Dear Elim Grace,

It’s a Marriage Monday!

Are you becoming the kind of spouse God can lead?

A person can act wisely and not be a wise person. Similarly, a person can forgive and not be a forgiving person. A person can give a generous gift and not be a generous person. A person can show kindness and not be a kind person.

Yet, the more you act wisely the more you act wisely. So the more you forgive the more you forgive. The more you are generous the more you are generous. The more you are kind the more you are kind. It’s about becoming, not merely doing.

In Proverbs 2 we read both that God gives wisdom to those who ask and that wisdom enters a person’s heart making them wise. In other words, wisdom will not simply guide you along the way, enabling you to make a good decision here and there, but will guard you along the way, bring the whole of your life into the way of wisdom.

The goal, then, is not simply to receive wisdom but to become wise—the kind of person God can lead.

In marriage, the goal is never only for Alissa and I to do what is enough, what is right, or what is required. But the goal is always also to become the kind of man and woman, the kind of husband and wife, that God can lead.

God leads us less by telling us what to do and dispensing wisdom in a particular situation. He leads us more by forming within us the heart of His Son Jesus, a new heart within us with new desires and thoughts—a heart formed, shaped, filled, and empowered by the Spirit of God, in order that we might know how to walk in the life and wisdom of God.

Pastor Jonathan