You Must Be Alert To Keep The Enemy At Bay

1 Peter 5:8 "Be alert, be reflective, because your enemy, satan, roars like a lion and is walking and seeking whom he may devour." I have quite a bit to say about this, but really want to focus my thoughts tonight on marriage in particular. There is an all out assault on marriages now more than I have ever seen in my almost fifty years on this planet. It seems that marriages are crashing and burning all around us. And if we are not cautious, ours too can come crashing down.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating here. Marriage is hard. Now before you write me off, and say this guy's an idiot, I didn't say marriage was bad, I said it was hard, and there is a huge difference between the two. The professional athlete will tell you that getting into the shape they are in, and playing at the level they play at takes hard work, but is so worth it. Take the concert pianist too, they don't get that way because they just decided to play one day, they practice many, many hours each and every day to play at that level.

Marriage is just like that too. For you to have a great marriage, you've got to be willing to work at it, and give whatever it takes to make it great. Unfortunately so many couples base their relationship on the feelings that come along, and that can be so dangerous. One thing that I have learned is that I may be feeling down one minute and on top of the world the next. Feelings are always subject to change, that is a given so we need to remember that when reflecting on our marriage.

Take a look at the Scripture again, especially the part about "seeking whom he MAY devour". It doesn't say seeking whom he is going to devour". This tells me that I have a part to play in whether or not I'm devoured by the enemy. It simply means that I get to have a say in whether or not the enemy can do anything in my life and marriage. And that friends is very good news. Good news that the devil doesn't want you to know, because once you know it, then he has lost the battle before it ever began. Praise God!

Every marriage has it's challenges. You cannot put two people who are completely different into the same house and expect that they will see eye to eye on everything. Yet that is what we do isn't? We expect that our spouse should just totally agree with everything we think and do, yet we don't agree with them on everything either. Talk about hypocrisy. We have to look at our marriage (a lot too) and see just how it is doing. You have to take stock of where you and your spouse are at, and make corrections when necessary. And believe me it is necessary.

One of the things that I ask myself alot is, "Why did I fall in love with Cheryl?" I work hard to remind myself why I chose this girl, and what it was that attracted me to her in the first place. I will say that I loved the way she looked back when we were dating, (and I still do) but there is something deeper than looks that drew me to her. It was the real Cheryl, her spirit that lives inside her body. The real person who has a way of looking at life, and the way she treats people, all people regardless of their social status, has always amazed me, and it continues to do so even twenty-four years since we first met.

Why don't you do that now? Sit down with a piece of paper and write down all of the things that drew you to your spouse. Remind yourself of those things, and then tell them what you found. That is a great way to resist the devil and keep him from devouring you and your marriage. So there's that...strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

Do You Give To Make Your Spouse Better?

I've got a few minutes this morning before having to get ready for work, and seeing that Valentine's Day was yesterday, and I felt a little less than adequate in showing the world my love for my bride, I thought I'd write something.

Scripture says that God said that it is not good for man to be alone. Amen to that! I am so thankful to Him for my bride of almost 24 years. I was a bachelor for many years prior to meeting Cheryl and marrying her, and I've got to say that while there were times that I enjoyed being on my own, none of those times compare to the sensation of spending my life with her.

The world tells us that marriage is hard, and only the lucky ones make it. To quote Bill and Ted, that is bogus! Marriage can be hard, but that's only if you choose to make it so. The lucky ones are those who actually work on their marriage, that ask the tough questions, and the one where each couple puts aside their own desires to try and fulfill the desires of their spouse. I can honestly say that I do a lot of things that I really don't want to do, and so does Cheryl, but we do them because we love each other and want to give ourselves to each other.

"Forsaking all others." is how the wedding vows go, and I think most of the time when that is said people think about how each of the partners is to stay sexually and emotionally pure and away from other people besides their spouse. That is true, but I think forsaking all others, means also to stay away from anything that would take away from the relationship with each other.

We should forsake anything that will hinder the relationship with our spouse. If we are going to love each other in the sacrificial way that God intended for us to do, then we must put our desires aside for the betterment of our spouse. Now this is not to say that you should never have fun, and a good spouse will understand your need for time apart or doing the things that you enjoy. After all absence does make the heart grow fonder. It's just that we shouldn't desire those other things more than our spouse.

I know that I have been talking in the general sense about marriage and there are some relationships that will find this hard, mainly because one or both of the partners are not making the choices to live for the other, they are mainly living for themselves. But if you want the best marriage that you can have, try to out give your spouse in the area of seeing that things go well for them. I believe in the law of seed time and harvest, if you plant seeds, you will reap a harvest in due season, if you faint not. That means that you have to stick it out.

I am married to the most wonderful woman I have ever known, and I love doing things for her. She may not always understand me, and I know that I don't always understand her, but we continue to muddle our way through this relationship and it has gotten better and better the longer we are together. Take a minute and look your spouse in the eyes and tell them how fortunate you are to have them in your life. You'll be glad you did.

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!