Lies Women Believe.....About Marraige

from Chapter 6 of Lies Women Believe and the Truth that Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

And the lies continue......and are Satan's greatest tool in achieving his destructive purposes in our lives ~ and in our marriages.  What was meant to be a joyful, fruitful, and intimate relationship between a man, a woman, and God has often become a battleground.

If he can get use to believe and act upon his lies, he will succeed in putting us into bondage, stealing our joy, and wreaking havoc in our relationships.

Lie 21 : "I Have to Have a Husband To Be Happy"

Satan has distorted the truth about marriage and has us believing that its purpose is personal happiness and fulfillment......and that we cannot be truly happy without a husband to meet our needs.  Or, that our husbands are supposed to make us happy.

The Truth is that marriage is good, it is right, and it can be a source of great happiness and blessings in our lives.  The Truth is that the ultimate purpose of marriage is to glorify God ~ not to make us happy.

Those of us who look to our marriages and husbands to make us happy and fulfill our deepest needs are setting ourselves up for disappointment.  We live in a world that searches only for personal happiness and fulfillment, a world of romantic ideals, Hollywood fantasies and unrealistic expectations.  A world where everyone has a soul mate, and once you find your soul mate.....you live happily ever after.  The problem is that the romantic ideal is very rare, if it exists at all. 

When I was younger, I believed ~ as many others do ~ in the whole soul mate scenario.  As I've gotten older,  lived through my own marriage relationship difficulties, and observed others, and observed divorce rates, etc., my mind has changed.  I believe that there are a number of people in the world that you could end up with and have a happy life together.  I believe you choose your soul mate.  You choose the person (hopefully with the Lord's guidance) and make a choice, every day, to love them.  Because in my world, reality is often not my romantic ideal and looks nothing like the Hollywood fantasies or Disney movies I loved as a little girl.  Real life is difficult, it is sometimes messy......and my husband (bless his heart) doesn't always make the choices, or say the right thing, notice what I'd like him to notice, respond the way I'd like......or do many of the things that would make me gloriously happy every day.  (And the same goes for me making him happy).

The problem with our current view of "soul mates" is that when things are hard, when they are ugly....when they don't turn out the way we imagined that they would and we don't feel happy, we assume that we made a mistake.  That our "soul mate" is out there, somewhere.....waiting for us to find them.  And people spend their lives in and out of relationships and marriages, looking for that elusive, fulfilling happiness.....leaving damaged people and broken hearts along the way.

"The Truth is that happiness is not found in (or out of) marriage; it is not found in any human relationship.  True joy can only be found through Christ.  The Truth is that God has promised to give us everything we need.........The Truth is that contentment is not found in having everything we think we want but in choosing to be satisfied with what God has already provided." ~Nancy Leigh deMoss

When we stop expecting our husband to make us happy and fulfill our every need, and look to God instead ~ it is then that we find true joy and contentment.  The type of joy that Satan can't steal and the peaceful contentment that gives us grace in times of difficulty and the ability to love our "soul mates" when they're not so lovable.  It is then that our marriages can begin to be what they were intended to be ~ a glorification of God, of His Love, His Joy, His Contentment, His Grace and His Mercy.

The Truth is ~~ It's really not all about us after all.  The strange things about the Truths of God :  the less we make things about us and the more we make things about Him, the closer we are to getting what we were after in the first place.

My Mustard Seed Planting verse of the week:

"My soul, wait silently for God alone,

For my expectation is from Him.

He only is my rock and my salvation;

He is my defense; I shall not be moved. 

In God is my salvation and my glory;

The rock of my strength,

And my refuge, is in God."

Psalm 62:5-7