We have a throwaway culture. When we’ve had enough of using, playing with or trying something, it gets thrown in the discard pile. Even our relationships suffer the same fate.

The concept of faithfulness is hard to understand in this world, except in the areas of academic study, vocation and business, when we know that if we don’t work hard and apply ourselves we will fail. However, we don’t want to work hard all the time!!! Some things are supposed to be easy. Love should be easy, we reason!

There are many movies about meeting and finding the right person, falling in love and getting married. We all assume that the story goes uphill from there. That the hard part of ‘finding love’ is over. Few depict the realities of staying ‘in love’ or working at marriage.

It is commonly concluded that “if I have to try to love you, then I don’t love you”. I’ll call it quits and find someone who is easy to love, and who I feel like loving all the time!!! That’s cool, except one might find that that new love will have a hard time loving the choosy lover! Would you be happy if they called it quits because they have to ‘work’ at loving you?

Faithfulness is the key to happiness in all areas of our lives, not just professionally. It goes against our short-sightedness, our selective memories, our temptations, our laziness, our selfishness and more. It goes against our humanity to allow us to execute our godly potential, and actually live content, fulfilling and rewarding lives.

We can never be 100% assured that we are making the right choice when we choose to commit our lives to another in marriage. However, it’s not helpful to over-analyse or doubt our decision continually, when the ship has sailed. Even if we made a mistake, God doesn’t make a mistake. He is still with us. Loving us, teaching us and willing us to use our challenges as opportunities to grow into His image.

Doubt is common. It’s not new. Giving up is easy. It’s not original. Faithfulness is hard. But it’s redeeming. You will have doubts. You will be tested. But if you’re faithful, you’ll breakthrough to the other side where joy lives.

If you don’t trust yourself or can’t silence the voice of doubt…tune in to God instead. Trust in Him, listen to Him, learn from Him. His grace is sufficient, and the journey of marriage will bear its latter fruit, if we’ll get past our own resistance to love. For that is truly what we are afraid of. Love and its power (to deny self and be long-suffering). Even when we doubt its existence, when everything else falls away…the last thing standing is love – unconditional love.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails…” (I Cor 13: 7-8)

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