What Are Your Goals for Your Marriage?

Depending on the topic, your answer may vary and depending on the answer (if you are honest), it may be quite revealing. What if this is the question:

“What is your goal for your marriage?”

Now, before you start rehearsing all kinds of glorious answers, I am only going to give you two options.

A. The goal for my marriage is to “work” with my spouse so that we can learn how to meet each other’s needs.

B. The goal for my marriage is that I learn how to meet some of the most intimate needs of my spouse.

If you answered A, you may have missed the slight shift in the answer that leads away from the exact question. The question asked, “What is your goal?” Not your spouses, and not the two of you together. The reason that A is not the best answer is that we can only have a goal for something that we can affect, something we can own. My goal can not be based on something that I can’t control. I may have influence but not control.

The B answer is within my control. It can be my goal. I can learn how to meet some of my spouse’s most intimate needs (spiritual, emotional, and physical). I can do this even if my spouse does not respond well, even if they shut me out, or are not interested. This goal is not dependent on them, only on my willingness to embrace this.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t desire for us both to learn how to minister to each other and meet the needs that we are designed to meet with each other. I think most of us long for this; we desire and yearn for this kind of relationship.

The B answer also reminds me of two significant things:

· Only God will meet our deepest needs for a secure love and significance. When I know and really understand this, then I can come from a position of having my core needs met. I am not wrongly looking for someone else to try and meet those needs.

· I can then choose to embrace this wild idea:

My spouse is the one human being with whom God has called me into a oneness that allows me the privilege of meeting some of their most intimate desires and needs in a way that only I can.

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"And with all his abundant wealth through Christ Jesus, my God will supply all your needs." ( Philippians 4:19, GNT)

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When I fail to remind myself of these truths, I can find myself really liking answer A, it seems so much fair and equitable. Like shouldn’t we both work on things, why should it just be me? What about my needs? Who takes care of me? (The spiral is easy to start down).

But when I remind myself of the truth then the B answer is the one that I want to have as my goal. No, I will not always meet my goal and at times, I can lose sight of my goal. When I do, I need to remind myself of the truth and why it is my goal.

You know why? Because God has all of us, if we are married, to be the one that gets the privilege of ministering to our spouse like no one else in the world can.

~Carla