Staying PowerSample

Day One

When Life Sends Its Worst

Scripture: Isaiah 43:19; Romans 8:26; James 1:2–5

Unforeseen pressures hit our marriages when we least expect them. Your newborn has a severe disability. An accident or illness permanently impairs the health of your spouse. You discover that your teenager has become addicted to drugs or alcohol. Job loss rocks your financial foundation. You experience another miscarriage when you desperately long for a child. 

Many of the crises that can tear a marriage apart arise from decisions or character issues of one or both of the marriage partners. But this devotional addresses the choices, practices, and principles that can make a marriage stronger when faced with the types of crises that come from outside the marriage through no choice of the husband or wife. 

No matter what the external crisis, is it possible that there are choices, principles, and insights that cannot only equip your marriage to endure such an onslaught of circumstances, but actually leave your marriage stronger and more resilient and closer and more vibrant than it was before the crisis hit? We believe it is! 

Your marriage will face trials and tribulations. They can defeat you. They can cause you to give up. They can drive you to turn on each other in a rage. Or . . . they can cause you to pull together as a unit, a team committed to facing this challenge together and emerging from it in the end closer and more committed to each other than ever, and knowing each other better than you ever thought it possible to know another human being. 

The truth is, the choice is yours—yours together. Let’s look at the ways you can arm yourselves to face outside challenges, when they come, with wisdom and strength. The ways you can give your marriage staying power. 

What outside pressures has your relationship faced so far? Would you say those pressures caused you and your spouse to be closer together or farther apart?