Marriage

Marriage is not a success story. It is a redemption story.

This past Sunday, Rick and Teresa Dunn invited us to see marriage as part of a much bigger story than our happiness, compatibility, or ability to get along.

It’s easy for marriage to shrink down to the day-to-day realities of life: raising kids, paying bills, doing laundry, buying groceries, navigating schedules, and trying to make life work. None of those things are insignificant. But in the middle of them, we can forget that God has invited us into something bigger. Marriage is meant to reveal something about who God is, while also becoming one of the places where He forms us into the people He created us to be.

That changes how we understand the difficult parts of marriage.

Marriage has an extraordinary ability to expose us. Our differences, disappointments, fears, wounds, selfishness, unrealistic expectations, and need for grace eventually find their way to the surface. The very differences we once found attractive can eventually feel threatening. The person who once seemed to complete us can begin to feel like the person standing in the way of what we need.

Rick and Teresa described this as “the dance.” Every marriage has one. We find ourselves having versions of the same conflict again and again. The subject may change, but underneath it are often the same fears, wounds, expectations, and patterns. One person pursues while the other withdraws. One tries harder while the other shuts down. We react not only to what is happening in the moment, but to old stories and wounds we carried with us into the marriage.

But what if that exposure isn't merely a problem to solve? What if it is actually an invitation to redemption?

Jesus is not standing outside our marriages waiting for us to finally get them right. He is already at work within them. The places where marriage exposes our pride, self-protection, control, performance, and fear can become the very places where Jesus meets us, heals us, and teaches us how to love. Marriage becomes one of the places where God brings what we would prefer to leave hidden into the light, not to condemn us, but to form us.

That means our spouse doesn't have to be our savior, and they don't have to become our enemy. Instead, husbands and wives have the remarkable opportunity to participate with the Holy Spirit in God's redemptive work in one another. The person who knows our weaknesses and wounds most intimately can become one of the people through whom we experience the patience, grace, presence, and love of Jesus.

A gospel-formed marriage, then, isn't a marriage without conflict, wounds, weakness, or disappointment. It is a marriage where two imperfect people increasingly learn to bring those things into the grace and presence of Jesus. Rick and Teresa's own story reminds us that longevity and intimacy aren't the result of two people finally mastering marriage. They are the fruit of two people continuing to allow Jesus to meet them, prune them, expose them, and redeem what they could never repair by themselves.

So perhaps one of the most important things we can do is become curious about what our marriages are revealing. When an ordinary disagreement suddenly moves from a two to an eight, there is probably something more happening beneath the surface. What am I protecting? What am I afraid of? What am I believing about myself or my spouse in this moment? Why does the person I love suddenly feel more like my opponent than my teammate?

Those questions aren't invitations to analyze our marriages to death. They are invitations to notice where Jesus may already be at work. The friction, vulnerability, and exposure we would naturally avoid may be the very places where He is inviting us into deeper freedom, healing, intimacy, and dependence upon Him.

Because ultimately, the goal isn't to build a marriage impressive enough for everyone else to admire. The world doesn't need to see Christians who have somehow figured out how to have perfect marriages. It needs to see marriages that bear witness to the grace and redemptive power of Jesus.

Marriage is not a success story. It is a redemption story.