Today, I want to delve into a topic that I believe needs to be studied and applied (even more so in the day and hour that we are living in! )
What is that, you may ask?
How to build a marriage to withstand the storms of life!!
To begin with,
Let's look at this example real quick :
In the physical sense, from what I have read, when they build homes in storm prone areas, they have different codes and guidelines that they adhere to. Why is this? To ensure that the home that they are building is equip to withstand the storms that will happen later on.
The builders realize that they can't change the fact that storms come. That's just a fact of life -- but they do recognize that they can adjust and change their building codes and processes to mitigate the damages that a storm can wreck on that home. Builders and architects recognize the importance of building and designing homes that can weather the storms of life-
So let's look at few key building concepts that may be different on homes in these storm prone areas!
The Foundation of the home
This is the first vital part of the building! If the foundation isn't right, the entire structure is in danger! There is more structural stability, more concrete, more floor joists, more anchor points, etc. in homes built in storm or natural disaster prone areas. The builders recognize that in order for the home to be structurally sound and to have the best possible outcome in the event of a catastrophe, the foundation must be designed in a way to ensure that the rest of the structure has the best anchor points.
Next, we can look at....
The Shape of the home
Many homes in storm prone areas have different architectural design than homes in areas where storms aren't as prevalent-- Why are these design changes so important ? Because of their unique design, storm winds can’t build up enough pressure on any side to cause a structural . Building codes in those areas call for a certain roof pitch for wind deflection and reduced lift. In some of the more recent builds, they have even begun to implement circular or hexagonal structure designs which transfer environmental loads even more efficiently than traditional shape designs.
The next thing is ....
The Engineering of the home
As I alluded to above, in recent years, the builders have begun to implement more radial floor & roof truss designs which work like spokes on a wheel. Because of this design, kinetic energy from wind is safely dispersed instead of building up in a single area, causing damage. The engineering of these contemporary builds have mitigated many of the design flaws that caused other buildings to collapse or fail in the event of extreme weather.
Another thing that is super important for these storm prone builds is
The Material they use to build with.
From what I have read, machine rated 2400 psi framing lumber is used in trusses and walls in storm prone builds because it is twice as strong as typical framing material. Five Ply 5/8” plywood sheathing is used instead of OSB on all exterior walls, roof, and flooring which strengthens the home and prevents flying debris from penetrating the structure, in addition to having reinforced windows with impact glass that prevent wind and water from entering the home.
Another factor that I have read that is of great impact as well is
The Connections found within the home build.
Oversized truss hangers keep roof system anchored to walls. The walls have multiple construction ties to the floor system for structural stability and to transfers heat forces, along with having continuous metal strapping from roof trusses to the foundation which help maintain structural stability.
These key elements listed above are just a few things in the earthly sense that people do to lessen the damage caused by storms. If people go above and beyond in the carnal sense to safeguard and protect their earthly homes against natural disasters and destruction, how much more should we, as children of God, protect our homes and marriages from the destructive winds of this world.
That is what I want to look at today...
how to stormproof our marriages, or rather, how to build a marriage to WITHSTAND the storms of life!
Let's use the same outline listed above for building a physical home to withstand storms in contrast with building a strong marriage designed to stand the test!
Let's start with
the shape.....
I know many couples that start out with youthful dreams, ideas, and "puppy" love. They are so happy to be married and making their little home together, yet fast forward a few years down the road, and we see the same couple with their home wrecked by storms of life. They are separated, divorced, or they may be still together in name but are no longer one in heart-- full of resentment and bitterness toward each other. Why is this? What happened to that young couple full of dreams and young love?
In the temporal sense, if some building or bridge suddenly collapses without warning, after the initial collapse, they send in investigators to determine what caused this catastrophic event.... they look at the evidence left behind to determine possible causes for the disaster in order to prevent future events like that from. They learn from these mistakes and failures to develop new ways to improve building standards and to bring more safety and security to other infrastructure.
So with that in mind, as armchair investigators, let's go back to our hypothetical young couple whose home didn't withstand the storm...
(Sadly, I'm sure we could tell real-life stories about friends/family/acquaintances whose homes/marriages have been devastated by the storms of life)
First of all, one of us may say "Perhaps 🤔 maybe it was the shape of their home that caused the structural failure."
