{"id":2144,"date":"2015-07-22T11:45:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T15:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=2144"},"modified":"2015-07-22T11:45:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T15:45:29","slug":"marriage-a-sometimes-uncomfortable-inconvenient-covenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=2144","title":{"rendered":"Marriage: A (sometimes uncomfortable, inconvenient) Covenant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Wedding-rings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2145\" src=\"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Wedding-rings-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"Wedding rings\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Wedding-rings-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Wedding-rings.jpg 460w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Marriage is a covenant. That means it is, by definition, not always <em>comfortable<\/em>. Covenants are made with a view to not only great days, but also difficult days. And difficult days will come in any marriage. Every marriage will face the difficulties that come with \u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Health<\/li>\n<li>Parenting<\/li>\n<li>Money<\/li>\n<li>Jobs<\/li>\n<li>In-laws<\/li>\n<li>Sex<\/li>\n<li>Home<\/li>\n<li>Neighbors<\/li>\n<li>School<\/li>\n<li>And more \u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The great days are easy. The difficult days need a covenant.<\/p>\n<p>Marriage is a covenant. That means it is, by definition, not a <em>convenience<\/em>. Covenants are made with a view to not only joys and desires, but giving and sacrifice. And some days will find marriage inconvenient. There are the inconveniences of \u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The other\u2019s needs<\/li>\n<li>The other\u2019s wishes<\/li>\n<li>The other\u2019s family<\/li>\n<li>The other\u2019s demands<\/li>\n<li>The other\u2019s moodiness<\/li>\n<li>The other\u2019s goofed up thinking<\/li>\n<li>And \u2026 my responsibilities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Marriage is easy when it\u2019s convenient. The moments it isn\u2019t are why it is sealed as a covenant.<\/p>\n<p>The prophet Malachi referred to the woman as both \u201cthe wife of your youth\u201d and \u201cyour wife by covenant\u201d (Mal. 2:14). There is a reason it is both.<\/p>\n<p>Youth does not last. I recall going to the church gymnasium the day of our wedding and dunking a basketball. The thought of being married was making me feel old-er \u2026 and I just wanted to remember that at the ripe old age of 23 I could still dunk a basketball. Guess what. I can\u2019t dunk a basketball any more. (Insert <em>gasp!<\/em>) My hairline isn\u2019t the same either. Furniture disease is taking over: my chest is falling into my drawers. Age spots are increasingly joining hands so I at least look like I\u2019ve got a tan in a few randomly placed locations. Time and gravity are not our friends. A professor of theology at the seminary from which I graduated reported that recently his wife looked at him and said, \u201cDo you realize there\u2019s seventy pounds of you that I\u2019m not even legally married to?\u201d Time and gravity go to work on both the husband and the wife. Neither of these powerful forces seeks our permission.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s more than time and gravity. It is the sheer pressure of change. Time wreaks havoc not only on the body, but it\u2019s passing brings changes to your <em>mind<\/em>, and the way you think \u2026 your <em>emotions<\/em>, and what you feel \u2026 your <em>will<\/em>, and the choices you make \u2026 your <em>personality<\/em>, and the way you relate \u2026 your <em>values<\/em>, and what you cherish \u2026 your <em>dreams<\/em>, and what you hope for \u2026 your <em>goals<\/em>, and what you pursue. Those changes mean that on your fifteenth (or pick any other number you wish) anniversary you\u2019re not married to the same person you wed on that special day. We are not statues carved from stone, but malleable, every-changing, soft-clay beings constantly being formed and reformed by God Himself (hopefully!; 2 Cor. 3:18) or, if not by Him, by the pressures of life (Rom. 12:2a).<\/p>\n<p>That is one reason marriage is a covenant, for it holds you in place when you might be tempted to run another race or to chase another face. A covenant keeps you together because it\u2019s there that you find <em>grace<\/em> \u2026 smack in the middle of a covenant that was always intended to be an earthly depiction of another, greater covenant (Eph. 5:25-32) which is fundamentally all about grace.<\/p>\n<p>Break the covenant and be a poorer man for it. Choose the covenant and discover grace, under the sometimes uncomfortable, inconvenient circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marriage is a covenant. That means it is, by definition, not always comfortable. Covenants are made with a view to not only great days, but also difficult days. And difficult days will come in any marriage. Every marriage will face the difficulties that come with \u2026 Health Parenting Money Jobs In-laws Sex Home Neighbors School [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","post-preview"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgYGxX-yA","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}