Commitment
So… I’ve been thinking sort of a lot about marriage lately. (No, I’m not planning on getting married anytime soon… Eventually, but not really soon.) But for real. My best friend got married last month, as did a few of my other good friends, and many more are engaged. Even the news and political issues have repeatedly brought up the topic of marriage, what it really means, what it looks like…
Marriage. Marriage these days doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot. Marriage is a covenant, a commitment to another person for as long as you both live. People say we throw the word “love” around too much. While that may be the case, I think it has more to do with a vast misunderstanding of love that this happens, not the other way around. Using the word “love” for lots of things happens, I believe, because so few people have experienced true love and even fewer have committed to live it out.
Commitment. There’s that word again. The other part of marriage (and life!) that people don’t seem to understand. People talk about it all the time, especially Christians, most often with reference to marriage. There’s a wonderful song by Warren Barfield called “Love Is Not A Fight” that says a lot of great things about love and marriage (I’m sorta obsessed with this song right now):
Love is not a place
To come and go as we please
It’s a house we enter in
And then commit to never leave
So lock the door behind you
Throw away the key
We’ll work it out together
Let it bring us to our knees
Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
If we try to leave may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for
To some, love is a word that they can fall into
But when they’re falling out
Keeping that word is hard to do
Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
If we try to leave may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for
Love will come to save us, if we’ll only call
He will ask nothing from us, but demand we give our all
Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
If we try to leave may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for
I would fight for you, would you fight for me?
It’s worth fighting for.
The song starts off by talking about how love itself requires commitment, no matter what the relationship. We must commit to love one another, no matter what. If we don’t commit to love, then we will only love when it’s easy, when we feel like it, when we feel compelled to—and that’s not really love. Love, especially in the covenant of marriage, is something we must commit wholeheartedly to, that we will love and live in love even when it’s the most difficult thing in the world—even if you or I am the only one. These days we don’t seem to know what that kind of commitment looks like. We live in a world where we move toward what is easy, what feels good, what is most convenient… Very few of us have had to commit to something difficult, day in and day out, in order to function or get what we need. We so easily shy away from hard work (I am the worst offender of this).
Marriage is a commitment to a very specific relationship of love. It is a commitment between a man and a woman to love each other, to be entirely vulnerable with each other, and to commit the most intimate parts of their lives to each other only. Instead of basing this relationship on true commitment, which is lasting, which is difficult, and which is also fulfilling and very much worth it, people often base marriage on something that is not love, something that makes it easy to neglect commitment. The second verse says, “For some love is a word that they can fall into.” This thing called “love,” which is not really the fullness of love at all, is what people these days base their relationships on. And when something is based on anything less than true love and commitment, it won’t last. It also won’t be fulfilling and trusting, which makes leaving certain kinds of relationships so much easier to rationalize.
The final verse of this song is great. It points to the One who Himself is Love, and is the source of all real love. He is the source of all good things. What’s great about this verse is that it says, “He will ask nothing from us, but demand we give our all.” Commitment.
I think one of the reasons that even Christians don’t portray real love and commitment in their marriages is not that we don’t talk about it quite enough (although it’s never bad to talk about it!) but that we often don’t commit to God how we should in our relationship with Him first.
That’s right. Commitment. I see this in my own life so much, and it makes me sick. Incredible lack of commitment to God. Often we let our relationship with God ebb and flow much farther than it probably should. We only go to chapel or church when they play the music we like, have a really dynamic speaker, or our friends are going. If it involves changing our schedule or driving a little farther, we are reluctant to do so. We don’t take the time and effort to discipline ourselves in all areas of our life before God, we don’t do all that we need to in order to flee from temptation, we don’t pull up the roots of sin right away, we don’t make an effort to truly forgive, we don’t make our relationship with God such a priority that we are wiling to get up early and get on our faces before God before the day begins, we don’t work to live in love, grace, mercy, and truth toward all those around us…
In other words, we have a dire lack of commitment in our relationship with God. It is this lack of commitment that leads to improper relationships and lack of commitment in all other parts of our life.
For those of us that are not married (like me), we should be taking this time to learn, practice, and work to really live in full commitment to God. The commitment in this relationship is the foundation and basis for all other relationships in our lives. And then for those who are already married, it is incredibly important for you as well to cultivate, and work at fully commiting to God and all He asks of you.
Either way, if you aren’t sure where to begin, begin in the Bible. It has so many things listed out for us that God asks. Commit to beginning each day in prayer for even a few minutes and give it to Him. Think about how you are committed in your marriage, or the kind of commitment you would want for your marriage if/when you have it, and just imagine how much more committed we should all be to God. This will help you find where to start. And God will be there.
God is here with us, and it is by His grace and His power that we can come to Him. He has given us all we need to come to Him and live in commitment to Him and in love toward those around us. Praise Him, for He is good! He is worthy of our all. He is everything.