You see, one man described real marriage as a triangle in shape. Man and wife are at the two bottom corner points of the triangle directly across from each other, but the most important point on the triangle is the top point, where God is. The man described it like this.... the closer man and wife gets to God, the closer they become to each other.
While a circle or hexagon may be the best shape for building in the temporal sense, the triangle seems to be best shape to illustrate a God ordained marriage -God at the focal point and everything else stemming down from Him! When God is first in our homes, everything else seems to fall in line.
Perhaps this young family initially started their new home right.
Maybe 🤔 their home did start out in the "God ordained triangle" shape but gradually, the cares of life eroded away the sides of the triangle-- God (being first priority) slowly slid off the top point of the triangle.... slipping lower and lower until eventually the triangle was upside down.... husband and wife were still connected for a while but the further away from God they got, the further away from each other they became -- until one day, there wasn't a connection at all. The next storm that came upon the home was the one that done them in. The damage was just too great to recover from. As a result, the young couple, defeated and broken, "threw in the towel" on their marriage, turning away from the broken wreckage of a love that once was.
Another may say, "maybe the collapse was due to
foundation issues"
Perhaps they never truly got the foundation right. The first few years of a marriage is so critical to "set the foundation". It is of the upmost importance to "pour the concrete" of God's design for marriage in a way that will set right for the rest of the marriage building to come. It is vital that both husband and wife seek God and are completely and wholly willing to do whatever it takes to have a God honoring marriage. If one or both spouses are unwilling to do things God's way and submit to their own roles and responsibilities as He designed it, there will be consequences and foundation failures in the future.
( Disclaimer-Don't get me wrong. If you didn't start out right, there is still hope! Just as a house with foundation issues can be repaired, your rocky marriage can too be repaired by the grace and mercy of God!! I am just cautioning those just starting or perhaps are about to embark on their marriage building journey, to be sure to build it out right. It is much easier to build the foundation right in the beginning than to have to repair it in the future. But if you find yourself with a faulty foundation, God is more than enough to fix it!)
Maybe the shape and foundation started out right but maybe it was a problem in the
engineering---
But what is engineering anyway? one might ask. Engineering in the physical sense involves the application of the principles of science and mathematics to solve real world problems.
Likewise in the spiritual, "engineering" can be looked at as the application of the principles of the Bible and God's design to solve real life problems. Principles to enable us to victoriously handle everything we encounter and go through in life can be found in the Bible. There are solutions, wisdom, and advice found all within the Holy Writ.
God designed His Word as our how-to manual. It is up to us to dig deep and seek out the instructions!
Think about it... It's hard to successfully build anything, whether it be a piece of furniture or a construction project, without an instruction manual or without using a master plan....
Blueprints, instructions, etc all help us to come to a desired end--a finished product that looks and performs as it was designed to--- Likewise, God didn't leave us without blueprints to build our marriages and homes with.... Oh no! His Word IS our blueprints!
Just as the builders trust the architects and engineers who designed the plans of what they are building, it is our job to trust that God knows how to build a marriage and we just have to follow His design.
If the builders decide that they know more than the architect of the blueprints, and they decided to change this or change that on a earthly build, it can jeopardize the entire project if they aren't careful. Likewise, when we act like we know more than God, and try to do things our own way, we too can jeopardize our "build".
God is the master builder! He knows exactly what works and what doesn't. We just have to purpose in our hearts to follow His design!
Lastly, we must make sure we are using
quality materials.
Subpar materials just won't work. You won't have the strength and durability that God designed marriage to possess if you don't use quality materials in your home build.
So, what are some quality "building materials" in a marriage?
Unconditional love
In marriage, Love is a choice. Not an emotion. There are days that you may not feel gushy gushy about your spouse. (They may be behaving in a way that isn't provoking us to have "heart eyes" lol 😍)
I don't care who you are or how much you think you love someone, after a long while of living with someone day in and day out, there will be times when you get on each other's nerves or just don't see eye to eye.
I've heard people who have been married for years suddenly decide -- well, I just don't love my spouse anymore. I'm leaving them. -- I'm sorry but that's just not an option for us as children of God.
