August 8, 2010

For the Good of Your Family…Forget You’re Married!

 

            By way of personal testimony and confession, the origin of this article will make sense to you, and you’ll understand why I had to write this.  I believe in ideals and believe it’s good to live by ideals.  I also know that it’s impossible to always live up to the ideals I believe in.  Normally I don’t live up to my ideals out of weakness rather than out of a blatant disregard for the ideals I profess.  But the end result is still there…I fall short of my ideals.  Then…if you want to backtrack to fix the mistake, it can sometimes be a hassle.  However, the hassle is worth the feeling of getting it right in the end.  So…what’s my story…?

            I decided I wanted to plan a family vacation.  We were able to procure some time off from our jobs in August.  I made the reservations for Sunday night through Thursday night to return home on a Friday.  I planned to leave after the morning service for New York in order to have four full days and not lose part of Monday traveling.  I figured we’d get in on Sunday evening and sacrifice half of Sunday to not lose any time on Monday. 

        The problem was that it is the closing day of Vacation Bible School at the church.  My immediate thought on that point was this:  I’m helping out six of those days, so I don’t see a problem with leaving one day early that week for us to leave for our vacation…after all…I had helped out all week, and the curriculum was over…the final closing service on Sunday evening is more for the parents of those kids…I’m not intricately involved.  That was my thought process that fueled my decision to skip out on it and leave Sunday afternoon.

        But what brought me to that point to begin with?  What made me make a decision that required such carnal rationalizing?  I’ll tell you…it was my daughters.  They never asked to leave at any specific day or time.  They have no preference for any aspect of the vacation; they just know they’re going away.  For me, however, whenever I plan anything that involves my girls, my whole focus is that they have the best possible experience and for me, it’s all about them having a great time.  My focus is on them…wait a minute…that might have been the problem.  No!  Wait!  That WAS the problem!

        My focus was off and I wasn’t seeing clearly.  My desire was to give everything to my girls in this vacation, and I put that desire ahead of finishing what I agreed to do…help out at Vacation Bible School.  After all, can you imagine being an Olympic athlete and competing in the Olympics for two weeks and leaving the last day before the closing ceremonies?  Would I compete in a tennis tournament and win, but leave before I received my trophy?  It sounds so ridiculous, but why did I feel I it would be all right to pass up on the closing program for VBS?

        Look at what I just told you in light of what Paul says here:  “But this I say, bretheren, the time is short…they that have wives be as though they have none” (First Corinthians 7:29).  If you look at the whole chapter, you’ll find that the context is simply revealing that as a man marries, and as a woman marries, their desires can be out of balance and they begin to desire to please each other rather than please the Lord…and that’s not helpful in today’s age. 

        As one commentator put it:  The meaning is not, of course, that a married man is to refrain from behaving as a husband should, but that his relationship to his wife should be subservient to his higher relationship with the Lord…who is to have the first place in the heart, he is not to permit a natural relation to obstruct his obedience to Christ (W. E. Vines).  That sentiment is echoed in the following two verses:  “But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife (7:33) but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband (7:34).  It’s not just an opportunity for men to fail, but for the women equally.

        If we’re not careful, our families win out over the things of God.  We break commandment number one by elevating our families and their desires above God.  That is idolatry.  As I did that in this particular instance that I’m sharing with you, God kept reminding me of that portion of Scripture found in First Corinthians 7:23-40.  Even though Paul speaks of wives and husbands, it doesn’t get any easier when children come along.  Now the responsibility is greater and the stakes are higher, while the devil has numerous opportunities to trip us up.

        We fear disappointing our families sometimes.  We fear that being obedient to God will somehow short-change our families.  But look at what God says about the pursuit of spiritual things:  “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).  You can read for yourself what all these things are, but understand that keeping our eyes focused on God first and our family’s needs, desires, and the like, second is the way God teaches it to be.  That’s why if you’re a serious minded Christian who is still single you need to wait for God to bring you a like-minded serious Christian to marry (Amos 3:3).  That way, you will both have the desire to put God first and family second.   

        That’s also another big reason a Christian should not marry a non-Christian person, regardless of how spiritual that person is (Second Corinthians 6:14).  Remember any spiritual person may present themselves as a believer, but may be far from it (Second Timothy 3:5).  But, I’ll say it again, even if you have a marriage of two believers trying to live raise a godly family, it’s not always easy to make the right decision.

        I guess what it all comes down to is a test of faith.  You get asked to do something for the church, but it means giving up time at work and a potential loss of income for that week, so you decline because you are afraid your family will not have enough to cover the bills that month because of the time off.  Instead, if God put it on the heart of a pastor to ask you to do something for the church, trust God that He knows what you and your family “need” and can do without.  If you were single it would be easier to trust God, because there would be less at stake…do it in these instances too…trust God as though you didn’t have a family to worry about and leave the worrying to God.

        The more I thought about my decision to leave early Sunday and skip out on the ending of VBS, the less I thought it was the right thing to do.  It certainly wasn’t the right thing to do.  It wasn’t even the “OK” thing to do.  I forgot for a moment that God could easily spoil my best laid plans.  He could make the traveling bad.  He could make the weather on Monday bad that I would have gained nothing.  He could do all that if He wanted to, and I forgot that truth.  Obedience brings blessings, but if you do the wrong things…there are no guarantees.

        So then I reasoned with God…it went like this...If we arrived in New York on Sunday evening, as was my intention, how early would we really have gotten out the door on Monday morning to start enjoying our vacation?  We would have probably taken a leisurely approach and slept in, gotten dressed eventually, had breakfast, and maybe…MAYBE…be out the door by 10:00am.  So, I decided, and my wife agreed, we would stay for the closing of VBS and leave around 6:00am on Monday morning.  By the time we would arrive in New York, around 10:00am, we would have lost nothing in the process.  Again, if I was single, I could deal with disappointments like “losing time” on my vacation by doing things for God, but when you’re married, you have others to think about and how they’ll handle disappointments.  Do the right thing in those cases and forget you’re married with a family.  Doing the right thing and being a godly example to your children will go a longer way then putting their carnal pleasures and carnal needs before God’s Will…and just trust God to work things out in your favor because you did the right thing.

        Now, obviously you don’t want to carry this notion of pretending you’re single to the extreme.  You can’t be reckless.  You have to be certain of what it is that God is asking you to do, and step out in faith.  If you’re in a job you can’t stand, don’t use this principle to forget about the potential harm to your family by quitting your job and “leaving it in God’s hands” because it may not have been a direction from God to leave your job.  You do have a responsibility to focus on your family in every decision, but if what God wants you to do goes against what you may believe is the best thing for your family…you have to go with God and believe that He will wok out all the details.

        So I knew this all along, but forgot about it in this instance.  God kept putting scripture in my head until I allowed God to remind me of what it was that I was forgetting to do.  I just love being taught lessons from God.  You feel a tad bit disappointed in yourself for not getting it right all the time, but it’s a great feeling to know God cares enough about me and my family to take the time to remind me to do the right thing…and when you do the right thing for God, He’ll take care of everything.

        I’ll leave you with this final thought from David…”I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).  God knows what’s best for our families and what our families need better than we do.  David left it in God’s hands, and God proved Himself to David, so trust God and let Him prove Himself to you.