Read Online Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough by Justin Davis, Trisha Davis - Free Book Online
Authors: Justin Davis, Trisha Davis
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around, we noticed literally hundreds of tiny jellyfish in the water and washing up on the shore. The truth is that these jellyfish had been in the water the entire time; we only noticed them when they started stinging us.
That is how spiritual warfare works. There is a battle for your marriage all day, every day. Most of the time we only notice it after we get stung.
Marriage is physical and emotional, but more than anythingelse, marriage is spiritual. We have an enemy who seeks to steal our hearts, kill our hope, and destroy our marriages. Our struggle against this enemy is what we know as spiritual warfare.
Spiritual warfare isn’t something we talk about very much, especially as it relates to marriage. We see it most often as something TV preachers exploit, or something crazy guys talk about when they’re claiming the end of the world is near. But just because I don’t understand spiritual warfare and just because I don’t always acknowledge spiritual warfare doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Maybe what you need to move past ordinary is to recognize the war being fought against you right now. God longs to shift the momentum of your marriage, and often that shift is found in recognizing the battle that your marriage is fighting every single day.
From the very beginning, there has been a war waged against oneness. Satan’s mission was to destroy the intimacy Adam and Eve experienced with God and to destroy the oneness that God had created them to experience with one another. With one act, both were destroyed. The momentum of their marriage shifted. The result of their choice was hiding and blaming.
Look at Genesis 3:7-8: “At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the L ORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the L ORD God among the trees.”
Adam and Eve’s first response after succumbing to temptation was to hide. For the first time, they felt shame. For the first time, they felt as if who they were wasn’t good enough and that they needed to cover up. They were exposed, vulnerable. They were naked, and they knew it. So they covered up and hid from each other. When they heard God, they knew they were caught, so they hid from him, as well.
One of the biggest enemies to extraordinary oneness is the desire to hide.
When we get married, we truly believe that the person we marry knows us better than anyone else. We have a desire to share our entire life with him or her. But as we go through life, we become tempted to hide. We feel ashamed, and we grab our fig leaves because we aren’t comfortable being exposed—even to our spouses.
Somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that we can hide from God, as well. If we attend church enough, if we pray enough, if we read our Bibles enough, then we think we can withhold parts of our hearts from God and this hiding won’t affect us. But hiding withers away the oneness that God longs to experience with us.
In the Genesis passage, God finds Adam and Eve (as if they were ever really lost), and Adam does something that married couples tend to do when problems are exposed: he blames his spouse. “The man replied, ‘It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it’” (Genesis 3:12).
Wait, who’s the enemy again? Your spouse? No—we have one enemy, and when we blame each other, we become victims in our marriages rather than partners.
Maybe that describes your marriage today. Maybe it feels easier to hide from your spouse than to spend time with him or her. Everything that happens in your marriage is the other person’s fault. Even though you know you have a share of the blame, you find it much easier to shift blame than to take responsibility. You are both victims, not partners. Trisha and I lived like this for years, and it almost destroyed our
That is how spiritual warfare works. There is a battle for your marriage all day, every day. Most of the time we only notice it after we get stung.
Marriage is physical and emotional, but more than anythingelse, marriage is spiritual. We have an enemy who seeks to steal our hearts, kill our hope, and destroy our marriages. Our struggle against this enemy is what we know as spiritual warfare.
Spiritual warfare isn’t something we talk about very much, especially as it relates to marriage. We see it most often as something TV preachers exploit, or something crazy guys talk about when they’re claiming the end of the world is near. But just because I don’t understand spiritual warfare and just because I don’t always acknowledge spiritual warfare doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Maybe what you need to move past ordinary is to recognize the war being fought against you right now. God longs to shift the momentum of your marriage, and often that shift is found in recognizing the battle that your marriage is fighting every single day.
From the very beginning, there has been a war waged against oneness. Satan’s mission was to destroy the intimacy Adam and Eve experienced with God and to destroy the oneness that God had created them to experience with one another. With one act, both were destroyed. The momentum of their marriage shifted. The result of their choice was hiding and blaming.
Look at Genesis 3:7-8: “At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the L ORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the L ORD God among the trees.”
Adam and Eve’s first response after succumbing to temptation was to hide. For the first time, they felt shame. For the first time, they felt as if who they were wasn’t good enough and that they needed to cover up. They were exposed, vulnerable. They were naked, and they knew it. So they covered up and hid from each other. When they heard God, they knew they were caught, so they hid from him, as well.
One of the biggest enemies to extraordinary oneness is the desire to hide.
When we get married, we truly believe that the person we marry knows us better than anyone else. We have a desire to share our entire life with him or her. But as we go through life, we become tempted to hide. We feel ashamed, and we grab our fig leaves because we aren’t comfortable being exposed—even to our spouses.
Somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that we can hide from God, as well. If we attend church enough, if we pray enough, if we read our Bibles enough, then we think we can withhold parts of our hearts from God and this hiding won’t affect us. But hiding withers away the oneness that God longs to experience with us.
In the Genesis passage, God finds Adam and Eve (as if they were ever really lost), and Adam does something that married couples tend to do when problems are exposed: he blames his spouse. “The man replied, ‘It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it’” (Genesis 3:12).
Wait, who’s the enemy again? Your spouse? No—we have one enemy, and when we blame each other, we become victims in our marriages rather than partners.
Maybe that describes your marriage today. Maybe it feels easier to hide from your spouse than to spend time with him or her. Everything that happens in your marriage is the other person’s fault. Even though you know you have a share of the blame, you find it much easier to shift blame than to take responsibility. You are both victims, not partners. Trisha and I lived like this for years, and it almost destroyed our
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