Have the Mind of Christ in Your Marriage

A quick Amazon search of "marriage books" reveals over 260,000 results. A search of "Christian marriage books" reveals almost 28,000 options. Within these thousands of book options, many of them tell us how to change our actions. They offer helpful to-do lists of tasks to do for your spouse. One of these nearly 28,000 Christian marriage books, 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, by Sheila Wray Gregoire, comes at it from a little different angle. While Gregoire does offer a number of practical application tasks and ideas, what sets her book apart is her focus on our mind ---how we think about our spouse, more than merely what we do for our spouse --which will in turn affect our actions.

Some of her advice on our thoughts include remembering that our spouse is our neighbor, and Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which should greatly affect how we treat them. She advises her readers to focus their thoughts and attention on their marriages so it doesn't drift out with the tide due to neglect or taking it for granted. She reminds us that we cannot expect our spouse to fulfill a role for us that only God can fill, and a reminder that we cannot change our spouse and mold them into what we want or expect. We must remember that the partners in a marriage are on the same team ---not in competition with each other. We also need to allow our spouse to be our spouse, and only allow God to be God.

I especially found her approach to submission very compelling (Chapter 5). She acknowledges that the usual definition of submission is that in the case of a disagreement, the husband wins --the wife is to blindly obey and defer to her husband's position, regardless of the outcome. I love that Gregoire quotes The Princess Bride, saying of the word submission, "I don't think it means what you think it means."

To illustrate her understanding, she walks through two Scriptural narratives: the story of Nabal and Abigail, in which she (correctly) did not blindly obey her husband (1 Samuel 25) and the story of Ananias and Sapphira, in which she (incorrectly) did blindly obey her husband, much to her own detriment (Acts 5:1-11). Gregoire advises to focus on unity of the marriage and asking the question 'What does God want me to do in this situation', not blind, dutiful "submission."

My capsule version of Gregoire's advice in this book is to "have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16 NIV), especially in regards to our spouse.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

When the Lord Says "Watch This!"

Remaining strong and hopeful while waiting on the Lord can be so difficult –especially as your season of waiting grows long or as the situation grows hopeless.

I wonder if a friend of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus may have offered this verse to them as a word of encouragement while they waited for Jesus to show up and heal Lazarus. Someone may have said to them, ‘I know you are concerned because Lazarus is sick and even though you sent word to Jesus, he hasn’t come yet. Remember what the psalmist said –wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.’

As Lazarus grew sicker and sicker, were Mary and Martha able to wait patiently for Jesus? Were they able to remain strong? Did they continue to have hope in their hearts? What happened to their hope when Lazarus died and Jesus still had not come?

I’m reminded of the end of the wedding scene in The Princess Bride when Buttercup is completely shocked and devastated because Westley did not come in time to rescue her from Prince Humperdink. It was with a deep sense of disappointment and hopelessness that she uttered, ‘he didn’t come.’

Like Princess Buttercup, Mary and Martha must have wondered why Jesus didn’t come and why He didn’t make it to Bethany “on time” to heal Lazarus and save the day. They must have wondered why Jesus was so slow. Didn’t he know what was going on and what they were going through in His absence? Didn’t He love them and their brother Lazarus? 

I find it interesting that John notes for us that “although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days” (John 11:5-6 NLT). His delay was not because He didn’t love them or want what was best for them or everyone else around them.

As the stone was sealed over the tomb, Mary and Martha must have seen their situation as finished and hopeless. As everyone knows, death is final and there was nothing else that could be done. It was over. Even Jesus couldn’t do anything for them at this point. Lazarus was dead, as was their hope. And this was all because Jesus was too slow in getting to them --at least in their understanding.

The apostle Peter was there and witnessed this entire event. I wonder if he had this in mind at all when he wrote, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness…” (2 Pet 3:9 NIV). How do we understand slowness? God not acting on our personal timeline? Or not acting according to our own finite understanding?

The Lord says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:4 NIV). His thoughts and ways are not just a little bit higher than ours. We can’t just reach a little higher or think a little deeper or concentrate a little harder and be able to wrap our minds around the Lord’s ways and thoughts, just as we can’t stretch high enough to reach into outer space or even to touch the clouds in the sky.

Mary and Martha’s plan was for Jesus to come before Lazarus died and for Jesus to restore Lazarus to health. While this would have been a good, miraculous event, it was nothing compared to what Jesus did for them. He didn’t just restore health to a living person. He brought a dead, rotting, stinking corpse back to life. While healing Lazarus from his illness would have been nice, raising him from the dead after four days was a glorious, spectacular, incomprehensible miracle that no one expected --a miracle that could only be performed by the One who “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20 NIV).

Raising Lazarus from the dead was far beyond what Mary and Martha could have asked or imagined, and they would have missed it if Jesus had succumbed to their plans, their requests, and their timeline. Jesus waited until the situation seemed completely and utterly hopeless before He stepped in and said “Watch this!”

So again, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:14 NIV) and wait for God to step into your hopeless situation and say “watch this!”