Living Out Scripture in Your Marriageنموونە

Tested for a Purpose

We have been through some challenging times in our marriage. Early on, many of our trials were self-induced out of selfishness, pride, and poor decisions, but as we aged, many have come from things beyond our control. We’ve dealt with loss, massive changes, health challenges, and even a near-death experience that rocked us to our core. But we have learned through all these challenges that no matter where they came from or what they were, they all went through the hand of God.

That truth is something we have learned to find comfort in. We know that God is good, and everything he does is good and purposeful. There are many things in our flesh and limited vision and understanding that we have disagreed with him about, but we can trust that there is always a purpose in our pain whether we ever see it or not.

God tells us that we will all be tested; sometimes, the testing even comes through his hand. This testing isn’t because he wants to see us squirm or cause us harm; he wants to grow and refine us. He wants our trials and tests to transition us into a place of abundance.

The tricky part is that none of us like suffering, and our usual first response is to get out of it. The problem is that when we immediately work on our escape plan, we often miss God’s good plan. His plan for that refinement.

In your marriage, trials will happen, but what if when they do, you don’t look for a way out but instead look for a lesson, trusting that God has a plan? Being married for over 28 years now, we can attest that so much of our connectedness comes from locking arms and enduring the hard stuff together. A marriage that has gone through testing is a marriage that you can trust. When you learn that you can do hard things together and survive, you begin to lose fear and start understanding that there is no threat against you that God won’t be able to overcome and that you can’t endure together.

Trials aren’t fun and can be very painful, but don’t ever think the Lord isn’t using them and that he won’t get the glory from your enduring them together.

Take Action:

Ask your spouse what they think is the most challenging trial they believe you have experienced together. Talk about how you handled it, how God showed up, and if there’s anything you would have done differently. Then remind them that you are committed to enduring anything and everything with them.