Do You Keep Your Promises?

If I am being honest with you, as I sit down to write, I am not feeling too confident about talking on marriage. Marriage is truly a mystery and to write about it feels like opening a can of worms. Some recent thoughts in my head have been:

“What do I know about marriage?”

“I have only been married for 3+ years, so how can I be writing about it?”

Well yeah, nobody truly does have the “answer” to marriage or the perfect solution on “how to” have a successful marriage. But these questions have still challenged me over the last couple weeks.

They have opened a deep well of unknowns and actually a ability to be open. There is really no one answer. There is no right way to marriage. It can be easy to write and find the solution to our problems, but we are all so different. We all respond differently to situations. We deal with excitement and conflict in our own ways, so to sit here and give you a solution to something that is a mystery would be a contradiction.

This is my thought process. Marriage is beautiful. Marriage is hard. And this is a place of wanting to connect the two together. There is a desire to sympathize with you in the struggle of marriage, and even of life, but also use this as a encouragement of the living hope we have in Jesus for our marriages by using The Meaning of Marriage book as a guideline. There is so much learning and growing for all of us, and I am excited to continue on sharing with you what we can learn together.

As I read chapter 3, “The Essence of Marriage,” I couldn’t wait to tell Jordan (my husband) and you about the new stuff I thought was super encouraging to take home with you.

Law and Love

Tim Keller mentions keeping the law, as keeping our promises. When we make a vow, we are making a promise. Those promises shape the rest of what our love should look like for our spouses. Those promises actually form our identity more than love itself. It is our ability to stay faithful to our promises that we make that will then keep us in a place of unwavering commitment. I have never heard of this before, and it makes absolute sense. Promises can be taken lightly, but when we take them deeply, they are so good and so lovely for our lives.

Promise and Passion

Let’s say a married couple gets into a argument and it’s pretty heated. There are words exchanged and each person walks away from the conflict. Moments after, love might be not the feeling. The feeling of love is more like frustration and irritation. Our feelings thankfully do not have to be what control us. If our feelings controlled us we would be pretty destructive. However we have our promises to hold on to in times such as these. We can remember the promise of commitment and of love we gave to the other, so that forgiveness and reconciliation can be possible moments after the conflict happened. By remembering our promises, they will spring board us to healing with each other and open the door for a even deeper passion to begin again.

Love Your Promises, They Will Bring New Hope

Promises are a defined set of laws that we are meant to keep. Those promises help us. To keep us tied back to the covenant of love we made with our spouse, no matter how long ago. Promises are sweet. They give us hope for the broken places of our relationships and of our own hearts.

Application

Married Couples

Remember your vows. Remember the promises you made to your spouse, no matter how long ago. Rewrite them down. Speak them out to yourself and even to your spouse when you get the chance.

Engaged Couples

Whether you have decided to write your own vows or not, pray and think on the promises you are about to make. Pray about how what promises you desire to remain faithful to throughout your whole marriage. Keep them in your heart to have for the rest of your marriage, not just on that one day. They will be vital for you as your marriage grows in new ways.

If you’re just joining us, you can catch up here:

• Newest Addition to April Maura Photography: Marriage Series Author
• Searching for the Secret of Marriage
• Unveiling the Great Secret of Marriage
• Being Loved So You May Love
• Power to Choose in Marriage

Author of the Marriage Series: Taylor Wild