Leaning into our Marriages...
Whenever we make a change in life we leave one way of doing things to embrace another. For example, you may have moved from one community to another or from one church to another; in these cases, we release particular ways of doing things and adjust to the patterns of the groups we are now a part of.
In the ten years of volunteer RCMP chaplaincy we did, I took note of the need for police officers to literally place their lives in the hands of one another. They did not necessarily know each other well or for a long time but had to trust one another on the job.
The biblical pattern calls us to this type of adjustment when we enter marriage … to release the family in which we were raised and to embrace the new family we are starting. This is not a rejection of our parents but a healthy transition for establishing our new family. It is tying our plans, emotions, and actions to our spouse ahead of any other person; it is committing to them over all others.
We not only need to “leave” our parents and “cleave” to our spouse, but as parents we also need to release our children to their spouse and family. We remain a support network for them but release them into independence (or more so inter-dependence with their spouse).
These are challenging principles for us. This Sunday we will continue our study on how to lean into our marriages by examining how we best cling to our spouse over all others.
Prayer Meeting – tonight at 7:30pm
Living Evidence Seminar – Saturday, February 9 (register by this Sunday)
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
(Genesis 2:24)