When We Become Nothing
by Sarah Westbrook
Love. We are exactly nothing without it. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
If you grabbed the most incredible person that exists on the planet (think of that person that pierces your heart and blows your mind), who has fulfilled jaw-dropping good things with God. If you remove love from them – they are reduced to nothing. Why do we fight so hard to be other things that we think are good and valuable? Probably because His love is so inhuman. It is radical. It is earth shaking. It is 1 Corinthians 13!
Where Is the Gospel In Our Marriage?
Five years ago, I was present when a man from Africa was asked “Why does your country see more miracles than we do here?” He replied, “Because we have no other options”. Because of their humble lifestyle, they reach for and experience His love and His power.
Our “options” and “negotiations” around His ways have so clearly crashed and burned in failure. If we would act like this wonderful people group from Africa and grasp that there are no other options for us, then we would have the gospel in our marriage. Power and love would be present and played out because we are grabbing ahold of it. I am beginning to understand that when God’s Kingdom comes to us and into our lives, it will probably look pretty foreign. It won’t look like anything we could ever do or be on our own.
Examine What Your Heart Treasures.
It’s not the outside world that wrecks us. Defilement happens inside our hearts. (Matthew 15:18-20) Where is our heart for each other? That is our ministry above all else. Allowing our feelings to call the shots and run the show has become so common. We freely judge each other.
We lean on our own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5-6) We forget all about speaking our spouse’s love language to them. We allow our love for them to get crowded out and turned off. We forget to recognize the good traits that God put in us for each other that we need so much. It’s not the outside world that defiles us. Defilement happens inside our hearts. (Matthew 15:18-20)
In my case, this especially takes place when the odyssey of raising children is underway. I get fixated on how uncomfortable I am, being pushed so far past my capabilities, riding a crash course of self-absorption obliteration, and living in the blazing reality that I feel no control of anything under the sun. I’m suddenly reminded that before I was my kids’, I was my husband’s.
A few ways to keep God’s love in your marriage:
1. Be in His presence to receive love. Be a person that interacts with Him minute by minute and therefore remains in His transforming presence. The Kingdom of God is ‘at hand’. He is at our fingertips. “The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk; it is living by God’s power.” – 1 Corinthians 4:20
2. Fight for your spouse. War for them through prayer. Pray down His kingdom come in them and in the process your love for them gets turned on and you gain God’s unsurpassable heart for them.
3. Love your spouse from God’s perspective. Love them through their failures, incompleteness, and transformations. Tap into God’s feelings, compassion and plans for them.
