Sticking It Out

"Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes."
–2 Kings 20:3

There is woven into the fabric of marriage a sense of something on-going. One woman, one man, together for a lifetime. They don't have to be "communicating" or having fun or constantly setting goals. They do have to be together—and intend to stay that way. This is faithfulness to each other and to God.

Too many people think marriage should be fun, or fulfilling, or entertaining. Then they get married and find out it's not always like that. So they keep searching and find even more frustration with another marriage partner.

As I read Scripture, I don't see teachings on happiness as a first principle. Joy, yes—the kind of joy that flows from obedience, from service, from glimpses of the holy. God wants us to do that which glorifies him—to be faithful, to keep his commandments, to seek first his kingdom. Sticking it out comes first in God's eyes—through the times when you're thinking, This is life? Why am I married to this person, anyway?

Sticking it out means being faithful, and out of faithfulness there is peace. I see that peace in couples that have been married years and years. These are the couples who have come to terms with their choices; they accept each other wholly, and somewhere along the line they embraced sticking it out as a first principle.

–By Elizabeth Cody Newenhuyse in The Couples' Devotional Bible (Zondervan)