Sometimes we think the goal of life is happiness. After all, who doesn’t want to be happy? But this world is broken because of sin and we know that things happen that make us unhappy – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, moody teenagers, a seemingly destructive national decision that we often feel powerless to affect, or even something as small as stubbing our toe as we walk outside on a beautiful spring day. We seem to naturally think that life should go well for us, and we get confused when it doesn’t. Sometimes, we blame God – we think that since we try to serve him that he should make everything in our lives work out well. We hold up our righteousness to him – the good things we have done – and say essentially, “Am I not owed a good life because of all this?” It does not help that our culture and sometimes even our churches feed into these notions. I’ve heard non-Christians use the principle of “karma” to try to explain such things, but is that the answer – a non-personal universe that keeps score and levels the playing field with no mercy? Yet Christians often unknowingly make the same connections – you did this and now that is happening to you. The Bible presents a very different picture about our God and the world he has created.
You life is not just about your life. Your life is a scene in the Grand Play – God’s Story. Your life has meaning and purpose that is far beyond the bounds of the dash between your birth and death on a tombstone. What happens to us and how we react – what we run to – is of eternal importance. God wants to do more than just enter your story and make everything work out the way you think it should. God is not an errand boy who makes our agenda come to pass, but is instead the Grand Playwright, the Great Director, and the Master Storyteller. He has a destiny for you that is far bigger and better than your own dreams and desires. We are also a part of the story that involves the others around us – the play is not our own monologue, but a vast array of characters far beyond our view. God is the Great Redeemer, and we are the recipients of the Great Redemption. His redemptive work has an end goal far better than our mere happiness in seeing our dreams come to pass. His redemptive goal is that we each one day will be like Jesus – that when we stand before Him face to face, we will be like Him. At that time, all of our tears will be wiped away, all of our striving will cease, death and sickness will be no more – and that will be true happiness in the fullest sense of the word! That destiny is guaranteed for all believers because of what Christ has accomplished, and not because of our own performance. So, in the fullest way, happiness will one day be the glorious by-product of being like Jesus, and you will be happier than you can now imagine.
But right now, we are in the midst of our scene. The play is not over. The end of the story has been written and the outcome is secure – but it is not here yet. In the midst of this play, there is much conflict, war, and bloodshed. The enemy is raging, wanting to destroy as much as possible before his time comes. There are still casualties. Death, decay, and discord are a part of this life because we rebelled against a Loving and Holy God. But this same God who rightfully could pour down his wrath upon us all and sweep us away in a moment, chooses to enter our lives, redeem us and fight for us! He will never leave us nor forsake us for His Own Name’s sake! When the play is over, we will marvel at the depth of His love, His mercy, His patience, His justice, and His wrath. He will be known more fully because of the story, and we will praise Him all the more!
What does this mean for us in the midst of life, and specifically our marriages? It means that God has a plan far more complete and complex than you can imagine. The experiences and situations of your life are not random events, and they are not merely the events of an out-of-control world. This is Holy Ground and must not be taken lightly, for this means even our sufferings are for our ultimate good and for His praise! God does what is necessary to show us what our hearts value more than Him, to show us what we cling to besides Him in moments of trouble. We certainly do not want to think we can explain why someone went through some horrible form of suffering, but in the midst of our confusion, we can cling to the fact that nothing enters our life that catches God by surprise. Nothing enters our life that is not first filtered through his nail-pierced hands. The play is his, and we are actors in a scene. It will, one day, make sense. We must trust Him – trust His Heart that willingly died for you!
So, is God’s goal in our lives happiness? Not the way most people mean it. Most people want God to make their dreams, their vision of their life come true. But our story will climax in His story, and at that point we will have happiness beyond compare. Here, in the midst of the story, we are called to suffer – to suffer like Jesus, to identify him, and to pick up our cross. God has given you the spouse you have for a reason, and that reason is to make you more like Christ. The difficulties, arguments, and seeming incompatibility are there because you have (at least) 2 sinners living under the same roof, each with their own version of the play. God wants you to relinquish the rewrite, and trust that his version is the one that leads to true eternal happiness. Be willing to step back in the heated moments and say “just what is my heart craving in this moment?” and “what does it look like to live in faith in this moment?” It will take time to break old patterns and ways of thinking – but you have the same power working within you that raised Christ from the dead!
In the end, we need to spend more time pondering God’s self-revelation. Job knew nothing about the divine drama going on that caused him to lose everything earthly. He suffered greatly, yet never knew why. Jesus was the one person who ever lived who truly did, thought, and felt exactly what God wanted him to in every moment in life – yet it was God’s will to crush Him for our rebellion! If anyone ever deserved a “happy” life, was it not Jesus? Yet his life was full of suffering. The author of Hebrews tells us: “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.” Jesus “was made perfect” or complete through suffering - and we are made like Him when we suffer. We are called to “Love God” and “Love Neighbor” and even to “love our enemies.” And sometimes, in those heated moments (and maybe more often than that) our spouse can act like our enemy. We are called to choose the way of suffering and love them anyway …
A few verses on suffering: Romans 5:3, Romans 8:17, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 1:5, Philippians 1:29-30, Philippians 3:10, Colossians 1:24, 1 Thessalonians 5:9, 2 Thessalonians 1:5, 2 Timothy 1:8, Hebrews 2:9-10,18, Hebrews 5:8, Hebrews 13:12
