Beyond Happily Ever After

Before we wrote our mission statement, we didn't realize how secular our goals were.

Kevin & Karen Miller

Average Rating:

[1 Comment]

There are no previous pages

1 of 5

We thought we were going to a nice, quiet conference for church lay leaders. We would drive a few hours, sit through a few sermons and workshops, sing some songs, and come home. Little did we know that one concept presented at that conference would change our marriage forever.

Before the conference, we were a nice Christian couple. We knew God had brought us together. We went to church together. We often prayed together.

But we also felt a little aimless. We had fallen into daily routines not much different from those of our non-Christian neighbors: commuting to work, driving kids to school, watching videos. Sure, we helped at church, but were we making any difference in our world?

The conference speaker pegged us when he said, "Most believers just want to be happy. They would also like to have friends and enough money, and then if God is pleased with them, that would be great, too."

We didn't see anything wrong with that. But then he said, "The problem with these subtle, unvoiced life visions that most believers have is that they are destructive lies. Jesus said clearly that if you seek your own happiness, you will never find it. As soon as you make happiness and security your goals, you make them impossible to attain."

Ouch! Could it be that we active churchgoers and Bible readers had, without realizing it, been living mostly for ourselves? That night over milkshakes we had one of the most honest conversations of our marriage.

"I may look like a Christian on the outside," I said to Karen, "but down in my fundamental goals and drives, I'm not much different from anybody else. I think my major goal has been to move to a bigger house."

"I know exactly how you feel," Karen said. "My life vision has been to have children and to live in a big house in the country."

We felt awed, scared, and excited all at once. We sensed that an ugly, long-standing wall in our hearts had been exposed. And now it was falling.

"What if," I asked, "we got rid of these old life visions and replaced them with a new one built on God?"

Beginning the Search

If God had brought us together—and we believed he had—he must have had some reason for doing so. So we decided to begin building our new life vision by composing a short, clear statement of who we were and why God had brought us together.

Looking for help, Karen and I turned to the Bible and searched Genesis for the purposes God designed for marriage. Marriage was created to give people companionship: "It is not good for the man to be alone," we read in Gen. 2:18 (NLT). It was created as a place for bearing and raising children: "Be fruitful and multiply" (1:28, NASB). Most people of any religious or nonreligious persuasion would agree on those two goals.

But we came to see that Genesis assigns a third meaning to marriage: joint, fulfilling service. God tells Adam and Eve, "I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals" (Gen. 1:28, TEV) and places them in the Garden of Eden "to cultivate it and guard it" (2:15, TEV). It's as if God said, "Take care of this, you two. It's a big job; and you'll need each other."

next page... |

There are no previous pages

1 of 5

Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2002, Spring

More from Kevin & Karen Miller:
Kyria.com | Books

Join the Kyria.com Community!

Become a member to have access to the following:

Full access to the bimonthly Kyria digizine, each issue focusing on a spiritual discipline or theme
50 percent discount on all of the downloadable resources in the Kyria Store
Hundreds of members-only articles for thoughtful, influential women