Week in Review

This is my father, my stepmother and one of my older brothers. Do you see the family resemblance? That should be the same with our father, God. We should resemble him.

Invest in Your Marriage and Reap the Benefits
Marriage & family, God’s Plan

1. The first step in investing in our marriage is to seek our happiness and joy from the right source.

2. The second step in investing in our marriage is seeking our roles through God.

3. The third step is having a forgiving heart.

There are many that believe you cannot forgive someone once you have been hurt. Yet, we must always be ready to be forgiving. In relationships, especially marriages we will find ourselves letting each other down even when this is not our intention. We will find ourselves hurting those that we love.

What are we to do then when we face these difficulties in marriage? We must first look are ourselves before God. When we were not saved (and even in our Christian walk) we have hurt God. How did we hurt God? Our sinful behavior and disobedience to what is right, hurts God.

When you and I come to the realization that we have hurt God we go to him and ask for forgiveness. God is waiting in anticipation for us to come and ask for forgiveness. So as quickly as we ask, he is ready to forgive.
I remember when I prayed the offender’s prayer regarding my husband. The Lord impressed upon my heart to not only ask God to forgive him for the offense he had done then, but to forgive him for whatever offenses he would do. God showed me why. He showed me that he not only forgave me at the time of salvation but he has forgiveness awaiting me even for those things that I have not done yet. So he let me know that he would be quick to forgive and I should do likewise.

In order for a marriage to have success we must invest in the art of forgiveness. We must be willing to forgive because forgiveness was offered to us. When you are willing to forgive you reap the benefits of how God can bless your marriage as well as the benefits of your spiritual growth in Christ. Some may worry, but what if the offense is so great? My answer to that is, there anything to hard for God? We simply have to be willing to forgive and then let God direct us.