting it up to fail from day one if we do so. Christ is the only one who can ever meet all of our needs. If we expect our spouse or any person to accomplish this they will never measure up. God created marriage to satisfy many needs in our life but not all of them if we live it out with this expectations we are going to be disappointed over and over in our marriage and possibly cause it to fail. I know too many times I want Aaron to be my everything and that is just not fair to him or me. We both need to live with God as our everything!

I think I am really going to enjoy this book. I hope as it continues I have an easier time putting my thoughts into words as I feel I have struggled to align them this this chapter. I am excited to see how God is going to use this experience to better my relationship with him and Aaron.

Also I can't wait to see how he uses all of the other women participating in this to minister to me and others as we walk through this from all parts of the country.