“Be careful,” the Apostle Paul warns, “that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak… Never do anything offensive to anyone” (1 Corinthians 8:9; 10:32).

Those are pretty tough words to live out—especially in marriage! Marriage brings about a natural environment to offend one another. Think about it—you live together day in and day out and see each other in not only the best of circumstances but also the worst. It’s only natural that you’re going to offend each other at some point (and often at MANY points).

The above mentioned verses urge us to put our energies into finding ways to work THROUGH our problems with each other and BEYOND them. After all, that’s all a part of being a marital team which is what we become when we “leave and cleave” after the wedding. We’re challenged to turn our problems into blessings, both for our marriage and for also God’s heart as He sees us giving each other the grace and space He asks us to give.

One of the things we’ve learned in life is that our “problems” become growth opportunities— opportunities to empty our individual wants for the better good of the marital partnership. As Mike Mason (from the book, The Mystery of Marriage) says, “Marriage is a natural place to begin to practice daily, the curbing of our own freedoms wherever they prove offensive (or troublesome) to each another.”

He goes on to say, “The point is that each tries to surrender as much as possible for the sake of the other so that the love between them may be honored and built up in every way” —which is so Biblical.

Whenever you and your spouse have problems, you need to make it your mission to find ways to build bridges so the problems become blessings for the betterment of your marriage and for the glory of God’s kingdom work.

When we serve and look for ways to bless each other we not only make God’s heart smile we also disarm the enemy of our faith from using our “problems” to cause further future harm to our marriages. It entertains the enemy all the more when we hurt our marriage and each other. And we don’t know about you but we’d rather entertain and gladden the heart of our Lord rather than the enemy of our faith anytime!

Mike Mason goes on to give an example of this by saying,

“If Mary really cannot stand the noise of the power saw, then is it John’s place to question her reasonableness or to make slighting comments about the fairer sex or to point out that her food mixer makes even more noise? Or is it rather simply to refrain, in love, from using the saw when Mary is around?

That’s all there is to it. It’s a simple question of how much John loves Mary: Does he love her enough to stop annoying her with his saw? Is the fact that his wife’s peace is being disturbed of greater importance to him than the completion of a birdhouse? For Mary’s part, naturally, she needs to make every effort to adjust to the noise of the saw, knowing that an innocent pleasure of her husband’s is at stake.”

But then it comes down to something else Mike Mason says in his book,

“Who wins this battle of wills and whims is not the point; the point is that each tries to surrender as much as possible for the sake of the other so that the love between them may be honored and built up in every way—even at the expense of birdhouses and headaches! We need to learn to see that a simple, harmless hobby such as carpentry (or indeed, anything under the sun) may actually become an instrument of the devil if it’s allowed to disrupt the love between two people.”

“This is the gist of Paul’s advice to the Corinthians, concerning the attitude that a Christian should take toward his ‘weaker brother.’ It’s a rule that cannot be applied too vigorously in marriage, for it’s often the case that each partner assumes the other to be the weaker one.”

“But if the other really is weaker, argues Paul, then that is all the more reason not to maintain our own rightness, stubbornly and overbearingly, but rather to surrender for the sake of love. Rightness, whenever it seeks to dominate, becomes wrongness, no matter how right it may be. Would we rather be right than happy?”

Author Mike Mason goes on to say,

“Much has been made of the fact that Paul’s advice to wives is to ’submit to your husbands,’ while his advice to the husbands is to ‘love your wives’ (Ephesians 5:22, 25). Some interpreters have delighted in pointing out that distinction between these two commands and the implications this has for the roles of husband and wife.

However, the entire passage is prefaced by the command to ’submit to one another’ (v. 21), and it is clear from the context that Paul intends these words to be directed first of all to Christians, but then for the married couple.”

“In fact, the point seems to be that the married couple is to set the pattern of mutual love and submission for the whole Christian community. If a man cannot lovingly serve his own wife, after all, or a woman her own husband, whom then can they serve? If they can not bring happiness to one another, how can they bring happiness to anyone else? Poor Christian marriages, marriages in which willfulness rules in place of sacrifice, make a laughingstock of the whole church.”

So there’s the choice for us. Are we willing to turn problems into blessings—both for the sake of each marital partner and also for God’s kingdom work, laying aside our own comfort, just as Jesus did? Or do we cling to our own comforts like the world says we should? If we cling to our own rights, ignoring Christ as our example, our marriages will look no different than what the world offers and they become the “laughing stock” Mike refers to in his book.

Let’s face it, who will be attracted to knowing our God better when God’s spirit isn’t manifested any differently in our lives than in a pagan’s life? But if we work to bridge our problems into blessings, we show ourselves to be Christ Followers and who knows all that God can do with that? We pray you’ll think about this and what you can do to implement it in your own marriage (if you aren’t already).

Our love and prayers are with you as together we work to make our marriages the best they can be!

Steve and Cindy Wright