That's when the strength of "unconditional love" should come into play. I can love my spouse despite how I currently feel about him because daily, I make a choice to love. As a married person, we must take our will and conform it to God's design. God's design says marriage is until death do us part. Whether I feel lovey dovey towards my husband today is not a caveat as to whether I love him or not. Oh no! I love my husband because I take my will and grab it by the scruff of the neck and say God's design is for me to love my husband and I choose to love him. (And the awesome thing is when you do this--you make the conscious choice to love-- more often than not, eventually your emotions will follow. )
Too many times, people make life altering decisions in the fit of current emotions (or lack of, rather) when, if they would just follow God's design and love unconditionally, the feelings/emotions of love would eventually return.
We humans are fickle creatures. In a fit of upset, we quickly forget all the good and magnify the bad. But later after we have time to think, we realize maybe it wasn't all as bad as we envisioned it. That's why it is so important to build with unconditional love, no matter what the feelings are. Feelings come and go but unconditional love is a building material that is absolutely vital for success!
Self sacrifice
Here is a doozy! Self sacrifice is a building material that many homes lack. In today's world they make it seem as if marriage should be 50-50, but by God's blueprint, marriage should be 100-100 ---the wife should sacrifice 100% for her husband and the husband should sacrifice 100% for his wife.
This world has the mentality of "what I can get out of my marriage/what my partner can do for me?" -- but God's design focuses instead on what can I do for my partner?. How I can be a helpmeet to him?....how I can bless him ?... see the difference??
Marriage always works out better when the husband and the wife each determine to put the needs of the other person above their own. Sometimes, that is a hard task. When I'm sick or feel bad and my husband needs me, it's so easy to smart off or be selfish, but when I look back at the blueprint....philippians 4:8 -- Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
There are even more verses to back this idea up -- here is just to name a few....
Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Philippians 2:3
Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. 1 Corinthians 10:24
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Ephesians 4:2
“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Philippians 2:4
Another essential building material is
patience--
Sometimes it is the hardest to have patience with the ones we claim to love the most. Patience is a virtue that we all should strive to possess. The Bible says in Proverbs 15:18 - A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.
Sometimes, just having patience can defuse what could be a catastrophic storm. Proverbs 15:1 tells us that “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger."
Just something as simple as holding our tongue at a crucial moment could prove to be a key element to help our marriage withstand the storm. Having to have the last word or having to prove a point or drive home a "I told you so" often prove to have devastating effects!
The list could go on and on--- there are so many quality "materials" found within the Word of God in which we should utilize to build our homes in the Lord! Ever do a character trait study? Almost all of the character traits would be highly desirable to be active and present in our marriages!
For some reason, we seem to exclude the relationship we have with our spouse from needing to be honed and sharpened by the master architect (God). Too often, we take our marital relationship for granted until we are in the midst of a storm and it is suffering great damages. In the day and hour in which we live, we must be proactive and work hard to build a marriage by the blueprints God has designed for us--A home that will withstand the storms of this life!
One last point here and we will close for now--
we also must build strong connections in our marriage.
Strong connections will help us weather the storms. Connections are our anchor points. Our first and foremost connection is the most important and the one that keeps us securely anchored-- our connection to God himself.... if you are struggling, spiritually, more than likely, you will also be struggling in your marriage. God is our anchor point and if we do not have a good connection with Him, most often, we do not have a good connection with our spouse either. We must be vigilant to maintain our connection with God. When we have things right with Him, It is so much easier to keep things right with everybody else too.
It is so important to maintain a strong connection with your spouse. This is something that we have to work on constantly; the enemy would love nothing better than to sever the connection that we have with our partner. Camaraderie and shared mutual connection help build relationships. That's why when life gets crazy (even when you're really busy!) it is of the upmost importance that you make time for your spouse. Even just a few minutes of your undivided attention each day can help maintain that special connection with your husband and help foster a strong bond between the two of you.
Communication is key. Do not allow the devil to come between you and your spouse and get you to where you have no connection and no communication. That connection and communication with your spouse may very well be the key anchor point that helps you weather the next storm that comes your way.
In this last day, storms of life may seem to be more frequent and more intense than ever before. The winds of discord and confusion may be howling all around of us.....But if we will purpose to do things God's way, we can rest assured that we can be sequestered in our Godly homes that we have build up with our spouse (according to the Master Architect's design), safe and secure, right in the middle of life's most devastating storms.
From my heart to yours....
-Tiphanie ❤️
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