A Recipe For Success
Would you bake a cake using random ingredients, without following a good recipe and expect it to taste like heaven? I bet not. You’d expect that it probably wouldn’t taste too good.
If you want a masterpiece of a cake, you’d use choice ingredients and follow a recipe that’s proven to be successful.
Likewise, you can’t randomly throw things into the “mixing bowl” of marriage and expect bliss. You’d need to be diligent in your choice of ingredients, i.e., picking the right spouse. And more importantly, you’d want to follow a recipe for success…the biblical recipe!
Want to know why our marriages aren’t lasting?
It’s because we’ve been baking cakes with the wrong ingredients in addition to following the wrong recipes. We’ve been putting together marriages according to what seems right to us and by following our hearts even though we are told in scripture to lean not on our own understanding and that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked (Proverbs 3:5; Jeremiah 17:9). We fail to realize that we are told this for our own protection, not because God just wants to restrict us.
We keep trying to obtain the benefits and privileges of a kingdom marriage using culture’s recipe for it. We try to get the benefits of God but without Him.
You might also be thinking, “Well, I have a good marriage or relationship and it didn’t take all of that.” And to that thought, I believe it is totally possible for one to have a marriage or relationship that they are content with without doing it God’s way. However, there is an innate draw in all human beings towards spiritual or the “higher frequency” things. We are wired for deep and intimate connection. You may not acknowledge God but that’s where it comes from, and connecting with your person on a spiritual level makes all the difference in a marriage just being okay versus one that surpasses anything you could have ever imagined.
Today, I challenge you to think about culture’s recipe for marriage and sit it next to the kingdom recipe for comparison. In culture, we choose a partner for marriage based on the desires of our flesh. And because we don’t use our season of singleness to kill our flesh, we wind up bringing it into the marriage with us. In the flesh, our love is filled with conditions and we will withhold that love when you don’t meet those conditions. the vows we said aren’t forever and we really don’t even mean them when we say them in the first place. The statements, “we grew apart or fell our of love” become valid reasons to leave the marriage. It’s a recipe for failure.
The recipe for kingdom marriage is the polar opposite. We choose a partner through much prayer and after careful observation of the fruits of the Holy Spirit that this person displays. This is evidence of an active and thriving relationship with Christ, which must be the foundation of the marriage. Because we live by the spirit, our flesh doesn’t dominate us. Our love doesn’t come with conditions that have to be met because we aren’t giving love in order to receive something in return. We love at 100% even if our partner is giving 0%. We love selflessly and sacrificially. We extend grace at every turn and are quick to forgive without keeping record of your wrongs.. We don’t fall out of love because it’s pure and a forever thing. God sustains what is done according to His word. It’s a recipe for success.
Use the right ingredients, follow the right recipe…and you get the right marriage. 🤍
