Sunday, December 21, 2014

Let There Be Peace

Zut alors! She has emerged!

After a long writing hiatus, the junk in my brain is finally making it onto the written page...or screen, I suppose.

One Bible verse keeps popping into my head and assaulting me during my devotions:

What causes fights and quarrels among you?
Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?
You desire, but you do not have, so you kill.
You covet, but cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.
You do not have because you do not ask God.
When you ask, you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives,
that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
James 4:1-3

In the past, I've thought of this verse as it applies to my children. I remind them of it sometimes (at least paraphrased, I try not to throw the Bible at them all the time) when they spat with one another.

But now...now I'm seeing it in a different light.

I've been thinking about a lot of the fights we often have with our spouses, over big things and little, and it seems to come to this: our own selfish desires cause quarrels between husband and wife, but one desire more than any other...the desire to be right.

Don't believe me? Think about your last fight with your husband or wife. Whether it was about the kids, the bills, or dinner, you probably knew your spouse was wrong and you were absolutely right.

You were right, your spouse was wrong, and you were determined to prove it.

How'd that work out for you? Did you win? If so...you turned your spouse into a loser. How's that feel? You may have won your fight, but when there's a winner, there's a loser. 

You've turned your home into a battlefield. 

Let me tell you, if this is the way your house is running, you're destroying your marriage, and there's really only one winner: Satan.

Be sober-minded; be watchful.
Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion,
looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8

You are intended prey, and you can stand around completely oblivious to that and get eaten up by sin and your own prideful desire, or you can flee with "gazelle intensity" (a term I borrowed from Dave Ramsey, but it fits).

Josiah said it really well tonight: some people want to be right way more than they want to be happy.

Yup. That's truth.

But it's so much more than that, they want to be right more than they want God. Our selfish desire to be right is our idol.

Yes. You read that right. Don't believe me again? Chew on this verse for a bit:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to your own interests,
but also to the interest of others.
Philippians 2:3-4

God, in His Word, says we are to consider others more significant, more important, than ourselves. If we can't put our spouses' feelings above our own because we'd rather prove how much better we are, then we are placing that desire above our desire for God. It is an idol, and we worship it.

In their book You and Me Forever, Lisa and Francis Chan made a point that blew my mind.

If you are fight tooth an nail to prove how right you are, and in doing so acting in direct opposition to God's word, you have a pride problem.

Now, we also know that God opposes the proud, right (Proverbs 3:34)?

So, if you've chosen pride to be your idol, and God opposes the proud, you've chosen a different enemy: GOD.

Good luck with that.

You've chosen to take on the Creator of the Universe, the one and only omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent being as your opponent. 

You. Can't. Win.

And so, your marriage will suffer. You will suffer. Your children will suffer, all to feed your insatiable desire to prove how right you are. How much smarter you are. How much holier you are.

Okay, I think I've made my point there, but what does the opposite side look like? I mean, there will be times when you will actually be right, right? There will be times when you actually know better than your spouse. What happens then?

You loving present your point, and if that doesn't work, you pray and seek God's wisdom.

Pray for you and your spouse to meet eye to eye. Pray for love and understanding.

Seek God's wisdom in His Word and in others who are faithful to Him. Ask him to give you the answer. Ask Him to uncover and rip away any pride that may be residing in your heart.

God promises when we do this, when we seek Him, when we ask for wisdom with faith that He will provide, He will do just that.

So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
Luke 11:9

But you need to know He will provide, and you must have faith in His promise. Otherwise, you are no more than a wave being tossed by the sea; you are unstable and you can't expect that He will deliver what you ask (James 1:6-8).

In the short-term, let's just focus on this week. This week we celebrate the coming of our Savior, the Messiah, God incarnate who humbled Himself so that we would be saved. We celebrate Jesus's birth because he came as a servant. He was born to die...for you...for me.

He was the only man ever born on Earth that had every right to stand higher than everyone else, but instead, he came as a servant, to teach and then to serve as a sacrifice for our sins.

Even the verse from Philippians above, in context, is asking us to put others above ourselves as Christ did for us. It asks us to follow his example. 

A popular song this time of year says, "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."

Let's start small. Let's change that to, "Let there be peace in my house, and let it begin with me."

This week, wake up every day with an intentional focus on seeking God's help to serve your spouse. What would make him happy? How could I make her smile? What has he been asking me to do? What has she been hinting that she needs?

But here's the catch: you must do all these things without expectation of return. Do these things not just because you may make him/her happy, but as an act of worship to the Savior whose birth we celebrate this week.

Merry Christmas to you all,
and a happy and peaceful New Year!!