We’re on to chapter 6 – Lies Women Believe about Marriage. If you missed a week or a handout, you can get all of them here.
Download the handout here –>Lies Women Believe About Marriage Chapter 6 Chart
I know what you may be thinking. Why do I need to read a chapter about marriage when I’m single? Well, you need this chapter just as much as anyone because you are in a prime position to shape your thoughts, beliefs, and convictions about marriage before you get married which will lead you to make wise choices and build a healthy foundation.
Do any of these lies resonate with you? I suspect the first one might.
- I must have a husband to be happy.
- It is my responsibility to change my mate.
- My husband is supposed to serve me.
- If I submit to my husband, I’ll be miserable.
- If my husband is passive, I’ve got to take the initiative, or nothing will get done.
- Sometimes divorce is a better option than staying in a bad marriage.
I want to camp out of the first lie for most of this post; however, I want to point out that “signs” that you believe the other lies about marriage do begin to show up and take root in your dating relationships. How often do you desire or even try to change your boyfriend? Do you have visions of a dream house, dream car, dream kids, dream vacations along with a housekeeper and nanny? That could be a form of believing that your husband is supposed to serve you to provide all of those things. And then there’s the dreaded “s” word that our culture has totally taken out of context and trampled – submission. What are your thoughts about that? Spend some time really examining these topics.
Okay, the lie “I must have a husband to be happy”.
When I was single, and I looked into my future, I could not imagine a life without a husband. It was like looking into oblivion, my thoughts couldn’t even perceive what that would look like. This was so much the case that I purposely did not pray for God to change my heart, if it were His will, and take away my desire for marriage. I was afraid that He’d actually do it, and then where would I be?
This is a lie that is easy to believe because as a single woman with an intense, good desire for marriage, you can’t imagine a satisfied, content life without it. The problem with this is that we begin to see marriage as a right and not as a gift. Then, after we’re married, the lie “I must have a husband to be happy” morphs into the lie “My husband is supposed to make me happy.” In both cases, our happiness is dependent on something other than God, so it is displaced. This leads to impossible expectations and feelings from your husband of being used and emotionally suffocated. No human being can make us happy. By expecting him to do so, we are asking him to be a kind-of god to us.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss writes on pages 137 and 140:
“Satan twists the Truth about marriage by suggesting to women that the purpose of marriage is personal happiness and fulfillment, and that they cannot be truly happy without a husband to love them and meet their needs. The Truth is that happiness is not found in (or out of) marriage; it is not found in any human relationship. True joy can only be found through Christ.”
The purpose of marriage is not to make us happy. The purpose of marriage is to glorify God through our lives together – to serve Him in a specific way in the unity as a married couple that we could not as two single people.
“The Truth is that God has promised to give us everything we need, and if He knows a husband would make it possible for us to bring greater glory to Him, then He will provide a husband.” Lies Women Believe, p. 140
What are your thoughts about these lies about marriage?
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