Marrying God

03.03.13

Mark 10.7-9 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (ESV)

Recently, I read a blog where the writer discussed the will of God and what we seem (generally) to think it’s like to surrender to God’s will: like it is something totally scary; like God is going to make us do something that is going to be excruciatingly painful or humiliating. Now in fairness to the writer, she wasn’t saying God is some Cosmic Kill-joy; but she was addressing the notion that some people seem to think the only way we can draw closer to God is through pain of some sort – and with God, the more the better.

I admit I’ve been tempted to think that: the more I pain, the more I gain. I’ve been tempted to think that pain gets me more Brownie points. I’ve been tempted to think that the only way I’m going to address the bad things in my life is through some sort of circumstance that is excruciatingly painful or humiliatingly humiliating. That simply isn’t true.

It is true that the circumstances of life, while sometimes painful or humiliating, do have a tendency to get me to think of God more; I’ll admit that. But the circumstances of life are not exclusive to the believer – everybody has circumstances. Stuff happens. To everyone.

My thoughts about God are somehow balanced or righted when I think about Marriage and what Jesus said about marriage that day to some Pharisees who seemed to want Jesus to give them a hall-pass on their relationships with their women. Jesus, tell us, is divorce okay or not!?

Divorce is something many of us are familiar with in the west because, as stuff happens, so does divorce. Divorce is prevalent in modern society. Divorce happens. But why does divorce happen? Jillions of reasons I suppose but the bottom line is this: God never divorces. He may let people go and have their own way, but in His heart, His promises (and His love) always stand.

When I think of my relationship with God in the context of a marriage I understand it somewhat better; well, differently. Our relationship just seems to think out better when I consider it that way. It is a way of committing that goes beyond living together. It’s making and keeping a promise with God. It’s accepting and keeping His promise for me.

It’s all about continually infatuated-love, safe-surrender and self-less mutuality, and separation never comes into the picture. Why would it if the couple is happy? Marrying God is a win/win because the hurtful or humiliating part is never done. God understands us in a way that far surpasses our understanding of Him. And God chooses us; it’s not the other way around.

Human marriage is a picture of that and should be approached with love and steadfastness as the goal, not whether one hurts or humiliates the other; being married to God, means (to me) to be cared for perfectly forever. Being married to God means that He is more precious to me than anyone or anything else. He’ll never divorce me and I’m foolish to entertain thoughts of divorcing Him…