Training Ground

Train even your weaklings to be warriors. ~ Joel 3:10

The first years of marriage are hard work and looking back on it, I understand why. You've got two independent thinkers who now need to be retrained and shaped so that they will fit into one new mold. When you're married, you're constantly at war. What many couples fail to realize is that the battle is not with or against your spouse. Instead, you need to stand side-by-side or back-to-back with your spouse and fight the enemy, together with Christ, as a united front.

In Ephesians 6:10-12, Paul reminds us that we are a united front in Christ and it's not humans--your spouse or other people--we are fighting against. Rather, we are at war "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Paul totally understood that people can't make us and they can't break us--our enemy is the devil. But, if we are a united front in Christ, then that's all we need.

And while the first years of marriage may be difficult, I believe that's our training ground. We view it as pain and think it's our "breaking ground." However, each warrior must be broken of his or her own "independent" thinking and "retrained" to think and work as a united front. So all the while we think we are being broken, that is the time we are really being trained for battle, trained for war. It is in those training years--and the length of time is different for every couple--that the couple will either "resolve" and determine to hang on, no matter what, or they will "dissolve" and quit, usually just before break-through.

If you're going through a tough time in your marriage, if you're thinking of quitting, let me encourage you to press forward and determine to be a united front with your spouse--not against. For it was Jesus, Himself, who said, "I have overcome the world," (John 16:33). If we are in Him and He is in us, then what can overcome us? God is looking for warriors and putting them through training everyday. It is only after we have united from our training that we cry out, "And now, O Lord, call out your warriors!" (Joel 3:11)