Transcript
You see if you're going to experience a marriage that isn't riddled by conflict, riddled by judgment, if you're going to be content with the [inaudible], the sacrifice of parenting your children, then you have to take up a purpose greater than your own think about this.
If Happiness Were the Purpose, God Would Be a Failure
This is pretty easy to figure out. If God's total, complete purpose in marriage and family is to deliver to you your momentary, temporary definition of personal happiness, He is a massive, total failure. It can't be that because look, marriage and parenting live in a broken world. A marriage is a relationship between two still flawed people.
Children are brought into a family as sinners. It's messy. It's broken people in a broken world and that's not a recipe for constant happiness. If you haven't figured it out, God's primary purpose in those relationships is not so you and I would wake up in the morning say, "I love my life. Bring on more. I'm so happy today."
Now, I think that's us. I think it's very hard not to have a single focused happiness agenda. If I'm not happy today, then I'm going to be mad and I'm going to spill that madness on the people around me. You see, God has a greater purpose. Yes, He wants you to have joy. Yes, He wants you to be content. Yes, He wants you to be satisfied but in order to do that, He has to change your heart. It's heart transformation.
The Fruit of the Spirit
What is God working on in marriage? Let me tell you. Let me read a passage to you. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."
What is it that God wants to accomplish through long-term marriage? What is it that God wants to accomplish through long-term parenting? Why all the messiness? Why all the difficulty? Why all those moments where it seems like happiness isn't close? Because God isn't giving you something less, He's giving you something better.
It's called holiness. It's radical, continual, personal transformation. He's working to turn us from what we once were into people of love and people of joy and people of peace and people of patience and people of kindness and people of goodness and faithfulness and self-control. Think about those words. Wouldn't you love to be married to a person who was always loving, who was always joyful, who was always kind, who was always patient, was always faithful, was always gentle, always had self-control?
The Family of Your Dreams
Listen, in God's work, in God's purpose is the family of your dreams. You and I could never manufacture this and so, I can't opt for my little claustrophobic short week small, truncated purpose because If I miss God's purpose because I demand my purpose, I miss the beauty of what only God can do.
I would ask you, whose purpose drives your family? Whose purpose drives your choices, your decisions, your actions, your reactions, your words in your family? Whose purpose fuels the way you treat your children? Whose purpose fuels the way you respond to your husband and wife? And perhaps the opposition you're getting is the opposition of your Father who has not given you success, not because He doesn't love you, but because He loves you and He wants something better for you.
