My wife and I have been married for some 40 years now. I’m happy she still loves me and I feel the same way. We’ve been through a lot together and life for us and my family has not always been easy. There are challenges here and there from time to time. But I’m glad she’s with me all the way since we were still teenagers up to now. I would say that we have a good loving relationship despite our faults and weaknesses.
Broken Marriages
A relationship between a husband and wife can sometimes go from bad to worse and then end up in a broken marriage. It’s heartbreaking when this happens. After living together for some time, one or both of them are frustrated because their mate is not really the person of their dreams in their fantasy world. What they really wanted to get married with was a mate which was a creation of their own imagination—the perfect prince charming or the perfect princess of one’s own dream in fairy land.
Know and Love Your Mate
We could never really come to know the other person and build a lasting relationship if we continue to recreate our mates according to the image that we have invented in our own minds about him or her. If we only relate to our mates according to the figment of our own imagination, most likely we will often get frustrated and soon it will end up in a broken relationship.
It’s sad when marriages break up because the couple have not really come to know each other and have learned to grow in love with one another. A couple needs to learn to forgive one another and understand each other’s faults and weaknesses. Accepting one another in love is a key to a lasting marriage relationship.
Getting rid of this mental baggage about our mates is the ideal if the marriage relationship is to blossom to maturity. Let’s all get to know our mates and love them for who they really are — warts and all. Let’s not transform them or “reform” them according to our “specifications” based from our fantasy land. We will be happier that way.
Knowing Jesus
The same thing is true with our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can never really come to know the real Jesus if our Jesus is merely our own ideas that we have created about him and not really Jesus Christ that is revealed in Scripture. Some serious repenting* of the way we think is a must. We have to change our minds, get rid of our mental baggage, and get to know the real Jesus, who he is and what he has done for all of humanity and all of creation as revealed in the Bible.
Ask God to open your minds so that you will know who our loving Triune God really is as revealed in Jesus Christ. God created us to have an everlasting relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We can begin to enjoy everlasting life and love now and forever more with the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t have to end in a broken relationship.
*The word repent in the Bible comes from the Greek word, metanoia which means change of mind.