Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of

You would not ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel, so you cannot demand that the broken to live as if they were whole.

We are created for adventure, and if we cannot find one, we start blowing things out of proportion so it feels like we have one.

There is no greater place for damage (than marriage) because there is no greater place for glory.

Marriage is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life's great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest.

Most men wait to move until victory is guaranteed.

You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.

Wouldn't it help you to realize that you really do live in an epic if your life had a soundtrack?

You cannot force people to walk with God. You cannot force them to repent. All you can do is live with integrity and invite them to do so as well. Take things a step at a time. Give them consequences when they refuse to deal with serious issues, and pray. Pray like the dickens. Pray every step of the way.

You will find it hard to hear from God until you let go your rights and your agenda.

It is not love to ignore your spouse's sin, or brokenness, or immaturity.

The balancing act we parents attempt is convincing our children: 1. You are loved more than you can imagine. 2. The world does not revolve around you.

Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and openly as we can; we want to be our truest selves before him. Prayer lets us be in a place of need.

God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. He lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us.

Shouting is obvious; not talking to each other slips by.

We are, all of us, utterly committed and deeply devoted to our "style", our "way", our "approach to life." We have absolutely no intention of giving it up. Not even for love. So God creates an environment where we have to. It's called marriage.

There are two kinds of people in this world; the clueless and the repentant, those who are open to looking at their life, and those who are not, both that know they need God to change them, and those that expect EVERYONE else to change.

So you can't demand the broken to live as if they were whole. Discipline is not the issue; apply discipline and you'll make it worse. What is needed is healing.

When it comes to happiness, our soul is like a colander, a tire with a nail in it, our grandfather's memory. It feels like there is a homeless person inside of us, wandering around pushing a shopping cart.

The years have simply reconciled us to the fact that we are all here for the transformation.

If one of you is walking through a dark valley personally of course it affects the marriage. But it is not about the marriage.

This is why the "apply some principles" approach to marriage improvement doesn't work. So long as we choose to turn a blind eye to how we are fallen as men or women, and to the unique style of relating that we have forged out of our sin and brokenness, we will continue to do damage to our marriages.

The authors challenge that the marriage in which one cannot express disappointment has become an idol – The Thing that Cannot Be Questioned.

Hope is a fruit of proven character.

If all the pain of the world were gathered together, and sorted by cause into great basins, the vast majority of tears would fill an ocean entitled “Unloved.” Because love is the deepest longing of the human heart—however hard we might try to pretend otherwise. When things get painful in our marriage, the arrows that pierce our hearts carry some message of You are not loved. The arrows might be Rejection, or Anger, or Betrayal, or Blaming, or even Silence. But the message is the same: You are no longer loved; you never really have been. We have got to anchor our heart in the one sure Love. You are now, you always have been, and you will forever be loved. It might help to say that to yourself, every day. Maybe every hour. This is the boat that carries your heart right across that ocean of pain to the safe haven of God. I am secure. Utterly and completely secure. “No one will snatch [you] out of my hand … no one can snatch [you] out of my Father’s hand.” (JOHN

How different would it be if we went to bed each night with the vision of two comrades lying down together in the midst of a glorious campaign? This is the reality, whether we see it or not.

You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life’s great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest.

When we abandon ourselves to love, we find ourselves closer to the one who is always doing that Himself. We find God.

«Señor, ¿cuáles son los acuerdos que he hecho en cuanto a mi matrimonio?» «¿Cuáles son los acuerdos que he hecho en cuanto al amor?» «¿Cuáles son los acuerdos que he hecho en cuanto a mi cónyuge?»