Today we continue our thoughts of likening our marriages to the cedars of Lebanon.
CEDARS ARE DURABLE AND LASTING
Cedars have remarkable lasting qualities and are noted for their durability. In fact, there are some cedar trees that are estimated to be two thousand years old! This is how God sees marriage--durable and lasting. When we make the covenant of marriage before God and witnesses, we are in for the long haul! It is “forsaking all others.” It is “until death do us part.”
We live in an unprecedented hour in history when divorce is as rampart in the church as it is in the world. How God’s heart must grieve as the beautiful institution of marriage, which He ordained, is attacked and torn apart by the devil. This is not the vision of “lovely homes” which God designed.
How can our marriages last? Only by doing it God’s way. Our selfish flesh continually puts a spanner in the works! “Self” and “selfishness” are the root of all problems in marriage. We need to lay down our own rights and embrace the same attitude of Jesus who did not cling to His rights as God. Instead, He made himself of no reputation, He became a servant, and He humbled Himself and was obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:6-8). The outworking of this truth in our lives is sufficient to keep a marriage to the end.
Too many people think that love is a feeling. When the feeling dies, they think love has finished. Love is a commitment. It goes beyond feeling. It goes beyond circumstances. Even when we have no vestige of love left within us, God’s inexhaustible love is still available to us. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes the kind of love we need to survive marriage. It is agape love, which starts with: “Love endures long” and ends with “love endures without limit.”
King Solomon used cedar timber to build God’s temple, and his own palace, because of the durability of the wood. God wants our marriages to be built of cedar too, not poplar or untreated pine that will not stand the tests of time.
May you have a marriage like the cedar tree.
More tomorrow.
Be blessed, Nancy Campbell
Picture: Unspoken Love by Sam Sidders
Enjoy looking at pictures of older couples who are still in love at: https://www.pinterest.com/aboverubiesmag/i-love-older-couples-who-are-still-in-love/